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The Tree

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First thing in the morning I take our dog for a walk before breakfast. The route is always the same but it is always very special. The path cuts through a group of silver birch trees that we planted about ten years ago. It then passes what has become an old friend – a small turkey oak. This tree was a sucker off the root of its 350 year old “parent” that crashed to the ground on December 31st 2000 – a millennium moment. This little tree is growing in shape and character just like the old tree that we had grown to love as a massive feature in our landscape. It is amazing to think it could live until 2300.

These trees are personal. They are almost family. At this time of year particularly, as the leaves are so fresh they add a vibrancy of life to my walk. I should not have been surprised when I heard the news this week that one of the ideas to control climate change was to create forests of artificial trees. Trees to suck the CO2 out of the air. The reporter said they would do this just like trees “but better”. It is a great technological idea, but it is not a tree.  It will not provide a natural living landscape.

Alternatively, it could be one solution to global warming – and the capability to do that is impressive. It is an indication that there are great minds at work to mend our world. We have grown to rely on technology. For me, springtime has a vibrancy as the farm’s crops start to mature. In the sea buckthorn field, the area between the plants are thick with grass, thistles, docks, nettles and other broad leaved weeds. They are weeds but they are also full of insects that potentially are controlling insect aphids that could devastate my crop.

The last few weeks have been incredibly dry and we are all becoming aware that climate change brings with it long hot summers. Summers that slow plant growth, create poor crops and can kill the plants we care for.

So the weeds are a problem because they compete for precious water in the soil. If I cut them down the insects I also look to help in controlling others will lose their habitat. The fact we grow the sea buckthorn organically is a choice, but it is a choice that makes you think holistically about the environment you work in.

The area between the rows of sea buckthorn provide a similar haven to the area under the plants providing a refuge for beneficial insects. So the weeds can go and I have started to remove them. In the past this has been done by hand, then by strimmer. Last year, at a Soil Association seminar at the gardens of the Belmont Manoir aux Quat’saissons in Oxfordshire there was the ultimate solution to weeding – a Karl Ladurna cultivator. It is the boy’s toy for an orchard.

Its capacity to weed is unchallengeable, but all machinery needs handling with respect. Its capacity to rip up weeds is matched by its capacity to pull up everything else in its way.

I have to admit that as I merrily drove up and down the rows of sea buckthorn, seeing the weeds surgically removed I was horrified to find how easy it was rip whole sea buckthorn bushes out of the ground. You soon learn to concentrate and respect the power in your control.

Last week saw the release of the IPBES Global assessment report on biodiversity. Valuing biodiversity is not easy in our technology based lives. I recognise that I could not farm my sea buckthorn organically without the beneficial insects and the complex of species that live in a healthy soil. Every species is reliant on another. One of the commentators on the report said, the problem with biodiversity – even with all our knowledge is that we just do not understand its complexity.  We have not even identified all the species on our planet so how can we understand what they do, how they interrelate to others and help to complete a healthy ecosystem.

We all appreciate biodiversity differently – it never fails to amaze me how much green space there is in London used by millions as natural space to relax. Technology is a modern wonder, but it will not replace the natural world – a natural world that feeds us.

Technology provides our quality of life, but the natural world allows us to live. We just need to respect and enjoy both – in balance.

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Inspiration and reality

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It’s nearly May. Potentially there are 64 days before we start our first sea buckthorn harvest. This is the culmination of ten years work. Ten years of working with like minded others with the passion to deliver a natural crop that encapsulates a power pack of nutritional quality. I too have that passion, but it is not emotion that will deliver the crop.

In 2017 our orchard was laden with berries. The realisation that handpicking was so time-consuming led to abandoning the crop – but it inspired two years of investment in machinery. Designing and developing a harvesting system that reflected on the success of being able to grow a crop.

So here we are. Two months to go and the plants look really healthy. Mid-March was the crucial period for pollination. It will be three weeks before we start to see the berries forming and can assess the size of crop. The memories of the icy storm of March 2018 that rampaged through the plants destroying the viability of pollination are still vivid in our minds. But that is nature and this is another year.

This coming week the design team are testing the harvesting equipment which has been through a development phase of test and modification. Our Landini tractor gets its full service. The Ladurna cultivator – our weed control solution after years of manual strimming will be put to work. Applying foliar feeds has also been a manual job, but two weeks ago the backpack was replaced by a 400lt tractor mounted sprayer. Finally, our sea buckthorn can be managed to an effective and efficient plan.

As we mechanise our sea buckthorn it might be efficient but this comes at a time when Greta Thunberg is showing the leadership that we all must focus on reducing our impact on the environment. It is sad that it takes a 15 year old Swedish school pupil to remind us of the critical nature our environment is in. Mr Gove, at DEFRA has driven the government 25yr Environment plan, but as Greta has highlighted it is not a 25yr policy plan we need but action.

Yesterday, as I walked our dog I thought about the whole issue of sustainability. Plants growing in the wild need the rain, the sun and the soil to grow, thrive and return year after year. Such a simple but totally sustainable system. One of the reasons for growing sea buckthorn was its low need for resources. No sprays, compost to improve the soil that feeds it and a low requirement for water. Hand picking would have been an environmentally low cost way of harvesting. It is fine for foraging wild plants, but not a commercial crop.

Our harvesting system is largely based on needing electricity. It is easy to say that is more efficient than direct use of fossil fuels, but electricity still comes from gas power stations.  As we develop our crop we need to not only be aware of how our actions impact on the wider environment, but take action to minimise those impacts. Whatever we do, we will use resources. The issue is questioning their use. Minimising their use. Compensating and mitigating for their use and ensuring that the process is true to its goal of ensuring we tread lightly in the environment that we need to work in.

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February Update

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Sea buckthorn is never short of surprises. By the end of January every one of our ten Siberian sea buckthorn varieties have decided spring is here. Klaudia started the party on January 5th, Inya was last by January 29th. This is a first as normally the last buds will start to crack open by the end of February.

Our sea buckthorn project started ten years ago. Importing plants from the extreme climate of Siberia to our coastal mild climate was bound to create unpredictable behaviour. We paid the price last year. Early leaf emergence leads to early pollination. The Beast from the East storm in March came as pollination started. Sea buckthorn is wind pollinated with males releasing pollen to be blown onto neighbouring female sea buckthorn plants. The freezing temperatures and strong icy wind made it impossible for any viable pollen released to reach or settle. The result was a few isolated berries on a few plants – nothing else.

There are always solutions, but solutions come having identified a problem but that is the nature of a trial to grow a crop.

Through the last 12 months we have been working on developing our harvesting system. In 2017 the plants had a crop with some Chuiskaya variety plants producing over 10kg. We tried to hand pick. The result was not only slow, but also too many berries being damaged.

The decision was made to follow the German harvesting concept of cutting branches, freezing them and separating the berries off the frozen wood. With the help of a LEADER grant we employed a harvest equipment design company to start on the task. The specification was for a small orchard producing up to 10 tons of berries.

Like all prototypes the initial design needed modifications. The development process will be perfected ready for harvest 2019. Experience from 2017 suggests that harvest will be in July and all ten Siberian varieties will ripen over that month.  Having seen a full crop in 2017, lost the crop in 2018, it will be a huge step forward to harvest a full crop in 2019.

It feels similar to the Brexit process. We all know it is going to happen. It is just the detail that remains to be seen.

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Change – nothing to fear.

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For over a month I have been listening to the speculation and division that surround Brexit and found it profoundly depressing. There comes a time when life has to move on. For farmers, Brexit is not just leaving Europe. It has triggered the Agriculture Bill which will radically reform our industry over the next ten years. The fundamental change in the removal of farming subsidies requires a positive response, together with the challenge of facing up to climate change.  Coming at a time of political and market instability does not help, but one cannot change reality.

Starting to grow sea buckthorn was a leap of faith almost 10 years ago. Finally we have a healthy crop in the ground, a bespoke harvesting system under development leaving the concept of producing and selling a product as the crowning task to compete the process.

In the face of a time of uncertainty it seems that positivity, focus and keeping concepts simple has to be the order of the day.

Our crop has high nutritional opportunity. With vitamins A,B,C,E together with omega fatty acids 3,6,7, and 9 headlining its attributes we have the potential to deliver product that is both natural and healthy. This is a time of year when consumer trends are published, a factor which maybe gives impetus in big business to new approaches to marketing, but marketing is not what is important. For alongside climate change, diet is becoming a massive challenge. A challenge that has developed in spite of government policy and regulation, a science-led food industry and vast amounts of diet related research.

It is interesting to see that one trend forecasted is that a balanced diet is gaining consumer focus. The concept of the balanced diet is ancient. The gut microbiome is a great new focus. The 100 trillion bacteria loaded in our gut that process what we eat and provide the body with the essential fuel and metabolites that drive our health. This concept changes the focus for narrowly based diets back to the idea that a healthy gut is what maintains a healthy body, not a bunch of specific nutrients.

It makes me think in terms of new crops we should be looking to grow on the farm. The UK is a small country that should not try to compete with countries that can grow cheap grain. We need to change to focusing on specialist crops that are focused on dietary benefit. Cheap grain has sponsored an unstable economy for agriculture, requiring subsidy to prop it up. Maybe finding crops with direct to market nutritional added value will help to redress the need for subsidy and create a real market for real food.

2019 for us will be a formative year, not because of Brexit, but because we will be producing our first commercial sea buckthorn crop. A crop made possible by the harvesting process. The first crop that we will nutritionally analyse. It will start the next process to define the best growing methods to improve the nutrients that we target as important for our consumers.

Brexit is bringing about change, but change has always been happening, so it is not to be feared but embraced.

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The World Never Owed Us a Living

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Autumn has come around again and it is my favourite time of year. Temperatures are mild, the landscape is colouring up as leaves start to turn, and our sea buckthorn looks good and healthy. We have recently been reminded by the scientific community that climate change now requires urgent management. 2018 will be one to remember. The first buds on our plants started to open in mid January. The wintery blast of the storm – the Beast from the East appeared in March. It came just as our Siberian plants were preparing for pollination.

Sea buckthorn is wind pollinated, so it does not rely on insects. Our orchard is laid out so female plants fall within 10m of male plants.  In Altai, where the plants come from, spring is not until April. Pollination is therefore in our late spring. The Siberian plants at Devereux have adapted to our mild climate by emerging from dormancy in January and starting to pollinate in mid-March.

Hence the icy strong winds last March cut checked the pollination process. The result – almost no crop. In a year when the IPCC told us that we have 12 years to reduce our impact on the environment, I have to reflect whether an icy March and a long summer drought are part of climate change or just circumstance.

As coastal farmers we are very aware of the potential impacts of climate change. Retreating glaciers and collapsing tundra in Siberia are geographically distant events, but both threaten our farm. I do consider that every time I get in my car to go to the farm I add another contribution of emissions to the atmosphere. Global warming is happening and the glaciers are melting. The tundra collapsing is worrying as it has locked up CO2 not for decades or centuries, but for millennia. The tundra is thawing as the climate warms. It has a capacity to release huge amounts of global warming gases, increasing the rate of warming. The direct impact for us of a warmer atmosphere is warmer seas, creating sea level rise through thermal expansion.

Solving, or controlling global warming requires huge political will and collaboration. The impetus that is driving collective political inspiration to reduce the use of plastic is heart-warming. But often there is a feeling that as individuals it is difficult to influence those at the centre of political power. So it is up to each individual to understand their impact.

As a farm we need to look at how and where we create emissions. Energy use is a major issue. How we conserve water for crops, livestock and the environment. Our level of consumerism and creating waste. All of these are serious issues that we have to identify, quantify and reduce.

The Advisory committee on climate change report published yesterday suggests that government is not going to have the resources to solve the impacts of climate change. It is therefore down to the individual to find local solutions to local problems and like our sea buckthorn it is a matter of adapting to a new environment and moving on.

This process is underway but I would love to think that the world will wake up, as it is with plastic, to manage climate change as it poses a very real threat.

We are told that climate change will provide extreme periods of weather and again we have experienced a long hot dry summer. Our plants look healthy this autumn, so they are showing their capacity to withstand drought, but healthy plants are no good to a farmer if they do not produce a crop. It is the uncertainty that this brings which presents challenges. I fear that politicians are turning a blind ear to the scientists and expect that technology will deliver a solution to this gravest of issues. Maybe, as is happening with plastic waste there will be a sudden resolve to act. Maybe it is down to all of us to take personal responsibility for reducing our impact on the planet.

Fear however is not productive so with autumn comes the start of another year and plans for making next harvest a success. Thoughts of a bountiful crop spur on even the most tedious jobs. Pruning started this month. As our plants get larger pruning seems to take forever. Apart from removing dead wood, this year low branches that will snag the Ladurna cultivator are being trimmed back. The tops of branches in the centre of the plant are also being removed to allow more light into the plant.

 

David

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Harvest 2018: German plants perform better

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Last week we started to harvest our German sea buckthorn varieties. The emphasis at Devereux farm has been to focus on growing the thornless, sweeter Siberian varieties, but the initial orchard started with 180 mixed German and Finnish plants represented by nine female varieties.  The eccentric weather has impacted on these plants by later ripening. Varieties normally harvested in July are up to four weeks late in ripening. Berry size is good and it will be interesting to see how they analyse.

Having had a long hot summer nutritional analysis may see better than average concentrations of key nutrients but with 190 to choose from which are the most relevant. There are key vitamins of A, B, C and E; omega 3,6,7,9 fatty acids; phyto-sterols; and myriad polyphenols. But if we analyse what do we need? Single headline nutrients are not the reason why any fruit provides health benefit. It is the synergy of the total mix of nutrients that is important. The interaction between nutrients contributes to the nutrient driven health package that contributes to the make-up of balanced diet.

As a farmer I want to grow a quality crop. Analysis will indicate whether growing methods are creating consistent quality. Research indicates that as fruit ripens so does the concentration of individual nutrients within it.  Some increase, some decrease but this will be influenced by variety and weather making management difficult if one is looking to grow a consistent quality berry. The old adage of eating an apple a day cuts some truth here. It is not the fact that you eat a natural ingredient, but the fact that you eat it regularly and often building up the supply of fresh natural nutrients for your body. If fruit quality is down in a particular year it matters less if you carry on eating it day in, day out regardless.

One quirk in this year’s harvest is that some German varieties – habego in particular are ripening consistently on the north side of plants, but the berries on the south side are yellow on the top exposed to the sun, and orange underneath. Is this a form of bleaching, or lack of ripening? Brix measurements on all berries are around 8, much lower than the figures for Siberian varieties which when ripe are between 12 and 14.

We have started harvest on some nine year old habego plants, some of which will not have been harvested last year. The first of these plants yielded 27kg gross – including the weight of the branches. We are trimming off leaf and cutting berry bearing sections of branch approx. 40-50cm long, so the wood content is small, so this yield is impressive.

The berry separator machine has been put through its paces and has worked well in its primary task of removing berry and leaf from branches. Like all prototypes the best way of testing a design is to use it, and then work out how to perfect it. We still need to improve the flow and channelling of leaf after it has been removed. The operation can be messy and within a food processing environment, spillage of waste leaf is undesirable. When it takes so little time to remove the berries by machine, it is frustrating to spend so much time clearing up after the job. This will be sorted for next year – it is another part of the development process.

So that is progress on the sea buckthorn. This all comes at a time when the rest of the farm has also been busy with the arable harvest being cut. Over this summer we have also been a partner in building a 250m sea wall to protect a neighbouring Anglian Water treatment works. The final job of the engineers involved on the wall was also to dig some scrapes in two fields to improve our local habitat for breeding birds and waders. It certainly has been a year to remember.

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Russian varieties disappointing, hoping for better German success

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The last three months we have been putting together our sea buckthorn harvest processing site. Its function is simple. To freeze down the branches and then separate out the berries from the leaf and branch and finally to grade the berry for marketing. We are farmers by trade, but developing this site has raised the issues of selling a food product direct to market so food hygiene becomes an issue. On Monday the site was inspected by our local Environmental health officer. Like all new experiences we had no idea what to expect. The site has been designed to be able to maintain high hygiene standards, so thankfully the work passed inspection.

The fact we do not have much of a crop is an issue, but with the Latvian varieties now in, we look forward to the German varieties next. It seems that the Sirola was also effected by poor pollination with some plants berryless. We Brix tested both Sirola and Habego yesterday – 13.4 for sirola and 7.6 for habego. The consideration is that Sirola will be ready by the end of the week, but Habego is at least a fortnight off ripening.

Having some berries has allowed a trial run of the new berry separator. As with all prototypes there are a number of small design changes to fine tune the machine, but reflecting that last year separation was a manual process – this is a revolution in progress.

A revolution might mean progress, but without a main crop this year we have now to focus on harvest 2019. It has been three years since we planted any new plants, but the next planting needs to reflect which varieties to select as commercially viable for the future. A small field next to the existing orchard will provide room for another 1300 plants.

Our selection needs to be on which plants are responding to regrowth after harvesting. Taste is key. Large berry size would be good for marketing but currently achieving a 1gm berry seems difficult.  With that in mind the focus on establishing a new site will be to improve the soil condition from the start with compost incorporated into the planting soil.  As we are all becoming conscious of water conservation we do not want to irrigate mature plants, but providing a drip line to new plants is worth trying. Improving our foliar feed applications through the growing cycle also becomes possible now we are tooling up with our landini tractor with a sprayer. Like the introduction of the separator, each year that goes by brings us closer to having the full set of tools to produce a good crop of sea buckthorn.

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Harvest 2018

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Harvest 2017 showed great prospect for our sea buckthorn. All the Siberian plants across the site produced heavy – predicted yields of berries. Having produced a crop the next challenge was to create an efficient, affordable means of harvesting. Winter 2017/18 therefore focused on delivering this process.

One can formulate the best plans but in agriculture there are natural variables that have the capacity to undermine concept based on theory. We all have experiences of weather and the seasons but these now have to blend with considerations as to the impact of a changing climate and how much to risk manage this position.

We still have mild winters. I am told that the severe weather incident in mid-March should be taken as a one in fifty year event. Its impact disrupted the pollination of our sea buckthorn resulting in no Siberian crop, although we still have a yield of Latvian and German varieties. The climate might be changing but unless this is repeated within the next three years, we have to discount this as a novel event.

The prolonged period of hot, dry weather over June and July is a different matter. This has been predicted by climate change scientists and it seems to be repeated across the globe. We need to look at our sea buckthorn crop and assess the impact of this phenomenon.

After a solid two months of no rain and temperatures up to the mid-30 deg C has left the majority of the plants still looking healthy. As our soil is clay and our water table is high plants have a capacity to reach down for water. This does not mean that all plants are healthy. These conditions create stress and there are possible 15% of the plants shedding leaves and looking very sad.

Our investment in a Ladurna cultivator this year must have helped in both reducing weed competition, but also combining that weed growth back into the soil around the plant. The use of compost to improve organic matter in the soil is an on-going concept to improve the health of the soil and potentially improve its moisture retention. We will be using a combination of wood chip and green waste compost this autumn to keep this process going. The ability to combine it into the top tilth with the Ladurna will hopefully increase the incorporation and benefit process.

Irrigation is an option. It is my personal belief that if we are going to see more long hot summers then the plants have to work harder, their roots need to go deeper and the soil needs to retain more available moisture. Irrigation will be useful in establishing plants in their first two years, but as a tool for yield enhancement I am personally not convinced that there is benefit.

This year our Augustina were irrigated every two days to see if the few berries there were might improve in size. Unfortunately there seemed to be no response. A more technical approach might be worthwhile with a nutrient irrigation package but strictly on a trial basis. As we have limited capital investment available this can probably be better focused elsewhere.

Investment capital is a precious resource and this year it has been channelled into developing a facility to mechanically harvest our crop. The fact the crop has been tiny has strangely been a real advantage. The development of any new system takes time to plan, but it is the practical implementation that reveals the real issues.

The harvest processing site we have built from a collection of two refrigerated lorry bodies, two large portacabins and five containers. The temporary nature of the site is with an intent to develop harvesting/processing ideas from concept to full development on a small, low cost scale that can then be moved into a new building once we fully understand what we need. The site will comply with food hygiene regulations and this will also cover how we operate in the field as well as within the buildings.

We started harvesting our Latvian berries a week ago and each day the process has been refined. The process requires the cutting of branches and them being brought back to the site for freezing in a new cold store. The cold store temperature is set at running down to -24 deg C, with a concept of wanting to freeze the berries as fast as possible. We have found that with an ambient temperature in the 30s, simple issues such as loading branches into the cold store requires skill to prevent the store temperature from rising and compromising its ability to blast freezer the incoming crop.

The newly designed berry separator has arrived and is being operated in a chill room at temperatures of between 2-5 deg C. The machine is designed for this, but as a prototype it will require on-going improvement to create the ideal machine for the job.

We are already looking to a redesign of the linkage between the cold store and chill room to ensure a consistent working cold temperature. We have been told that we are a low risk operation in terms of food hygiene management, but even so maintaining high standards is our target and each practical step requires refinement to achieve the right level of practical approach.

It is this transition of working to create an efficient, workable harvesting system that is taking time. If we had had a heavy crop this process of developing the harvesting system on the job would have been challenging.

But as it is, by next year we will have created a mechanically assisted harvesting process that will accommodate the crop that we had in 2017. That is farming for you. Each year is a new year, which is what makes the job worthwhile.