OXTONS ORGANICS UK- GOING NO DIG

so I made it to the UK and I'm in Worcestershire I put flat berry this is the flat berry mill on the River Avon that runs all the way to my hometown but I'm really excited about today's videos to meet with Jay coxton and Oxton organics and it's one of the few small diverse profitable farms in the UK I met Jake in the online training during the winter time I'm super excited to meet him and go see man is fun I'm super excited to be here and yeah maybe you could just tell the viewers like you know not sure what this how BIG's the farm and what's going on here okay yeah sure so we're 12 acres we're in just about five hectares about five actors yeah more or less and we're in the Vale of a bishop in the UK how much is in Worcestershire about an hour's drive away from Birmingham this this how an area used to be market gardens and plum orchards traditionally we used to be like the Market Garden for Birmingham which is the second biggest city in the UK but that kind of died out after the second unit second world war when like agriculture had changed but my folks set up when they went to Agriculture College in my local town they met there and they said they picked up this land for quite cheap we've got we own five acres and we rent seven eight acres up for council so they were one of the first vegetable box schemes in the UK pioneers and their number 17 is so registered organic yes business yeah yeah one of the first members of a Soil Association and they were one of like they set up a website and a shop which could deal with kind of bespoke borders a vegetable box is way back in 1999 which was like one of the first in the ball over kind of the big nationwide box beans is that I've managed to kind of compete with the kind of rise of a supermarkets and stay yeah stay profitable and stay competitive and I grew up here like I wasn't actually interested in agriculture all I'd like a lot of work for not much money I was into design and art and I'd studied illustration and then I kind of I was traveling a bit and I got really into ecology and I kind of started to value what my upbringing on the farm and I realized yeah actually I was very interested in agriculture as a way of supporting kind of eco ecological integrity so I've been living in a community in Spain where I'd done a permaculture design course and you know I was kind of all inspired to get into agriculture I was inspired by like for working people like Martin Crawford using a lot of perennial crops and I can't afford that naively for I could just come back and plant a food forest and everything was gonna be cool when my parents already had this really like viable diverse business yeah really established yeah and and like I didn't I didn't even realize how how privileged I was to have that I kind of thought I was gonna come back and we're gonna stop doing veg boxes and just grow like you know I came back and I kind of got and I know I think because I studied design I got really inspired by like I found your work and I found a work of like Estonian people like that and I got actually really into market gardening and started to value the productivity of production farming basically and and I'm still really passionate about integrating permaculture stuff into it like um you know we we've got a lot of agroforestry plans but we're working on at the moment and we're gonna start planting this winter so I want to bring the perennial the best aspects of open ocean much like your work and and integrate it into into what I'm so privileged to have and because I've already got access to this awesome business and amazing farming and a huge wealth of knowledge you know you know my folks have been growing vegetables you know I'm really privileged in what I can just you know come and plant up in like really and really get but Gabi I grow flowers should go in and just optimize for growing a bit and you know so my parents they we've got quite a famous Agricultural College in the town called Pershore Agriculture College and it's um my parents had both gone that study my mum was studying perennial nursery crops and my dad was studying veg production and they met there and they they had a kid my sister and they decided that they wanted to get land my dad was working for other growers in the area and just finding it frustrating people who are basically pretending to be organic and they were quite passionate about setting up their own farm so they they found this this but a land which was a five acre rhubarb farm or had been a rubub farm and and they came and they bought it and we moved into the land on in caravans where we lived for 13 years in caravans before we built the house and then we had we had the opportunity to rent this Baskerville averages seven seven acres from the council it's like a County County visa and yes I they they kind of they came into farming when there was still quite a big wholesale market where you could still just make a living off of selling like a big crop of runner beans and stuff like that you know but that kind of changed with even just within the first year years of banned farming they were struggling to to access wholesale markets and get a good price so they they bed hurt they read a newspaper article about someone setting up a box scheme which was actually guy Seng Watson from River foot farms I'm away but Jane my mother describes it as a you know just collect for venue about that was the future of Versailles model for the business so it was kind of going into the unknown a little bit but they went to the to the local village fete and they set up a stall and they got had like you know a piece just a little spreadsheet with red drawn up of pen and paper and they got people to sign up and within two years they had a waiting list like it just took off totally and my deliverer I used to deliver within about 20 miles or a bit smaller delivery radius now but they still deliver to Cheltenham and Worcester and into some of the Cotswolds but we're a fairly high population density compared to like compared to Sweden and and so we can keep a very local customer base and yeah I mean they were part of the kind of first wave of organic farmers I guess in the UK when it really took off and as I said before they're like one of the first members of the Soil Association and it's just grown from there early they struggled when you know before I've got a friend I've who I've worked with here for the past three years or so he came he got into growing when we were traveling together and he came when my parents are really starting to struggle like my dad had just had some serious ankle surgery and he was you know he's the physical side of farming he was really struggling with and and so a business that couldn't track did quite a lot to be able to deal with that and my mother was really struggling she was just working she stupid amounts and my friend Rakesh came in came into the business and he kind of he basically like increased the capacity so they could they could make a living again basically and he was easy he's a grafter he's like super hardworking and he really kind of saved them really and then you know like I was saying I'd done what PDC and I was like awesome my parents I've got a farm I can play with and so I came back as well and and you know it's been since that point of coming back to a farm you know the learning curve has just been like a right angle it's been it's been huge and I've learned a huge amount this past couple years and that's kind of where we're at now I guess where you know we've we've the business model that I'm working with is pretty much the same thing that they were very set up it's not changed a huge amount and I've taken on a bit more wholesale custom which I just do all for one-line spreadsheets which has kind of been something that I've set up separate to the existing but you know I was I think I mentioned this already bandas usually privileged to have access to all that establishing the market and bringing the production in and building the infrastructure is something that had landed on my doorstep like literally so and totally in all of the people who are starting up in scratch I mean the amount of Labor it takes just to maintain risk business and farm let alone start of business from scratches is good ethic really so yeah it looks beautiful Jake like how many square meters have you got here 2800 square meters of bed space outdoors plus another 600 protected cropping in the poly tunnels yeah and two of you managing that basically mostly outdoor stuff is just for two of us a man [Music] it's been myself ready people in material and you're doing totally no dig and yeah totally nerdy Lucas oh yeah this whisper should be another couple years this was the original trial plot and when some of the poly channels have been a dick for three years they'd already done gone now take him a poly tone was even before I came back which is just a total no-brainer like poly telling in poly tennis is crazy if you ask me if you you've been quite instrumental with bringing this no dig to the sort of more field scale no tightly has your sort of your first step into taking over a bit yeah sure yeah I mean I've managed to systematize the mulching and the crop management in a way that works with the native because there are jobs which have been created so that's for the purview as they were like shifting their cultivation so putting it back to persevere couple of years yeah at least I would we would after growing crops on us on an area for a couple of years with weed seed it with a diverse mix of clovers and you know mineral accumulating plants and that would bring the fertility back to the ground and when you apply about an implant into that on a rotation it's a major departure from how your folks are used to doing things now yeah I think there is a bit of tension I think my dad especially Julian he he was a bit apprehensive about the amount of like work we would be taking on to bring it into production especially and I think he had his you know years kind of skeptical about whether the system could work on this scale but this looking super clean Jake I mean it's I mean it looks really good it's if it's good it's nice I mean this stuff this has been a bit harder to manage this year because it's not had happier much but some of the more recent beds have had come on I mean for two of you on this scale yeah it's the cleanest yeah weed management has been a it's I mean we're weeding like we're definitely reading but I mean we're actually achieving you know like a nice clean beds which is really nice to work with and there's a total different quality of weeding when we've been waiting for tilled stuff I mean when you're kind of when you're going through a bed and and like looking for a weed and picking it out here and here of there it's more like I mean I love foraging mushrooms and it feels like the same I get the same satisfaction reading these days because I'm kind of in there like just looking for way to visit this is really I enjoy reading now which I didn't used to enjoy and then you've got you using tarps or so yes we use tarts when we brought the beds in we laid the compost and we've and then we topped it we did two different if there's two different areas the next one we'll see in a minute and then this area we laid the compost first we topped it for about four months this was a horrible lay and so we had a lot of clovers not sorry chicory another deep breeding plants which kind of opened up the soil a lot so it didn't actually brought working a lot of these in a lot of these beds but is something I'm gonna be doing a lot more of this year because some of the soil is definitely quite tight but what I like generally that you're farming on here at sadly payload am it's pretty good we're on floodplain here we're on like a kind of higher tier floodplain so we get I think wow look at this risk isn't it awesome yeah they've they seem to really like this system and this and this patch weird put a much heavier mulch on and weed management as being quite a lot easier here definitely but the one problem we have had is that we've had huge amounts of wind blow because with it's right next to where we had our tail dredge for a previous year so there's a huge amount of there has been a huge amount of flowering weeds and a lot of weed seed and especially fissile we've had a lot of sow thistle and awesome yeah but this is like how are you selling this like how many customers are you sellin turd so we have between like our box game is 1690 it can go up to like almost a hundred but it fluctuates probably tend to orders drop off a lot in the summer holidays you do it as a month by month basis where people aren't coming from the whole seat then they pay week by week so moving yeah so latest pay as they get a box basically and we have it's probably a higher administrative burden with like traditional CSAs but it means you're not locking anyone in and I think because of that it's much easier to sign people up because they can just try a box and it works quite well for us and because we're already you know we don't have any debts on the land and you know we don't I think a lot of the CSA models which work well for other people you know but not maybe not so necessary for us and it's kind of nice that we can just grow and sell what we have and not have like kind of obligation to people in that way so last year we did about turnover was about seventy thousand pounds on the veg boxes but last year that included stuff was bought in and sold this year we should be doing about 80,000 pound in veg just what we've grown like just for sales it's really nice quality stuff yeah we've had a lot of Keio like it probably seems I think that this time of year you've always got way too much kale but when the winter comes because we're cropping all the way through winter yeah I mean having a lockout I mean this is just rabbit protection basically in it we do have heaps of arbitration here and and this is what I'm using because it's what I had available like with my folks have been because they're moving because they've been moving the veg around a farm they've always used this because it was mobile and making they could set it up on anything touch was really versatile it's not even allowed to learn house it's not actually sapiens died working Mike stopped working a couple of days ago so I've so I've just ordered a new one in it ever you'd normally have it usually yes usually electric and we use my facts like as a mulch mat around the outside of a bed just to give a buffer against the grasses and perennials if you're ever doing this to manage rabbits in that bed you should never leave it set up and not beyond because what happens is rabbits will chew through it if it's not if they're not getting a shot bit cheaper and make holes and this is very old and it's full of hops when we were going totally no dig it's easy to see how it could seem unachievable you know because it was a huge it is a huge amount of work and a huge and a lot materials as well but you've come up with some pretty crafty ways to move yeah let's go have a look at that but first I want to see how's your compost what do you think about it's okay it's like green waste and from what I've seen of you guys over in Scandinavia it's better than the green waste compost event yeah but it still can it's still quite low fertility it doesn't have it doesn't you know it's not like a manual based compost it's basically kind of hedge clippings and and but it's the thing is is quite the textures good it's really easy to move it's not like clumpy or you know you've had a really dry summer here - right yeah really one of the driest as forests I've ever remembered but everywhere so how you you again this whole lot so we have a quite a high capacity pump coming from a spring fed pond I mean my folks put in an irrigation system which can do our whole 12 acres pretty much so now I'm adding ever getting like one acre it's it's it's easy I can run four lines at once we use dislike simple Rises with a steak and I gave you some access irrigation and we use quite a simple sprinkler head which has two and it has two outlets so when it has a long distance one in a short distance one and because of the way it's set up I can it's like the zipper radius is like 24 meters you know is I can I can put a lot of water down over quite a large space quite quickly and because of the way we've got the garden arranged I don't really need to do sectoring or anything like that I can I just move them around I mean once you get when you get practised at moving hosepipe it's quite quick you know it's not it's not a huge amount of work and we didn't ask how long in the actual bed at 24 metres 24 think that's and really great size because you get four cut so you can just fold it in half twice and cut really quick and it's the same if you were to do like 12 metre beds you just fold it again and cut it I mean we've had this bed of spring onions like usually before when we were using tillage and you would have like one we kind of do our spring onions and clumps and like one in three would be a write-off because of white rot and and I've and I've cropped out half of this bed and I've not seen a single incidence of White Rock no there's awesome nets it's cool yeah and I think that's just because of you know the more fungal diversity in the soil basically that's my favorite but like with limits like people resources you've been using machines a bit as well to make beds right yes tell us your bed prep methods and okay so we've I've marked out over bed on the left hand side of each bed I've put in a peg and it's on the same place at both sides at both ends of the bed and what I do is I have a piece of string with just a bungee cord on it which I can I can touch which pack and now give me like a perfect straight line where the edge of each bat is and then what we do is be useful retractor like one of my tractors is like 55 years old probably go another 55 years it's just what I have around a link box and we've just brought a hydraulic link box and what this does essentially it's like a bit like while you get on a digger you know one like a dumper truck you can drive it you can reverse into a compost heap and you can pick up a big later compost and you can basically you know you can drive fits over the burner fits over the bed and when you dump in piles where you want it and you just come back and break up so on your own you can have like half an hour you know it's nothing awesome you know probably maybe less and I'm never timed it but before we were just using this old made your own thing yeah it was like this is the thing bonus videos to move veggie round when it's too wet to use a van yeah that looks like a very good investment you made then it's good it's really good and you can use it with tiny tractors I mean you can I've seen em used with like tiny little compact tractor yeah which would be great because these are you know babies are a bit big to be taken on no Dave there is some signs of compaction around the edge if it's over bad you're talking about fooled him yeah this is a Ford Ford some 3000 I think but it's got the right wheel base for the beds you got yeah I mean we because we've been using amia beds because we thought it would integrate well with attractors but what's been happening is that around the edge of the beds where has been compaction like you can see with beetroot and stuff especially where it's planted right up to the edge though the outside ones are definitely growing slower but what I'm going to do is I'm just going to reduce the size of the beds and have bigger Wheeling's because of a moment of Wheeling's around forty sentiment yeah but our man if you keep on top of putting that material down this is gonna be totally weed free in the couple years it's beautiful and what is this machine for so this is um we brought this up I think it was from the golf course but this was something that was already here when we went no dig I can't remember my yeah Jane had bought it because she wanted to start taking cuts off for her blaze to make compost so that she could go no digging some of the tunnels and basically it's a flail mower but it's got a big hopper on the back and it Hoover's up all the crop residues and just done and you can put it in the back and what we do with like kind of crops like brassicas where the quite bulk is we'll cut them at the bottom and we'll put them into a wind room will add straw and then we'll heal the whole thing up together and just dump it into a window so it's like it's a really quick way to make compost that's awesome so you applying some slightly bigger heavier tag just really optimize it and maybe you could say like like what's your working week look like cuz you having the weekend off Fred I'm loving what hours we work in a week I mean like it's been it's been pretty intense but then we've been achieving a lot more than we have been before I mean you know like we do do like 14-hour days quite often and even more like 16-hour days in the summer but it's just there's a lot to keep on top of them but with what one of the things that is why we have to do that is because we're growing a lot of crops which should not even pay in their way so that's part of your redesigned now that we'll talk about in the bit is like shaving off some of them crops and they sit you're bringing in this fresh new blood to just optimize and streamline the business that's what I see my job is basically just optimizing we grow in here because I business is pretty pretty awesome works really well but like never we can get them if we can get like the market gardens profitable in terms of square me urge and time inputs then it could be like a comfortable you know like there's other stuff I want to do I'm probably never have like a 40-hour week because they don't particularly one you're like I like being out here but I like to maybe spend last time doing some of you know there's stuffy ever when you're on when you're out on in the market guns it's you know it's not like it's not really potent work you know it's a lot of kind of things you could cut off and other things you could leave her up there I kind of you know like this when apples it's just an amazing yet been amazing that we yeah I mean we've got way more than we can SAP what we've done in the past is just made a load of apple juice because we as a local press but that's actually quite this it's quite a big investment and we don't get a lot back from it and there's other stuff but I want to invest my capital in at the moment so he probably won't make juice with you ever yeah I mean we saw the apples I mean we've kind of got you're not quite got enough to go to some of the bigger wholesale markets so it might be something that we do with the agroforestry is that we actually plant more apples so we can access some bigger and bigger markets but it works well for us I mean it's not very hardly any work I mean we spend you know we spend maybe a a day pruning and maintaining them and your father's got an interesting methodology for wrapping branches yeah yeah so what he does he trained he kinda has a few main branches a man all these shoots that come off and grow tall he brings down Andrew basically wraps them in silver tray so kind and ties it up and not basically ties are helping up the nuts and it's it's good but after a while it gets it gets a bit too intense and we've had to like last year we had to spend we had to prune a lot more of it out and it was kind of time Gordon Oh second time savers every couple of years and then you have to take basically I don't I don't know if it's the best way to do things but I mean the trees are like super productive yeah I can't complain and you're not getting any fungal rots for me I don't really know I mean there's been hardly any disease this year yeah they're good what you've got quite a diversity of crops stoom do you know off the top of your head how many different crops you grow and when we were doing the seed order we ordered 120 varieties that's not just crops something that's different varieties of different crops but yeah I'm into too many right now you're going things that corn is that something that's will go in there in your plan it's one of those things that's ready it's a lovely finger to grow but I don't think it's very profitable particularly I mean I've not and I've got a sales data on everything so I'm gonna add up what's making the money but there's crops like corn and squash I know work really well for other local growers so what I'm happy to do is you know with now we've gone to this system it works really well we've kind of more intensive profitable crops which are hard to do you know no grown rocket like we do my baby leaf rocket you can't do that in a dead ground you know weed pressure is just way too high so you can then start trading some of these crops because you're selling my box you you kind of need that diversity still yeah so like we can yeah I mean we couldn't sell to other growers and we do sow to other local growers and and we can buy some of the crops which work well for them but not so much for us yeah that's that's the that's how I would like it to work because we can support other farmers but you know we have a pretty decent market and and should work well but like there's some stuff like the squash like this year I counted I counted over squash sure we were getting off different varieties and and just by just by using good varieties like some of the Hokkaido squash would definitely be proper what I would consider profitable systems one of my kind of a goal with this it would be getting about 250 pounds per bed per cross minimum and like this one for example this Friday this is Buttercup that's two beds were you know it's just like a huge difference in yield between the different varieties and people like to have for the diversity on my converge stands of stuff but for us like that's our most popular squash and the yield is massive so I think that like that qualifies as a profitable crop but most of the other ones don't present it for me so keeping really good records and data is really empowering you to to drive the business in a different way that perhaps your parents couldn't if they didn't have that day that totally yeah I mean it's really important and and I've been a bit slack with the monitoring I should have been more on it this year I reckon you're busy I mean we're pretty busy but what I want to have so ed for nexia is really like solid procedures so because we're gonna have some new staff next year as well but but we can have I can have like log books where all the yield data is is this recorded automatically like that's the way I want to have it set up because yeah I mean sometimes you end up making huge assumptions and like I had a huge assumption about squash but this worked out really well and that's just for me just counting the squash as they come into the shot you know it did it took like didn't take any time in order to two minutes and that has empowered me to make it make a good profit off my now there's an almighty bed roller this is one turret oh there's one man it's a 120 centimeters but it's really big and awkward I regret buying it it's like to get it from one side of a farm to the other like my layout was really long which is something I wouldn't do again but you know to get this roller from one side of fun to the other is not fun good use of time are you happy with the 60s Eden it's great this is one of my favorite tools it's just like it's I mean it's super efficient but it's also just a joy to use you know it's one of those tours super well major pleasure I've been trying a few people have been wanting them for our CDs and yeah they're not a joy to use mostly like standards like my son crops I've seen I call it simple things couple of unusual things what's this one yeah I'm usually fairly dubious about like exotic crops but this is something that's works really well for us but it's called Aztec broccoli I think the native Mexican name is and but it's like a it's like a flowering shoot and I can lean yeah I mean it's like fat hand basically it's basically like a weed but it's super it's really delicious when it's tender it's like asparagus and it's got the flavor of kind of spinach asparagus and our customers have gone mad for it I mean they do 200 units a week I mean we do we get because we've we've tried a wholesale with one of our bigger wholesale customers and they take a hundred and fifty bags and we then we sell another you know we can sell another 50 or so sometimes Hey maybe not yeah we sound a lot and it's probably the most profitable I mean you can we can take a hundred two hundred bags of this you know wholesale we get 1 pound Tanner all right we sell it for one you can do the same again next week and you plant your once is like it's just keep doing it all season I mean I'm gonna do a few planning's next year so I can keep the tender but that's great that's awesome it's basically ready ready tasting I mean it's you're saying you're doing some weeding with blue curious to hear what tools using bass I mean it is remarkably clean deck like perennial stuff lying underneath because you basically put this straight down on pasture like yeah this hasn't been tilled when guys Justine is just straight down on a hairball so for folks listening I don't know the term like her will lay like like it was basically just past it yes and you just put how much have you put down like how thick so like we were going for a minimum of which isn't enough six inches but 15 centimeters is for Halloween just to bring it in I'd definitely think you own that much and what happens is when you're raking it out as well because the grounds not perfectly smooth you do get like Fenna bits and you get areas where we pressures a bit greater but yeah I mean weighting management it has been it's been good I mean we're definitely like it's not like we don't weed stuff I mean I'd like to go somewhere like that eventually potentially but the weed management it's like satisfying weed management weed stuff it's clean yeah just just doing it no I think you've done exceptionally well like I often go to no dig startups and it's people that not put enough material down but I mean to come into pasture and beautiful so we just made a lot of compost in the beds but pointing what she found was not achievable in the end I'd like to find a way of doing it but so like weed pressure in the pathways has been fairly high and we're kind of just keeping on top of that with the wheel hoe but I mean yeah it's good and if you like weed management is it's about timing you know you got to be proactive you can't let the thing is bet too big because once you do that you're just chasing your tail for the rest of a year like there's always something that needs to be hand we did before you can get to the small stuff which is really easy and quick to weed so like next year there's been a few things like squash it's been really hard to keep on top of the weed like in in the corns and stuff you just can't get in that ready some of the couch grass and stuff like that it's a well it's really good point it's like if you if you're doing no dig and you've got a good amount material down and you take things at Carl Eden stage it's super fast and easy way so fast so these guys on weed control pretty much yeah like in between the tunnels because it keeps yeah pressure weight pressure from the sides you get couch grass and stuff and bindweed growing in so currently like you've got sheep and pigs but they're more for like the homestead value at this point yeah basically like the way I think about it like they're not a big part of the economy of the fun but they're a big part of the ecology of the father you know and it's something that we want to build on is well I quit the Sheep of my criminals on our scale are never gonna be profitable and there's something we do because we love it and maybe like v-shape with if we can get a market for skins or war line in it music Gatlin right there Swedish breathe is really high value skins and they got to eat to know that deliciousness when we took your online course like for one animal Enterprise that I thought could work really well for us would be passionate turkeys basically because we have a we have a good Christmas market here and there's no I don't know any you know there's not a lot of farms doing outdoor pastured take there's a lot of kind of like bronze turkeys but they're all usually barn reared and I'd really love to get more animal impacts out on the pastures and I think that's the way I'd like to do it just with the you know the gobbled egos is that something you're considering yeah I really wanna I want to try all I was gonna try 200 Birds but it might be a bit much I was going to trial I think I'd like to try 100 Birds next year but like I need to be careful with finding myself out too much so the turkeys are super low-maintenance a lot yeah compared to those chickens yeah definitely so like yeah I mean I'd like to do a hundred next year if I can get the infrastructure in place I need market gardens over went our build a go buddy go in the spring and give it a whirl yes yes I know we've got cucumbers basil and we've got winter servings of coriander and parsley going in now and I try order features here if like with some of the smaller crops like winter salads and stuff like it shouldn't make any difference ready to have a row of trees a man so if I can like yeah no no self as Polly I'd so it's tidy and you know like something like this nice if they should integrate quite well and I just love features it's not something I'm particularly doing for the business it's something I'm doing so I can make myself pitch party is this like last evenings of the Union yeah this is a winter silence and this is actually our own compost as well and I've got like and we live in this I don't know how well it's gonna do every winter it's it's I preferred it as to doing direct seeded lettuce and using the greens monster because because you can just keep the quality so much higher over a longer period is much easier to manage in that way do this is that we have two tunnels of Salinas and when you rotate them the mrs. peppers and yeah and I over jeans and we have some Bush to my house which but these peppers look awesome they're gorgeous very kind of a pointy type and now the only one we get a bit of mice damage on the end sometimes but a nice eggplant yeah beautiful beautiful and what happens with these is it gets right to the end of a season and you start to get heaps ripening up and then you've got a claret to get your to get your winter crops in I mean I don't know if they're that much of a profitable crop because they take so long to get into production yeah if you could heat this tunnel at the start of the season that'd be great I'm sure they would they're really popular but we're expecting Frost's fairly soon so we've kind of cleared a lot of the leaf out now and just trying to ripen as many as we can so you're doing in quite close spacing so yeah a centimeter we were using this year and and just a single row as well before we were doing I'm like staggered rows about about twice as much about 60 centimeters and it was really messy it's hard to manage but we didn't tomatillo eyes as well which is great I'm a fan of them I love them I like I cook with him a lot but they're not that popular they've not been that popular but without it with our market mm-hmm a shame because they're delicious yes really underrated yeah what then what's your season in terms of frost dates just for reference for views to be early May okay so your end up looking months more than us yeah they're probably higher temperatures but yeah and like we don't the first frost don't tend to make an impact on the talus it has to stay warm enough to lose great dude we can keep it Tomatoes going to into November something that gets to it gets to a point where you need to clear them to make them for winter crops because we can make a decent amount of money from tunnels and yeah we have enough you know we're quite fairly warm and compared to scan or continental climates you know we can produce it all yeah this is I mean these are some of the first good crops I've got a salad brassicas because if we baby always just been insane yeah 200 this is with the 652 I like it yeah it's great I absolutely love it from the salad mix of a moment it's really simple it's just this mizuna tatsoi rocket and lettuce so usually about you know sixty to seventy percent lettuce and people love it I mean it's a really simple mix like I know other growers in the UK who do those super complex she makes it so you know loads and loads of leaves and picking it all by hand and it's nice but this is delicious salad and and it's really quick as well we sell it quite a lot well you know we sell about 20 kilos a week at the moment so it's good it works no good on this it's what I dream about call this is your nursery yeah it's pretty basic I mean it's that this glass house was built about 15 years ago now and my folks got it off a glass house company injury which was closing down so every what were huffing for 700 quid but you still got a lot of crops to put in yeah I mean we're doing a lot of women transplants and what we tried to do is because we get such a good wholesale market in like April men and of a hungry gut so we can sell any amount of stuff wholesale and we can get a really decent price for it as well so we push to have a lot of spinach available we're going to try and have some more winning spring onions seven hundred pounds for his greenhouse ridiculous that is epic I think they had some things may have to buy it which cost more than the rest of us combined and I mean your folks built this house right so you were living in caravans when you came for years yeah tell us about the house because then you grew up in that sort of environment yeah yeah so it must have been amazing to have this building and all over you in the house was going up I they started building it when I was about that's a little compost new on the back yeah I built that you build a pet project that's a big dude and this is all coated with lunch man yeah yeah it's British Grand Lodge is treated which is probably unnecessary because larch lasts a long time anyway they use it for plank and ships I fix sometimes yeah but yeah it's good and yeah we'll probably never have to reclad it no no like really cool epi nice and it's all timber frame the night is all heated with a single wood stove all I hot mysamma I mean in the winter is all so they really built this up from zero from nothing yeah it's amazing really yes it's a great God [Music] this is your own electric vehicle yeah let's go delivery electric van I mean it's probably not like a file but my dad's really into like green technologies and stuff so he bought an electric man and it's ideal for deliveries it's awesome I mean it's basically for free and you're basically doing all your deliveries within sort of 12 months 14 miles so I just having a look in the tool shed asked if we could see some of the tools they're using nice organized things I really like loving and we have an electric chainsaw which is awesome a super light and then really nice to use not so loud then knife sharpener okay being able to keep your hose sharp from your weight and for green services as well and that one yeah it's good it's good did you get that one over in the state's own yeah no I hear ya boy off eBay yeah they're like the most incredibly economic tool you know I really like thank you and fun yeah a good rake you know it's one of my simple things like I spent a bear money and got a good rake and it's just yes sir in joyful tears but obviously the green harvester has totally changed silent production that's going great I think I see a lot people in forums and stuff buying them but I think you've gotta be wary but you do need to grow well to be able to use it well you got a great clean yeah clean beds flat beds we've free and the farmers tools don't come I've only got my recently I had this hopes off Malcolm yeah very late yeah it's just I'm gonna go and see him on the way home say make a video in his work so I see really sweet but he's not a he's not as it answers no blacksmith so yeah that exciting but he's making board folks for the farmers to us oh nice yeah that's really good I made one myself when I started but it was really heavy and horrible to you yeah six my seed is awesome ginger the only cedar I used that we had an old Stan hey Robin which is like I keep it just because it would survive like nuclear holocaust I keep it around just in case so pretty simple stuff this is like you building on this is what your folks have been using yeah and you just have it green Sam's to succeed a boatful hydraulic box for spreading chaos yeah but this is a knife shown there for those of you their interest in that there's different markings some different products on the market but really good for the Greens harvester and you can use it in a sort of curling way around each time can also dip my hand very easily and this it's good to learn the shovin by hand oh yeah definitely like I think with that I'd like to be honest this kid is quick with the greens hamster but you you lose the point yeah you don't want to lose a point yeah exactly and I think I think if um I think you can do it better much better by hand you have to be I can show you how you do if you want that one you need to if you're sharpening this you've got to keep these points because that's what initiates to cut so the point is more important than the curve but to keep it there you need to angle this off flat and do half the curve at once and then you come back and do the other half I also do yeah that's no good because these are this is what initiates a cut if I had a hand file I could bring that one back in to true it would take me about 40 minutes and these are all harvest crates yeah it gets obvious into the crate and when it comes here and it's either is either wash at this area what happens you can use one hand to be washing while you grab the other one and then you can let go and leave that one there and you can use both hands and get there and it's really efficient yeah I quite like that it's not so good for all the stuff but I like it for radishes so I use a kind of gun for the pitcher yeah I've got a bubbler and a salad spinner which I made but I don't even use an angle no okay I just like what I was finding is that your spin I don't know everyone's just too powerful or something but I was finding a lot of leaves were getting braised and folded and it's just a conveyor washing machine yeah it's good it's good it's like you can definitely get rid of burn stuff but what we can't sell it as wash to salad anyway you know we can't we're not allowed to and I want my customers to be washing it so you guys will you saw you saw the association of certified so yeah quite a lot of finicky laws and regulations and stuff like that yeah and in also it's I think that might just be like health and safety regulations but to sell a wash product it needs to be washed in like chlorine and stuff like this you know it's not something we're gonna do what I'm doing is I'm gonna I'm actually because I don't use most of that space anymore pretty much all I use is the water is the wash down table um I'm actually gonna convert this into a walk-in fridge because I don't actually have any refrigeration of a moment it's been hard to manage this year because all my harvesting has been compressed and to like the morning before I said it so we have some like our harvest backing days is super intense have you folks done that over the last years they've come in harvested and Grandma nicely harvested the same day as asada and you know use you can overspray stuff down to take the field here out of it and so you've never had refrigeration just water yeah basically and so you made listen to like a cool box I'm gonna make it into a cool bar yeah I've got a loud fridge which I bought which I'm just gonna cut the panelist to size to fit in here another door and then where will you move your wash um so it's probably gonna go bad and then I'm gonna have crate storage better I think because I'm the workflow will be quite nice because you bring the van in you can bring the van in it can come straight out into the fridge or it can come straight out the fridge into the van yeah if we're keeping edge to be delivered in there yeah and it's also really quick to get in between the package head because this is actually the package that we actually sleeve that I boxes we had we do like bespoke vegetable boxes and we do whole foods as well so that's the ebooks for references where people can go online and order a selection box one of the things they want actually it's basically like an online shopping like a workers cooperative in Bristol essential essential yeah yeah so there are things that people can add to their box yeah and it's like it does not very it's not a big market for us as to something we do because I think it has an added value of people it's kind of like we were talking about Rico with you're explaining it to folks and it's like you're that's the the benefit having other producers as you get that diversity but you're creating your own creme your own by adding products into your boxes yeah it's nice to be like a one-stop shop I mean that has its disadvantages it's quite a lot but can be quite a lot that mender manager rapper it looks alright this is gonna be renovated really soon I'm gonna make up I don't know something might seem the frame is in my butt I'm gonna make like a any bench Fair which is like the ones I think you use where you can have access to all the veg there when you're packing the boxes here and you've got storage underneath just make nice work basically there we want to integrate integrate a lot more tree crops into the farm in general it's something I'm quite passionate about and what I'd really like to do is is create like a mixed fruit Sylvia pasture which could operate as a pyo orchard basically a bit like the work of Stefan suburbia it's something I'd like to see happen just for the kind of social and ecological element of it I don't think he's got a lot of legs as you know the big enterprise but also we use a lot of word in our buyers and I want to make wood chip compost for our market garden so like I want to integrate a lot of biomass crops and some copies maybe some kimba crops you know for my kids or whatever and yeah so it'll be set out basically on north-south three lanes quite intense probably about 12 metres maybe even less in some areas with smaller trees your folks are happy that you wanna tape the Sun right yeah but it's a big like I see like it's beautiful what you're doing and to do this with your mom and to rock it so like it's really well cared for and it's really well thought through I can see that and I've heard a bit about some of your other plans but it's like this is a big thing you're taking on and in the sense that you're you are now starting to steer it and being allowed to and departing from like 20 or 30 years of experience right so it's pretty amazing to have folks who are that open - that's pretty mind-blowing yeah farmers are some of the most entrenched but I get the feeling your pounds so quite the box very pointed am I really supportive as well I mean as always you know very some tensions in decision-making sometimes well I have no I got any experience really and I have like you know and they have 30 years experience where I'm trying to do something but they also understand like something what this is about is secession right yeah and taking the farm on and there's nothing I can imagine they would want more than for you to take it on yeah and of course there's niggling like it's hard to let go everything like that right but it do folks have a like what's your decision-making or discussion around like that succession like how do you relate to it and how do you relate to it together I mean I don't really see it as I'm like taking over and I'm so we're very much done of work in a way that is really like beneficial for all of us I mean it's hard to not have like strict hierarchies and in our management because decisions need to happen yes and sometimes you just need to be able to tell someone with the way it's happening yeah so like well you know we kind of divide bits that we manage and and and we write we write holistic context together you know we write a holistic gold which has been really quite instrumental in like bringing everybody onto the same page you're very lucky but but with that comes great responsibility and you're taking that all you're taking that on obviously I didn't realize you came in Carolyn built this yeah it was it wasn't a fart when we came it was just a plot of land we just bought plot it now it's a farm it's got an address and it's got and it's kind of business it's got a history and you know be nice be nice I would have wanted it to stay far so is it I want to ask you personally like a personal question then for both of you is it thank you like in one way of course you want to see this go on but in another way is there another side to that where it's like like hard to let go of bits in it because it's also your baby the box is all mine baby yeah you know it was you've built that up they love their work I'm casting us we got customers we had a load today the other day and got half the customers being having veggie office 15 20 25 for years I think one of them works out can you see it in you know I went to the door I used to go to the door and the wife of you know the mother would be pregnant and then they'd have their baby and as I kept going you know those kids are grown up and I'll see the grown up they've come to the door that you know so that's that's been that's a whole different time thing like we're at an age where we can't relate to that time scale no that's a whole of our lunch so I was Jack's age when we started I was jokes about jokes I've got a little bit older than Jake when we started and I wasn't I've never had a fare like I'm back to that though also like so how how do you relate to managing that transition like at what point do you let go like do you see as a period of transition where you and mentorship in your guiding and sellable yeah there's an element obviously hopefully what our experience of for my part I don't have a problem with village did it win a competition did they have a competition so he's good okay now for my part I I wanted to follow up with in terms of succession are always ever since it's been afar I've wanted to stay after all yeah I wasn't sure I would I would have just left it as in my will to the family anything to poverty repeat gone that we've been up to them that they go to a bar would have preferred always referred it to stay involved because we created a far winning but it would be ashamed to think of it just you know falling into this with the changes have gone now because they are we were just talking like it's quite a big departure from the methodologies that you've spend but I'm Adele yeah but do you feeling happy about it all very yeah very I mean I you know um that's amazing the open I was saying it was really moving for me um well I wouldn't be like no you don't know you don't know well you don't know where you are your kids through the thirties and you're you know you're thinking of what you're gonna do it's you know I don't know I mean I I never really I'm not Precious about the farm I want it to stay a farm the fact that jag has come along and has not only got it like humans although worked on the farm that's how they got their pocket money but it was never raised as a farmer I went often and you know did you know that was what he was going to do that's was always going to do my daughter's you know they've never looked at if they were going to do anything like that so the fact that jake has come back with an interest and not only my own interest and ideas is amazing you know I mean I couldn't never ever fight for anything better because it wasn't and it was something I'll never I didn't ever I never considered yeah well you kind of hope but I was you know not thinking any of them would well Jake first came back he had very non-commercial ideas and I was surprised how how trusting I was in him to change his look because some of what he was doing we talked about it and I just I trusted him if it didn't change he would make it work but I was worried that he was going to build a forest garden and stuff that would mean he'd always be able to do other jobs always always be struggling and our lives have been a struggle inna yeah but the the change in Jay and as he's changed what I have I've learned a lot from Jake and I have moved to just stand back and let him work it out for himself because he does very quickly in fixes that they put quick I think we really left me like that and a transition from a sort of sort of woolly ideas of what would be really you know from vegan to now you know life so it's been it's been great and it's really you know I've got a lot of faith in his you know his methods what he wants to do and I haven't found it hard I thought I would after about 12 months ago it wasn't particularly interested in Market Garden but you could see that was how we made our money here mr. boxes and he was willing to you know to graft them and make but since he's fallen in love with it and I wasn't sure whether he would I thought I would always I would be continuing that and continuing to run it but it's absolutely brilliant because he's very good at putting in systems and we've got a long way to go to make it easier and the changes made incredible not absolutely nothing I think having a plan yeah it's what Jake is definitely a part of his youthful enthusiasm of this innovation it's actually we actually got a plan he's you know that you feel like that's a direction to the place and we were just you know we were carried on we don't know that we had a direction we did we did check to use it can if you build it up organically you know it says mobility was getting really bad before the operation and I was desperately desperately trying to think of a plan to keep us here and to keep growing here the thought of moving away bring me to tears now you know was really difficult what do you do me we're just working really hard I was working really hard yeah and you know general on the veg term doing all the boxes I was doing packing the boxes or you know nearly hundred all on my own and we couldn't we weren't makin enough to employ anybody and as the the profit was going down so all the work was I could see it wasn't getting there we were ok but so much would go into the fixed cost so so much would I I was doing I was working just to play for woo she's a home for me to work more basically and Julian was working hard as well you know but it was much more difficult for him I meant cash came and you know we said and was a great tell I'm losing earlier John he's a real grass to heart is working yeah and at he's being brilliant so that turned it around there and that was worked very well but there are areas that I always knew I would still have to be in control of and run in gender you can do it better so it has been quite easy baby he has made it easy I think by his character for this is like it's taken a lot on if you have anything to share about let the different methodologies and like once they're working and if they work then I set out cool that's great but like did you find like you just were skeptical also in the moving and some of the things have these skeptical a band and but he just grows yeah just wait and see moments you know and I know that that is the way you know that you have to wait to stand back and see if it happen if it works it's hard to think of a specific in the past but yeah there are times when it's difficult and more difficult being near Sun and just I mean I tried to get him to call me Jane in you know in front of working in working situations with other people or when we got people on the phone because I don't want to become just Jake's mum you know I and that's the that's like difficult for you isn't it as I sense a boundary yeah I think you know because they're in a professional when I should yeah yeah it's a variant I mean we've been talking about this everywhere I've been going with me this idea of working in couples yeah and finally very hard to find balances and were and life and bringing emotions into business decisions that's just totally inappropriate so I think it's good I mean yeah I find it probably strengthen the sudden relationship and that I can there is that difference where so if we're having a discussion or you know about Luke or a difference opinion about what we should do on the job I much prefer to call me Jane and keep it on a professional level and I'm able to do it we're able to do that more they would say you know as a couple as me in jingyan woods you know so it's an easier relationship nothing and when you're gonna return well yeah otama committee partly for me this year I was 65 so I'm pensionable yeah then I get mistake pension so I did no need to meet but I want to feel I don't want to have gin and tonics out all this I don't mind stepping back for the physical work but at the same time I want to make it as easy as I can for the farm to work and by doing what what I can do now as much as I can do and to take you know to all the wheels really I mean at the moment you know if that involves me doing collections it's an entry as well that's fine I mean that's to me that's is that's important now it's an important job for the farm but it's not a difficult job for me what do you see happening in the next couple of years that you've talked a bit about tree planting and the agroforestry bit but what about in the market gun specifically like as you like I think you have such different ideas with how you want to drive that to your phone so if what are the innovations you see are necessary here now I think like this really concentrating it like we've reduced the amount of bed space from last year from the dead ground by about you know it's about half it's less than half of the ground we did last year and we're producing a lot more but I could do that again you know I love it again hang on just maybe you have the size of the garden and you're producing I think like ten thousand euros more yeah yeah I mean it's but it's a lot of it is just about utilization like we're getting a lot been utilizing stuff better and quality is so much better that we're cropping a lot more so really focusing in on what you actually need to grow rather than trying to grow and just I'm just diluting yourself definitely and just little stuff like I mean like with leeks before everything was done no more than three rows and about because that's what they thought the plant that could be an I mean I figured out what the plant that can do six rows on the bed you just could go down up and down the vertical pipes and it's so just optimizing yeah just optimizing spacing and getting more successions out the bed like I was I went quite detailed into my crop planning but I made a bit of a blunder but I was really too cautious about like how long it would take to get cops out so I left this massive buffer after a cop to make sure that yeah and what I should have done is the officer okay what happened is I had like early crops and then like late crops and plantings but this year was a funny year that sure it wouldn't really have mattered what you planned in a way yeah maybe yeah I mean like I did like I planned oh we're like everything was gonna go in a bed at the start of the year like I had all my beds a number plate yes Ian and I just I'm glad the beds a numbered but I don't I next year I think I just wanted my I'm just gonna match how much beds of stuff I need and do with planting and sowing yeah and then just like make succession plans yes it does manage your bags as they come because yeah it's been really hard to like to manage like because I was having to replant it so many times basically all I was doing when I replumbed it was walking out and seeing what was free yeah and I can just do that on a week-to-week basis oh and so it sounds like you're gonna catch up quite two weeks yes by having things straight in the ground yeah we'll have a lot of earlier plantings going in this year and I think we can get we can push a lot more successions out where birds I'd like to be getting like free cups I have a better year of it you gonna shave some cops off definitely what are you getting rid of do you think I I mean I haven't done the sums on over crops because it's were still in the caesars purely on instinct yeah I'm doing stuff in the ground a long time and then is low value yeah and can just you can lose the quays we also with zero what do you think you're in the process of like you're very engaged in the branding and remaking the website and it like for me it's like a really I'm really like touched to see like the interaction with your family and to see that like this is really what it takes like for you to take on the business and like move into it it takes some years to do that like it's a filling in process and of course your parents gonna want to guide that and you know make sure it's all going good but it's really important I think that you've put your mark on it and like having a fresh website and fresh business face and branding is like a big part of that I think it's like a nice thing to do in there it's allowing you to feel into it to own little bit like it's a natural is how I would want to hand off a business to make it accelerated yeah so you do make a big work around in the back end and make it more efficient like sales model on the on the sort of digital end yeah pretty much to be honest for database but they've built it's really good it can manage orders like bespoke was ready but I'm ready into his eye you know I studied you know I worked in marketing so I'm interested in like the aesthetics of division and I'm really interested in is being able to communicate the ecological stuff which I'm really passionate to my customers in a way which is not just like an easily digestible so yeah I don't want to be able to tell people but why you know growing in this way like why ever no bigger so good I want to be able to package that in a way that's really telling a story so it's not gonna be cool looking organic it's gonna be good oxidants I think it's gonna be called roxton's regenerative farmers you know but yeah just the websites this can be oxidized form yeah you're basically putting a new skin and face on yeah on the thing I think that's why I see my job here is basically optimizing the growing yeah a bit and I've changed the way that we manage some of the wholesale customers and I you know I've kind of got no I'd never used a spreadsheet when I came to I already enjoy taking wholesale orders where it's all just done through online spreadsheets and it compiles it all in you know and what endeavour next step in that is to make it all the orders automatically printing invoice as well at the moment invoices back on - right it's annoying so that could be in that thing also yeah it could be but I think it is it on Excel it's on Google sheets because Excel can print out can spit out yeah receipts very easy yeah it's cool and but it wouldn't work for a lot of customers I couldn't deal with what I don't sense but with the wholesaler works really well and it support so what I can also really easily turn back into record-keeping I get all my you know yield data and you know all my sales data at the end of the year it's already there organized by crop so you're going to be a busy man yeah I mean it's been this years bringing three inch I've loved it yeah oh you you rocked it Wow thanks so much dick yeah dude this I've been super impressed that was awesome not and I'm super keen to keep following you and I'm really happy to see something awesome going on in the UK because I just haven't seen that that's inspired me to come over and have a look actually yeah this was this is one of them nicest kept Gardens I've seen in a long time and one of the best no dig conversions I've seen like you've gotta get enough material down and gotta stay on top of it and I think Jake's done an epic job with his mum here and this is definitely project you want to follow where can making people follow you we're on Instagram and Facebook and yeah and the new website will be coming soon yeah end of the year hoping to get it done in the winter perfect we're gonna stick that in the links below so make sure to follow Jake I'm super impressed and I think this is a great gun to follow thanks so much for watching folks we're off to what's this just a music festival western music festival have a beer see you next time [Music]

Channel: Richard Perkins

Views: 103,616

Rating: 4.8885288 out of 5

Keywords: ridgedale, ridgedalepermaculture, nodig, oxton, oxtonsorganic, marketgardening

Id: nINo1tKQ67I

Length: 77min 31sec (4651 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 16 2018