May

6/23/2014 05:46:00 pm , 0 Comments

Owls, ponds and cats:

The ‘barn owl men’ who visited us in May describe themselves as being like the famous trio from ‘Last of the Summer Wine,’ and so they are. They’re all retired now but Ian Anderson was involved with the Ministry of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries and now all 3 devote hours to helping to protect barn owls. There are known to be barn owls in the local area so we’re going to put boxes up in our trees to encourage them to nest at Honeydale.


Pascale Nicolet is an expert in freshwater habitats and is advising on how we can create wet areas, scrapes and interlinked small ponds, to attract more wildlife.

We already have feral cats. Six of them. The local cat rescue centre has caught and neutered them so now they’ll live out their days at Honeydale, keeping the rats and mice down.

Tree Planting

We’re working on plans for the autumn to plant native deciduous trees, shrubs and hedges over a seven acre area on the northern edge of the farm. We’re also talking to local architect Alex Corfield, a renowned planner in the Cotswolds. The buildings at Honeydale need replacing and our vision is to build an agricultural centre for sharing knowledge amongst farmers, land managers, the scientific community, college students, right through to school children. But we don’t want to rush into anything until we are absolutely clear about what will work best - as with the rest of the farm, our philosophy is plan before action.

Over the coming months the sheep will leave, the barley will be combined in August and the straw baled. We don’t own a combine but Sam has maintained links with Swinbrook Estate who will come over and harvest our crops. We recognise as many small farmers do that a business like this cannot exist in isolation but needs to be part of a mutually supportive network.

Ian Wilkinson

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April

6/23/2014 05:46:00 pm , , 0 Comments

April was a busy month...

Lambs

The first lambs arrived at Honeydale to graze two of the three grass fields. We wanted to manage and maintain the grass but didn’t want to commit to having any livestock ourselves at this stage so it was very convenient for us that the local farmer needed to graze his lambs. The grazier Nigel Adams, told us it’s the first time he’s seen sheep on that land for as long as anyone can remember. Prior to that it had been grazed by cattle but lambs were available and were easier to fence than cows.

So in one way we’ve now begun to make the first gentle changes to the way the farm is used. 



Barley

The barley was fertilised and sprayed.


Sainfoin

We employed a firm to construct and fit out the polytunnel and then we planted sainfoin, a plant we are very passionate about at Cotswold Seeds and with which we have a strong history. Robin Hill who founded CGS 40 years ago has always believed that if we can select the right strain with the right persistency and regrowth, sainfoin will become as popular as it was a hundred years ago. It fell out of popularity due to the intensification of grassland farming, with greater use of nitrogen which promoted ryegrass, but now the nature of farming is changing again and we believe sainfoin should enjoy more days in the sunshine!



Our sainfoin has been grown from seed, sourced locally and I’m delighted to say it’s flourishing.



Mark and Mike from our warehouse developed a technique whereby the individually planted seeds are repotted by burning holes in the plastic flooring of the tunnel so that the seeds can be easily be transferred directly into the soil without damaging them. They’ve also set up an irrigation system and we are conducting experiments with rootgrow, putting mycorrhizal fungi into the roots of the plants to see what difference that makes.

Wildlife


Jodey Peyton and Richard Broughton both work at the CEH (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) and are the government’s expert advisors on birds and experts. They came to Honeydale to conduct baseline surveys, to record the wildlife on the land before we start to make changes. Jodey shot videos and took bug samples while Richard established that there are 30 species of birds, breeding and feeding at Honeydale. Jodey and Richard will both be returning several times over the next few months in order to complete the picture. We are also waiting for a visit from a plant expert.

Ian Wilkinson

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March

6/23/2014 05:45:00 pm , 0 Comments

Jim and Wendy had sown malting barley, a relatively low input crop, for many years so we thought we’d continue to observe the land by sowing the same again. Sam cultivated and drilled the barley in the middle of March, we settled on the tried and tested ‘Tipple’ variety with the hope that it will make the malting premium at harvest it was then a case of rolling in and leaving. N fertiliser and a grass weed and broadleaf herbicide application to follow in in April.

 

Ian Wilkinson

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There are Always Surprises in Farming

6/23/2014 05:42:00 pm 0 Comments

There are always surprises in farming, of course.

Our first came when Cotswold District Council Health Department served notice on the spring fed water supply to Honeydale. Typically for this area, the water contained high levels of nitrate so was deemed unfit for human consumption, meaning the first digging on the land was to install the new water pipes.

 

Soil Testing

In order to be able to make a baseline assessment of the soil health so that we can monitor any changes, we took a soil sample from all seven fields in March, collecting in the classic ‘W’ pattern and sent if off to the NRM soil testing lab.

There are two types of soil at Honeydale. The arable land is typical Cotswold limestone but the grassland which covers nearly half the area is lyas clay which lies very wet with higher water tables and poor drainage.

The test results showed the soil contained an average of about 4-5% organic matter, which was about what we’d expected, though it was slightly higher on the grassland. The soil is relatively alkaline with a higher PH on the arable ground.

P & K levels seem fine and we didn’t want to apply fertilisers or manures this year because want to observe how the crops fare at this benchmark level before we start making any changes.

Ian Wilkinson

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Sam Moves to Honeydale

6/23/2014 05:42:00 pm 0 Comments

The first thing we needed to do was find a tenant, ideally someone with a farming background who could live on the land and help look after it. Sam Lane was working at the local Swinbrook estate and was looking for a place to live near by. He moved into the cottage in November, we got talking, and now he’s joined our team as technical advisor. It’s great how things work out sometimes. There was the first real link between Honeydale and Cotswold Seeds, before we’d even started to sow anything.

Ian Wilkinson

Having moved into Honeydale in late November I was immediately struck by the stunning panoramic views. They stretch from Chadlington and Charlbury in the North East and all the way around to Rissington, Stow and the Cotswold hills in the south west. I was lucky to experience a mild winter during my first at Honeydale, having been warned that snow does drift along the driveway, when it blows in on top of the hill! On the sunny days it was great to see lots of brown hares and an abundance of skylarks making the most of the over winter stubbles, as a habitat and food source. There are also a resident family of roe deer often seen in the bottom grass meadows of the farm.

As time moves on and we head towards early summer, the farm has really greened up, with the hedgerows and ash and oak trees in full leaf. In the arable fields the Barley ears have emerged which appear to rise and fall on a tide as the wind blows them, while in the grass meadows there are wild flowers and grass panicles in full bloom. Heading into the summer we have lambs that seem to get bigger each day and a pair of nesting red legged partridge. Looking ahead we will soon have a cut of hay from the meadow and have the excitement of the local farm arriving to cut and bale the spring barley, after which we face some tough decisions, as to what we plant for the following year.

Sam Lane

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Celene Wilkinson

6/23/2014 05:37:00 pm 0 Comments


I recently discovered a wonderful book called The Farming Ladder by George Henderson, a Cotswold farmer in the early 1900s. He was working the land nearly a hundred years ago, but his wisdom is timeless and sums up our vision for Honeydale.

George Henderson maintained that for the farmer there is only one rule of good husbandry - to leave the land in better heart than he found it. As has been said of George Henderson: this was his sacred trust: to maintain the soil's fertility and pass it on unimpaired to the unborn generations to come. For nothing justified the exhaustion of a farm. A civilisation lasted but a thousand years, while in the farmers' hands lay the destiny of all mankind.

I feel very strongly that soil is an overlooked, over utilised and often neglected part of the farming system which can be kept in a healthy state through the use of seed mixtures which increase soil organic matter, fix nitrogen naturally, help in the suppression of weeds and thus improve yields in addition to being cleaner and kinder to the environment and the pollinators so badly needed by farmers.

I am hoping that we can use Honeydale to trial methods of biological farming, through smaller fields, hedges, crop rotation and livestock use, which can offer a profitable way to farm but in a much more sustainable way than some more modern agricultural practices. It would be fantastic to be able to show people around a farm that could produce profitable results whilst being alive with the sounds of birds and bees and vibrant with a plethora of grasses, flowers and trees.

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Buying Honeydale

6/23/2014 05:34:00 pm 0 Comments



It’s always been part of our plan for building our seed business to have a small farm for development purposes, and We’ve been looking to acquire a farm in the Cotswolds for a long time now but we never found anywhere quite suitable, though, until the opportunity came up to buy Honeydale Farm last October.

Jim and Wendy had farmed the hundred acres at Honeydale since they married but were ready to retire to the neighbouring village. Cotswold Seeds celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and that coupled with low interest rates made it feel like the right time for us to buy the farm. With some trepidation, we decided to go for it, and after that things happened very fast, almost too fast, in fact.


The farm was being sold at auction by Tayler and Fletcher at the Fosse Manor Hotel just down the road. I went with my son Jack and though Matthew White, our land agent, took charge of the bidding for us, it was all very nerve-wracking. When the hammer fell, I remember feeling such mixed emotions, excitement coupled with anxiety and panic, a sense of the ground opening up. I think anyone who’s ever bought land or a farm at auction, or even a house, will sympathise.

The next morning we received lots of phone calls from neighbouring farmers who’d found out overnight that ours was the successful bid. They were so supportive and happy for us that it made the stress of it all worthwhile. As did walking round the fields and paddocks that first time, knowing it was ours and starting to plan how best to use it.


Ian Wilkinson

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