Yellow vine tomato seedlings
Welcome to our first quarters update as we setup our community farm project – fàs.
We’ve chosen quarterly updates rather than more regular updates as it gives more context to everything that is going on.
Trees
Firstly, thank you to the Woodland Trust for donating 400 trees to our project. We’ve been busy utilising these as biodiversity-increasing boundary planting. Our site is open on the north and the east and when those winds blow they tend to be chilly and fierce. So part of our design was to protect our site from those directions and create a micro-climate.
Chicken Run
If you’re regenerating an area of monoculture then animals and poultry are key. We were lucky enough to have a chicken shed, albeit one that needed a fair amount of tlc. So we’ve been busy fox, pine-martin, badger and eagle proofing our shed and run. Patching any holes and putting a wire net over the top of the outside run. We tried to hatch our own chicks but unfortunately only one hatched! So we have got another batch of fertilised eggs, kept them nice and warm in our incubator. The kids named the chick and chose Gandalf the Grey…. I don’t know why… We’ve chosen Bantams as they tend to be a bit more friendly and also because they have really good fertilising poop. When we build our chicken tractor they’ll be great at fertilising our lazee beds.
Lazee Beds
Talking of Lazee beds, we’ve started to construct these and now have four complete beds. Lazee beds are a great way to keep nitrogen in the soil. We covered each bed with brown cardboard (stripping off the tape first) then put a mixed layer of straw, leaves and grass clippings. Each bed is 1m wide and follows the contours of the south facing slope. This helps retain water and prevents soil disappearing down the slope. The plan is to have around 60% of the site covered in lazee beds, hugel beds and raised beds. It feels good to have the first ones in place. We’ve already planted our purple potatoes in Bed 1 so hopefully we’ll see some produce from these early beds this year. A word on the soil here. It is really excellent having had animals on it before and now mostly grass. When we were planting the trees, the spade would go in all the way up to the top of the blade and each spadeful would have any number of worms. We’ve got lots of topsoil to start with in our no-dig, no-fossil-fuel adventure.
Seedlings
In anticipation of getting our first polytunnel and also in preparing our lazee beds, we’ve been busy planting seeds. And they are doing fantastically well with 95% + rate of success so far! We have loads of different types of onions, romanesco cauliflower, three different types of leeks, carrots, tomatoes and a host of herbs currently doing well in our makeshift nursery.
Funding
Funding is going well with lots of applications in and a few due to get back to us in April. All being well these will allow us to put in further infrastructure and irrigation.
Growing Collective
A big thank you to the local growing collective and especially Michelle and Georgia who have been a source of great inspiration. Such a nice group of local growers who are sharing knowledge, seedlings, seeds and humour. Great to be a part of it.
