Firstly, we’d like to introduce James, our new Kindling Farm Grower. James has a vast amount of experience in the food world. He spent 5 years working as Head Chef at Riverford's Field Kitchen before taking the helm at Britain's first organic pub, The Bull Inn, Devon (so he is well used to working with quality fresh food and working at a hard and fast pace). Later he made the move into the growing side of things and we are delighted to have James join us after 2 years at Field 28 in Cheshire.
In other farm news, this season is off to a flying start (May has come a little sooner than seems reasonable, but all the growers we’ve spoken to recently feel the same, so we’re not alone).
March saw the planting of the final sections of our agroforestry system and we now have over 2,000 fruit trees including Apples (our main focus) including 40 different varieties, Plums and Quinces as well as a range of non fruit native species for pollination and habitat creation. Stu and James have also been busy tying down branches of some of the apple trees to open them up, increasing access to sunlight and ultimately increasing productivity (come to the Agroforestry tour to find out more).
In April we had our 2nd annual mammoth strawberry planting session, with another 3,000+ plants in the ground over 3 weekends, thanks to impressive volunteer efforts. The first year plants are looking super healthy too, so we’re hoping for a good crop this summer. We also sowed the green manure in all of the areas that we grew crops in last year (field 3), with the aim of giving it a good rest and nitrogen fix over the next year in time for the 2027 growing season.
We had hoped to get some chard and broad beans sown over the last couple of weeks, but have had a few tractor issues. Luckily our incredibly helpful neighbours Chris and Danny (or the 5th emergency services as we call them) came to the rescue once again, so we will be sowing soon. The timing is a pain and it will cost to do the repairs, but it’s essential and Danny said it’s one of those things about farming, you’ve just got to get on with it. The good news is that we left some chard to overwinter as an experiment and its looking surprisingly good, so that a missed couple of sowings isn’t a disaster.
Looking forward to May, our first seedlings will be arriving in two weeks time, excitingly. Our first plantings will include: Tomatoes, cucumbers, and spring onions in the tunnel; and out in the fields: the first lot of brassicas (cabbage, kale), celery, celeriac, courgettes and some new crops for us this season: Leeks, yellow courgettes and lettuce. With more to come over late May and June.
Biodiversity monitoring is now full steam ahead, with our incredible Biodiversity volunteers here weekly at the moment surveying either butterflies, moths, small mammals, birds, pondlife and sometimes a mix of them all. We’ll get an update for next month's newsletter so that you can learn more and hear about the top spots.
That’s probably more than enough of an update for you, so - while there is more we could tell you (about infrastructure, buyers and so on) - we will let you go and save the additional farm progress news for next time.
