Increasing the growing list



Isla with a cabbage

For the second year a team of 4 expert growers was appointed to decide what should be grown on each plot and the space allocated to that crop, the quantity of seed that should be purchased and the varieties that should be tried. Expert growers are available for consultation.

Broad beans


Subsequently each of the ten vegetable teams has been given two to four crops to grow in their area and the areas planted with each crop now more closely reflect the demands of all stakeholders than they did in 2010. So, for example, we aim to grow 8000 leeks, which will each stakeholder to buy about 80 leeks. Some who like leeks may buy more, those who come less regularly will have fewer opportunities and so will buy less. It is a skilled judgement call to know how much of each crop to grow and the area to plant and the expert growers are constantly refining the quantities of seed they need to sow, the varieties they sow and the time they sow. Typically in a year we will now grow around 30 different vegetables and sometimes several different varieties. For example, with potatoes a number of different varieties (some of them quite new) have been trialled. One year we experienced very damp growing conditions and blight destroyed much of the crop. This has pushed us towards growing some of the newer blight resistant varieties.

Lettuces grown in small tunnels
to prevent birds from eating

As well as the development of planting more crops for the winter period, there has been a push to better use the land. As I write in early July the last of the first earlies potatoes have just come out and the team is ready to plant their leek seedlings which should be ready for harvesting in the hungry months of February, March and April.

Pests and Diseases can devastate crops. When possible grow resistant varieties, but this is not always possible or desirable, as resistant varieties are often new and so often more expensive than traditional varieties. We generally steer away from hybrid seeds because of the cost and because you cannot keep seed from plants which have been grown for the following year as the seed will not breed true.

Fennel

Most allotment growers use a 3 year rotation of Legumes, Brassicas and Rootcrops or a 4 year rotation sequence of Brassicas, Others, Roots, Potatoes. However the "others" category at the farm was much larger than the other three categories, so it was further subdivided into 3; legumes, alliums, salads and others. This gives a potential six year rotation. However the placing of the three sub groups "others" in the rotation is not firmly fixed because we are also trying to grow a second crop in a year on some plots -generally overwinter - and so crops have to be fitted in to be planted after others have been harvested. Nonetheless, every effort has been made to ring the changes on each plot as much as possible, consistent with other constraints such as crop timing. It’s not really necessary to adhere to a strict plan as long as there is variety on each plot over time. Attention is also given to the type and quantity of manure, fertiliser or progrow which is being applied to an individual area. 



Sweetcorn being harvested



Courgette varierties





Part of the pumpkin harvest





Onions being dried

Pests and Diseases can devastate crops. When possible grow resistant varieties, but this is not always possible or desirable, as resistant varieties are often new and so often more expensive than traditional varieties. We generally steer away from hybrid seeds because of the cost and because you cannot keep seed from plants which have been grown for the following year as the seed will not breed true. With over 30 species of crop grown and often several varieties of the same species there are inevitably some risks taken and some significant losses. More about successful varieties later. 

Most allotment growers use a 3 year rotation of Legumes, Brassicas and Rootcrops [i] or a 4 year rotation sequence of Brassicas, Others, Roots, Potatoes. However the "others" category at the farm was much larger than the other three categories, so it was further subdivided into 3; legumes, alliums, salads and others. This gives a potential six year rotation. However the placing of the three sub groups "others" in the rotation is not firmly fixed because we are also trying to grow a second crop in a year on some plots -generally overwinter - and so crops have to be fitted in to be planted after others have been harvested. Nonetheless, every effort has been made to ring the changes on each plot as much as possible, consistent with other constraints such as crop timing. It’s not really necessary to adhere to a strict plan as long as there is variety on each plot over time. Attention is also given to the type and quantity of manure, fertiliser or progrow which is being applied to an individual area.

This is how one team have rotated their crops over the past five years: 

Season and Year	Plot 3	Plot 4
Summer 2010	French beans	Runner beans
Winter 2010-11	Fallow	Fallow
Summer 2011	Squash	Carrots
Winter 2011-12		Italian rye grass (green manure)
Summer 2012	Garlic and Jermor shallots	Potatoes: 2nd early Anya
Winter 2012-13		(Pigs)
Summer 2013	Cauliflower Cabbage Cavilo Nero	Onions
Winter 2013-14	Broadbeans
Summer 2014	Broadbeans	Salads: lettuce, spring onions, radishes, fennel
Winter 2014-15
Summer 2015	Main crop potatoes	Summer cabbages , calabrese, cauliflowers
Winter 2015-16

Where our community farm is situated


Highbridge Community Farm in Hampshire is part of a larger farm -Highbridge Farm - of 240 acres which is situated on the Northern edge of the town of Eastleigh and straddles the beautiful River Itchen. Much of the farm is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) with managed water meadows which are flooded in late winter. Mr Russell is the last remaining farmer on the Itchen to manage the fields in the traditional manner. The grass on these water meadows warmed and fertilized by the Itchen waters and begin to grow a couple of weeks earlier in the year than surrounding fields which benefits cattle that can begin grazing there significantly earlier. Currently the meadows are home to about 60 beef cattle.

O.S. Map showing northern edge of Eastleigh and Highbridge Farm

The Water meadows

There are 100-120 stakeholders involved in Highbridge Community Farm working on an area of 1.7 acres (0.71 ha) of vegetable growing and 0.935 acres of fruit trees and bushes. The fields are just above the flood plain. A stakeholder can be an individual, couple or a family, so the actual number of people working this land at any one time is around 250 people. Our peak working time is Saturday morning when there are frequently 80 people or so present.

Table 1 How the land at Highbridge Community Farm is allocated

Designation	Area m2 (approx.)	Number of stakeholders involved
20 vegetable plots	4392	100
3 polytunnels	103	5
Soft fruit and rhubarb plus New Soft fruit area	1172	5
3 orchards containing approximately 250 fruit trees	3304	5
Paths, sheds compost bins, stores, selling area, meeting area, water containers.	2350	3

 

Crops being  grown in 2010 -our first 

The Aims and Ethos of our community project

As a group,

•  to produce food locally for ourselves
• To provide an additional, sustainable and resilient food supply in a world where future food supplies are becoming increasingly uncertain
• To encourage the consumption of food that is nutritious and fresh
• To give members knowledge and experience in vegetable and fruit growing, using organic methods as far as possible
• To help our own and the wider community understand climate change, the need for putting more carbon into the soil and less into the atmosphere and the need to transition away from fossil fuel consumption.

In the Ethos statement of Highbridge Community Farm we state:

We have evolved from the Transition Movement and retain their founding principles - a community-led response to the pressures of fossil fuel depletion and climate change, supporting local economies and moving towards a more viable and sustainable future……..we work together to produce food for ourselves with minimum use of fossil fuels and chemicals. We support growing techniques that maintain the natural balance of the soil, preserve wildlife and their habitats, and encourage biodiversity.

The beginnings of Highbridge Community Farm

In late 2009 the world was reeling from three major threats to stability. First was the consequences of the bank collapses and the subsequent economic recession that was reducing global economic activity and causing a rise in unemployment.Global Food Security
Second was a feeling among Environmental groups that our world was past the days of peak oil production, that oil would become a scarce commodity, threatening energy production, transport and industrial scale food production. Here in Britain in 2012 the AgriFood industry, by burning oil was adding around 70 million tonnes metric equivalent of CO₂ to the atmosphere each year.  DEFRA p 35 Third, was the rapid rise in global food prices. In Britain food prices rose 18% in real terms between 2007 and their peak in August 2012, levelled until 2013 and subsequently fell back to January 2015 making a food price increase of 7.7% between 2207 and 2015.[iii] DEFRA p 18  Here in Britain we imported 47% of the food that we consumed in 2013[iv]DEFRA p26 and so it was felt that we could be vulnerable if there were major global crop failures caused by climate change.  The UK could be outcompeted for increasingly scare food resources by the rising superpower nations like China and India and so we could find ourselves struggling to feed ourselves.

These issues were debated in the newly formed Eastleigh Transition Network (E.T.Net.) during the autumn of 1979 and we pondered how we could act to inform, challenge and change our community response to these problems. The dozen or so of us in the Food Group of E.T.Net., were attempting to address the issues of reducing food miles and  increasing local food production and consumption. We had put an article in our local borough news expressing our interest in acquiring a field to begin to grow more food locally. Farmer Henry Russell read that article and was moved to help us. This is an account of how his kind initial gesture helped give birth to an unique project called Highbridge Community Farm.

18th February 2010. Mr Russell offers Eastleigh Transition Network use of two fields

In February 2010 Mr Russell offered us a field approximately 4 acres in size divided across the middle with a barbed wire fence. The smaller field had been sown with maize for a few years, for which the farmer received an EEC subsidy, but he never harvested the crop as there was no money in that. The larger field was a meadow which was occasionally cut for silage. We accepted Mr Russell's offer to cultivate the smaller of the two fields. At the time it was a gentleman's offer, no papers were signed, no figures of money discussed. Later we arrived at a cropping licence fee of £400 per year which included some initial help to plough the field and the provision of some fencing materials.

The smaller field had been sewn with maize, but not harvested

 Two of us had done some work in Community development and were keen to start a project that would help to create a community feeling with many unquantifiable benefits to the membership and also to use it as an educational project. Several members of our team had experience of growing on allotments and we decided on a fruit and vegetable growing project that might avoid some of the difficulties experienced at allotments where many people find the first year or two on an allotment very daunting. They are of ten confronted with a weed patch which takes months to dig, by which time the peak planting season has been missed. And then come the questions of what should be planted and so growing fruit and veg in an allotment is often a steep learning curve. We thought that some of the 400+ on Eastleigh Borough Council’s Allotment Waiting List might be interested in joining us rather than waiting another four years. Then there were the multitudes of people who were watching the TV programmes and hearing about the renaissance in growing their own food, despite the problems of getting land to grow it on, or even trying to grow their own in their back gardens and window boxes,  Would some of them be interested in joining us?

Chatting over the offer