Helping Hands

Here on the farm we can grow more food than we can eat, but it takes all of our time to keep on top of things. So it occurs to me that the farm would be better suited to supporting more people.

With this in mind, we have taken a few volunteers this year. The deal is that they are accommodated in a caravan and help for about 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. In return they get three meals a day and a jolly good experience.

Guest accommodation

Some people say this sounds like cheap labour, but it is more complex than that.  It is a cultural and learning exchange too. The balance of this equation is a fine one and has not always worked in our favour. It is not for everyone, but if I had time to travel I would certainly be happy to be on the other end of the deal. For the volunteers it offers a totally different travel experience to the usual treadmill of visiting famous landmarks.
For anyone wishing to have some time to reflect, to do some good honest work and to learn about self-sustainability, smallholding and permaculture, the swap is a very good one indeed.

Volunteers viewing our new ducklings - Arthur is helping out

The paddock team

From a professional carpenter who taught me loads to others who were trying out completely new skills

This is what volunteering schemes are all about

Let's look at the potential benefits if you get the right people and the right people management.

Knowledge Sharing

The post driver is a great

introduction to how satisfying

hard work can be!

As well as learning about each others' backgrounds and lives, we have been able to teach people all about our system of self-sustainable growing. We have taught practical skills too, from using tools such as hoes, hammers and drills to keeping sheep, poultry and bee-keeping.
We have learned from our volunteers too. One in particular had a wealth of knowledge about bee-keeping and taught Sue loads. The same person helped me out with my hopeless ineptitude when it comes to understanding how machines work.  
I have learned new construction skills too, even simple things like how to use my drill more effectively. 

Many Hands Make Light Work

Too many cooks spoil the broth, but many hands make light work.
It's all about choosing the right task. There were some tasks where all my time would be spent trying to supervise when I could have achieved the job in much less time on my own.
But there were other jobs where three people got far more than three times the amount of work done. These jobs fell into two categories.

Firstly, jobs which seem so daunting when you are on your own and would take days or leave you exhausted. With several people, these jobs became not only achievable but fun. So in no time at all we pulled thousands of thistles, weeded the whole raspberry patch and erected a hundred yards of fence. The last of these is a great example of using volunteers. On my own I can maybe drive in three or four fence posts before needing to take a break. The breaks become longer and more frequent the more the job goes on. Not only that, but the quality of the work goes down as I get tired and the risk of  injury goes up. But with three of us, each person did one or two posts and then handed over. In between we could even pick thistles. In no time whatsoever we had driven in about 40 posts. Nobody was tired or fed up and after a couple of hours we had a finished fence to admire. Very satisfying.

From preparing the ground to erecting a log cabin, 

this job would have taken me months on my own 

rather than just a few days with a little help.

Secondly, construction jobs. Jobs where I was able to gain greatly by other people's knowledge and skills. There are times too when you just need somebody else at the other end of a plank!

The new compost loo 

taking shape

The sheep testing out the facilities in their new paddock

 

The newly constructed paddock with volunteer accommodation in the background.

Not a long journey to work!

Time for other things
The main drawback to having all this help is the requirement to prepare three meals a day. Breakfast is easy, but a proper cooked lunch and dinner every day takes up a lot of time.
However, Sue and I really enjoy cooking, especially when we are using our own produce picked fresh from the plot, and we don't get nearly enough time to eat as we would like.
But with the volunteers, especially the ones who appear ready for breakfast and work at a reasonable time, we can get all the smallholding jobs done before lunch leaving the afternoon and evening free for all those things we would like to do more of but never seem to have time.
Cooking, baking, crafts, reading... even a little rest sometimes.



In Conclusion
Taking volunteers is a two way street and a big commitment. We have learned to choose carefully who we accept.
Plus points are: Over 40. Own transport. Skills to offer. A very good command of English.
Seeing through people's profiles is a skill we are developing.
Here are some translations:
We enjoy hard work =  we don't know what hard work looks like.
Enjoys caring for animals =  has very few practical skills and thinks they are coming to a pet zoo
Stronger than I look = not strong
Flexible = warning, this flexibility often extends only one way!

Do we plan to take more volunteers next year? Yes. Definitely.
If we can get it right the scheme is fantastic. We love to share what we do and what we produce and it is marvellous to work alongside other people and to meet people from all across the world.

One thing we need to work on is what to do on wet days. There have been plenty this year!
Hopefully the new log cabin and the undercover shelter will both be finished by the end of this summer which will give us much better areas for craft activities.

The scheme we have used so far is called Workaway. We plan to try WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunties on Organic Farms) as well next year, as this should provide a more targeted choice of volunteers.

To summarise, in all honesty at its worst we have found ourselves dealing with stroppy spoilt teenager attitudes! People who could not drag themselves out of bed, questioned everything and were very choosy about which tasks they wanted to do.

Besides the ones who didn't turn up, we have had our fair share of spoilt rich kids who in their mid twenties still seem to be spending a few years out exploring what they want to do with their lives. They get what we are doing here but their idealistic views of sustainable living have not always been matched by a willingness to get on and do what needs doing.

In particular, a pre 10am start seemed to be a challenge, even though Sue and I religiously got up early to have breakfast ready way before that time. We tried to adapt to this work ethic, but on days when rain was forecast for late morning and all afternoon, a late start seemed rather inconvenient and frustrating. And on days when afternoon temperatures soared, it would have been a lot more sensible to have made an early start.

The flip side of this coin is that we have had some of the most productive and enjoyable days ever on the smallholding. We have been able to undertake some big projects and it has been fantastic to be working as a team with such a range of people. I have learned loads and I think our volunteers have really had their eyes opened towards the possibilities of our style of sustainable living. 

We have met people we would never have met before and we have been able to share what we do and what we produce here.

So that's my honest, warts and all view of taking volunteers.

If you're a smallholder I would say it is definitely worth considering.

If you're looking to spend some time on a smallholding and haven't been put off by everything you've read here, please feel free to contact me. We have one caravan for short-term volunteers (up to 4 weeks) and one for somebody to stay longer term.

Insects galore

With the temperature nudging up very close to 100 a week or so back, insect life on the farm has been abundant. The leek heads and umbellifers (fennel, parsnips left to flower and lovage) are covered in bees, hoverflies, flies and other bugs.

At night-time, leave the windows open and a light on and the upstairs hall becomes a giant moth trap.

So I have started taking snaps of some of the insects that I notice. Identifying them takes quite a bit of time, especially as I often don't really know where to start. It's surprising how often a Google image search for something like 'spotty red beetle yellow antennae uk' comes up trumps!
But even better, a new button which recently appeared on Google Photos on my phone finds matching images on the internet. Over 50% of the time it has left me straight to an identification, and if not it often gets me looking at the right insect family.

I find insects absolutely amazing. They come in so many forms, with a multitude of appendages, fascinating life cycles, in all shapes and colours. If they were the size of humans they would put Doctor Who's range of alien baddies to shame.

Of course, I welcome (most) insects into the garden (althought the weevils which I found by the dozen inside my calabrese heads the other day were not quite so welcome.

The weevil that munched my calabrese!(left)

A freshly opened globe artichoke flower with honey bees burrowing down to get at the pollen.

But at the end of the day there are two approaches to take with bugs. Either aim to wipe them all out, goodies and baddies, as industrial scale farmers mostly do, or let nature help with growing. Ground beetles, ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies in particular are predators which help control other insects, and slugs in the case of beetles. Yes, there may be the occasional population explosion of some insect which all but ruins a crop, but it's never a total disaster and nature rebalances itself in the end. Of course I give a helping hand by growing plants and flowers specifically to attract or repel certain insects. I use physical barriers (netting) too where this is unavoidable, and I give my plants a healthy and organic soil to grow in so they can withstand attack.

Anyway, onto the good bit, the photos. It's not all about what helps the veg to grow. It's about creating a wonderful space in which to work and occasionally stop to admire the hive of activity going on about you.

So most days now I try to meet and snap a new insect. Here are just a few of them. I won't go all Latin on you with the names. Better to just admire them in blissful ignorance, though I do like to put a name to them if I can and do a little research on their habits.

Moths in many forms flumble (flutter and stumble) into the upstairs hallway.

Top left - One of many hoverfly species - this was a giant. 

Meanwhile a bumblebee visits one of my sunflowers

Comma is one of my favourite butterflies, though the sight of
ragwort in full flower and covered in Ringlets stopped me in my tracks

Marmalade Hoverflies and a  

Swollen-thighed Beetle (aka Thick-legged Flower Beetle or False Oil Beetle)

I initially thought this was a spider until I realised I was looking

at it the wrong way round and it was a fly.

But the way it moved was clearly aimed at deception.

Yellow Dung Fly                                       Noon Fly

A Transformation - No Dig comes to the farm

The first half of 2019 has seen a huge transformation in my veg garden.
We are now officially NO DIG.

NO DIG I said, Boris!

The Wheel - A little design history

I initially designed the veg plot based around a wheel split into 4 quarters for crop rotation. Each quarter had 20 small beds which could be accessed without being trodden on. There were flowers and herbs grown with the vegetables and self-seeded waifs were selectively kept growing where I found them.

All was good, except that the sheer number of grass edges and paths made things unmanageable and gradually a major slug problem developed. The overhanging edges and small beds were perfect for them to shelter under and make raids into during the hours of darkness. 20 beds x 4 sides each x 4 quarters = 320 edges to maintain!

Gradually I joined beds together till eventually there were just four large beds in each quarter, plus a smaller one for forest garden / perennial growing.
These beds were much easier to work. In a single afternoon at the back end of winter I could comfortably rotavate half the plot. Coming into the spring I could have all the beds worked and all the paths mown and edged. A fresh start for the new growing season.

But somehow I gradually realised that I had moved away from my idea of a productive potager style garden. With beds being completely turned every year, waifs and strays and smaller patches of nature did not really fit in with the system. I noticed too that the soil somehow felt less alive. For a clay soil it was in good shape, but there were no worms, no fibrous roots, no complexity or structure. Yet if I left a bed unattended for a while, the soil surface protected from the elements, I would invariably find a different story, with crumbly soil alive with worms.

I wasn't doing anything terribly wrong. I still managed the plot for nature, chemicals were banned and pests and diseases were largely under control thanks to natural balances, but more and more I felt that the actual soil I was growing in lacked vibrancy. It was just a hunch, a feeling.

NO-DIG
I was increasingly hearing about No Dig gardening, but considered it a bit of a gimmick. After all the promise of not needing to dig, greatly reduced weeding and healthier crops seemed too good to be true. It seemed to be an idea which was almost being sold as a panacea to all gardening woes. When I looked further into it, crop comparisons seemed to rely on an abundance of salad leaves, which do seem to do better under this system, but which I could never possibly munch my way through. Fine if you want to market them, but otherwise...   Indeed, figures seemed to show a slight decline in yield for brassicas, which normally require a firm, undisturbed soil, and this seems to be glossed over everywhere I look.
Another problem I perceived was that no dig gardening seemed to place a huge emphasis on an annual mulch of compost (or even worse, black plastic). I don't have a problem with the compost idea, but it doesn't seem right if people are buying in compost left right and centre. The idea of sustainability seems to have gone down the pan. It's ok if you've got a farmer friend who can transport an endless supply of manure to you, but we are not all in that position. Anyhow, I'm not sure how healthy cow manure would be, what with the amount of antibiotics, growth hormones and goodness knows what else are used these days. Horse manure has its problems too, mainly due to the problems caused by aminopyralid weedkillers which persist from being applied to hay crops, through the horse, through the compost heap and on to destroy your vegetable crops. With ineffective regulators this problem seems to be rapidly on the increase. I came across it once when I was collecting horse manure from a friend and it caused no end of problems.

To counterbalance this argument, it is probably fair to say that even a conventional plot should ideally have at least as much compost applied as a no dig one. It's just that you can more easily get away with skipping this to some extent.

One final problem was that this seemed a bit like the latest fad, another excuse to go out and buy things, most especially lots of landscaping material and wood for edges. Facebook groups are full of people's photos of their newly landscaped no dig gardens.
To be fair though, one of the main proponents has moved away from wooden edges, which are not just impractical on a large scale but also harbour slugs and snails galore.

But still something inside me told me that a modified version of no dig was the way forward, so I started making plans to circumvent the problems I perceived.

The first beds being prepared for no dig - note the use of cardboard (top left) and how there are now paths dug to divide the larger beds into smaller ones.

Mulching
I absolutely won't use black plastic as a mulch. It seems to go against every grain of nature-friendly, sustainable gardening. I am however making great use of cardboard to inhibit weeds. It eventually rots down and contributes to soil structure.
Mulching in temperate climates brings a huge potential risk of harbouring slugs and snails, a gardener's number one enemy. My previous attempts at using straw under strawberries attest to this - fine in a dry year but disastrous in a wet one. Instead I am following Charles Dowding's approach of aiming to use prepared compost. This should avoid problems of a gastropod nature since slugs and snails thrive on decomposing material, not decomposed material.
I will reserve grass clippings and animal bedding for specific crops, such as the soft fruits which don't seem to be affected by slugs. Otherwise these can go straight onto the compost where the nitrogen rich materials greatly speed up the composting process.

The garlic bed and salad leaves has grown rapidly.

There are radishes down the middle of the garlic

and it is flanked by two rows of young parsnip plants.

Once the radishes and garlic are harvested I shall plant tall flowers between the parsnips.

A different patch of parsnips will be allowed to grow into a second year 

(these are last year's sown for this purpose and now flowering) to attract hoverflies, 

to give architectural design to the garden and to produce fresh parsnip seeds for next year's crop

Compost
I shall ramp up my compost making. To do this I have specifically planted elephant grass and short rotation coppice willow, both of which will be shredded to bulk up my compost.
With these measures I should come much closer to being able to apply a thin annual covering of compost.
But already I am noticing a huge benefit just by having the soil protected from the elements, compost or no compost. So I intend to selectively use green manures. These are traditionally dug in, which is not ideal in a no-dig system! However, there are some which can be chopped off and removed to the compost bin. The goodness will still eventually end up on the vegetable beds and while the green manures are growing they do a fantastic job of protecting the soil from erosion and from being beaten down by the rains. It is surprising how quickly a freshly rotavated fine tilth can turn into a sticky, solid clay mass or develop a concrete-like crust on it. Already I am noticing a huge improvement in soil structure where I have applied compost mulch. The crops are doing very well too, but it has been pretty much a perfect growing year so far.
Finally I am planning to try something which I've not seen before in this country but I did come across in a YouTube video. Where crops are harvested early and I don't intend to follow with another crop this year, I am going to sow oats. These I get incredibly cheaply in the form of animal feed. I know that they germinate as I do this to provide fodder for the turkeys. The idea is that they grow to protect the soil surface but then die off with the first heavy frosts. The thatch will then protect the soil over winter and will have rotted down enough to rake off and go on the compost the following spring. So I guess I am talking about winter mulches which are removed in spring. Slug problems will be avoided because of....

Ducks
The Khaki Campbells have, for the moment, been ejected from the veg plot after developing a taste for peas, spinach and coriander. Having said that, they were far less destructive than any other ducks and certainly less destructive than chickens. I expect to be able to let them back in the veg patch as their light nibbling will be a small price to pay for their almost total slug control. I seriously doubt the slugs will bounce back much even if the ducks have to stay out until autumn.




Paths
I originally planned to have so many grass paths because of my clay soil. It just would not work to turn all the grass over to earth. Paths would end up a sticky mess and in the wrong conditions most of the ground would be clinging on to my wellies and weighing me down. My compromise is to keep the main paths but to dig out shallow paths in the larger beds, effectively recreating a whole system of smaller beds again but without the endless grass edges. The soil dug out from the paths has just been used to build the beds up a bit so effectively we now have raised beds.

The paths are one rake wide, which means that as soil is gradually displaced into the pathways from the beds (this shouldn't happen so much as things settle down) I can very easily hoe and rake along the paths to keep them clear.

With the beds now being permanent and not being turned every year, I can plan to grow more herbs and perennials and leave self-seeded specimens to grow if I like where they are.

The broad bean bed in its early days.

Under the beans grow poached egg plants to protect from blackfly

and coriander which enjoys the shade.

The whole bed will be used for Purple Sprouting Broccoli once the beans and coriander are harvested.

The flowers will provide ground cover and will self-seed to give transplants for next year.

Growing methods
Only carrots and parsnips are now sown directly into the soil. Everything else is started off in modules and the plants are then moved into their permanent spots when the time is right. This way I can nurture them and prepare them for the big outdoors. I have found it is best not to delay planting out too much as they really take off once in open ground, as long as a liberal dose of patience has been applied and you don't try to push the plants to grow when conditions are not yet right.
I have been trying some multisowing too, where small clumps of several plants are grown together. This won't work for everything and I am very much following Charles Dowding's lead on this one. I shall draw my own conclusions later in the year.

Transformation complete
The transformation is now complete. It has been hard work, greatly helped by the use of volunteers, but it was a one off job which won't need doing again. Mr Rotavator has gone into semi retirement (though I'm sure he will still get the occasional run out, just maybe not in the veg plot) .
My hoes and edging tools are now being put to much more use, as is my transplanting trowel. The spades will still have the occasional use, not that I ever was much good at turning the soil with them. The days of double digging are certainly over




Now in early June most of this year's plants are in the ground and the harvest is already under way. So far results have been impressive with the salad leaves and early growth has been strong with almost everything I have planted out.
I am not yet giving no-dig the credit for this. The almost total absence of slugs has made a massive difference when trying to grow the likes of carrots and sunflowers and the weather has been pretty much perfect so far.

As ever I am open to trying all sorts of new ideas, but I do not approach them with my eyes closed. I retain a healthy cynicism and will constantly be evaluating and adapting the system to suit local conditions and my own needs from the veg plot.