News from the farm: Business, belief & back to beans
Our team is busy picking borlotti beans and harvesting squash. I watch them working their way up the field in the September sunshine with some envy while I type. I still proudly call myself a farmer,...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Nothing mellow in autumn’s fruitfulness
The steady rain falling outside amounts to 77 (very welcome) millimetres since the drought broke. Soil is swelling and cracks are closing but a little digging shows that the wetted horizon is no more...
View ArticleNews from the Farm: Waiting, watching & learning as summer slips away
We now have clouds but we are still waiting for meaningful rain. How it can be so hot for three months without thunderstorms defies fifty years of experience, but we are entering a new era with a new...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Do we work for money alone?
Over forty years of trying to get veg picked and boxes sold, packed and delivered, I have repeatedly experimented with performance-related pay, or “piece work” as it is known in the fields. I have seen...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Impossible choices we’re responsible for
Our squash have met across the rows, stretching their vines to cover the bare soil, their roots spreading below ground in search of water to feed the flowering and swelling fruit. How many they carry...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Longing for Devon drizzle
Some fine hay has been made and most crops and pickers are showing surprising resilience but as the heat rises each day it is hard to avoid a sense of impending doom. After three inches of rain in...
View Article40 years on… an organic conversation with Guy Singh-Watson & Helen Browning
Forty years ago, Guy Singh-Watson and Helen Browning set out to farm differently. From a wheelbarrow of leeks, Guy built Riverford into one of Britain’s best-known ethical food businesses that...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Keeping your head above water
Happy voices can be heard across the valley over the tick of the slowly moving planter edging up the hill. Picking is in full swing and the weeds are threatening to overwhelm those who succumbed to...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Acorns, jays & strawberries
Last week’s heatwave rapidly ripened our strawberries, with pickers starting at 5am before being driven from the fields by the heat. By contrast, the first three weeks of June were damp and cool, with...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Hay, silage, strawberries & cream
Few smells are as sweet as that of well-made hay, rolled up ready to be baled. The sweetest of all is made in May, when there’s not a cloud in the sky, grass sugars are high, and young leaves are still...
View ArticleNews from the farm: More than small talk at the Riverford suppliers’ conference
Last weekend, organic farmers & growers from Yorkshire to Devon and Andalucia to Sicily gathered in Devon for Riverford’s biennial suppliers’ conference. These are the people who keep your boxes...
View ArticleNews from the farm: The 170-year squeeze that led to cheap food and Grievous...
In 1846, the year the protectionist Corn Laws were repealed, around 50% of UK household income was spent on food and about 70% of the price of a loaf would have gone to a local farmer for the wheat....
View ArticleNews from the farm: A better reason to slow down – join the FIT Count
Last week, I was accused of having a colonialist mindset by one of our more radical pickers. As we finished up the wild garlic season I was pondering whether we should consider roguing the woods to...
View ArticleNews from the farm: It seemed to work for a while, but now we need a plan
I have been lucky enough to live my 65 years in a period of relative peace, stability, and prosperity. Since 1980, that stability has been accompanied by a quasi-religious belief that the free market...
View ArticleNews from the farm: The kiss of death
While most of Devon is bright green, an emerging patchwork of fields will turn yellow, then brown, then silver. This is the kiss of death from glyphosate, the “world’s favourite herbicide”. Most...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Slurry, spring-sown stars, and feeding you all
Muck is flying, birds are nesting, and the geese are honking as they lap the farm surveying potential nest sites. After a three-month deluge of double our normal rainfall, three bright and (mostly)...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Wild pickings & nettles in fine fettle
March has brought welcome glimpses of the sun and enough dry weather to allow us to mow off crop remains, spread some compost, and even start preparing the best-drained fields for early crops. For once...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Time for men to step up & speak out
This Sunday is International Women’s Day. Some might ask what an ageing male farmer would have to add to the debate. Firstly, I would contend that, as many of the issues discussed on Sunday will relate...
View ArticleNews from the farm: The right way is rarely the easy way
When I sowed my first leeks 40 years ago, they were the best, the freshest, and also some of the cheapest around. Our co-owner council frequently asks why our prices have risen relative to supermarkets...
View ArticleNews from the farm: Weathering storms & speaking too soon
Last week I wrote, perhaps a little smugly, of the extraordinary resilience of crops and pickers in the face of two, now approaching three, months of double our average rainfall and the resulting...
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