To dig or not to dig ...

Here at Radford Mill we have been conducting an experiment to compare the effects of digging or not digging the growing beds on the productivity of some of our crops.

The idea, advocated by Charles Dowding (www.charlesdowding.co.uk), is that when you dig the soil you destroy the microflora and fungal networks which act as extensions to the plants' root systems. These then need to re-establish themselves, which takes more time.

We have two beds, side by side, one dug and one not dug. Otherwise what we have sown in each bed, and the amount of compost added is the same. You can see from the photos that the plants in the no-dig bed are bigger.

One significant advantage of this approach is that it is much faster to prepare the beds. Another advantage is that we hope the plants will be stronger and less prone to disease and attacks from pests. The trial continues, and we shall see.

Undug bed                         dug bed

Our wonderful Autumn Festival

Thank you to everybody who supported our Autumn Festival and made it such a great success. Fortunately the weather was kind to us, we had a good turnout and we were really pleased with how well it went. Thank you to everyone who volunteered and gave of their time. To the artists and musicians who entertained us, the workshop holders and therapists and everyone who turned up to enjoy the space and have a good time.

There was a lively buzz on site combined with a lovely relaxed atmosphere. The beautiful location, the excellent music, the sumptuous food, the range of traditional workshops, healing therapies and fun and creative things to do all helped to make this a really enjoyable day out.

Thank you to Sam for organising it and pulling it together and thank you to everyone on the farm who got behind the event and made it happen. It was a genuine community effort.

We are now planning our Winter 2012 – Spring 2013  programme of activities. If you are interesting in supporting the farm and finding out about forthcoming events or if you have any ideas for things we could do, you can find our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RadfordMillFarm?fref=ts. 

We have posted a number of additional photos there.

A Sign of the Times

We have new signs. Yes the farm is tidying and making itself look a bit more respectable. The signs will be used to advertise our various courses and events and are almost ready to be put up. Here are Dave and Tom, with the first one varnished and ready for installation. 

Please note the excessive amount of white paint on Tom’s overalls, even though this job did not involve using white paint. Look at the quality of that varnish… sadly the arms of both these men are stuck to it!! We will post a picture of the finished article soon.

We Have The Energy

We told you a few weeks ago about the new solar panel system we were putting up, here at Radford Mill Farm. The project is now complete and the final parts of the system were connected up on 29th July. It is producing lots of lovely green electricity, although not so much today as its raining!

We had a tough time putting the system in place as we were on a tight deadline, due to a change in the government feed in tariffs that we wanted to take advantage of. The steel posts are dug down a metre into the soil, which consists mainly of clay and stones so that was not easy. We also had to line up all the posts using a clear plastic tube full of water, to get the heights right and string and spirit levels, to get everything in line and upright. The posts are all held in place by stones and concrete and each one took 3 or 4 people to carry and a tractor to lift in position!

The panels were finally bolted to the wooden framework about 9 o'clock in the evening but most of the work was done in the heat wave just before the Olympics started, so it was quite a task. I myself was drinking about 3 litres a day extra!

This system is rated at 3.66 Kilowatts and on a very sunny day, can produce enough electricity to power 3-5 houses. It's connected to the national grid, which absorbs and distributes the electricity and we hope to get the cost of the system back from the sale of its electricity, within about 10 years or so. After that the income will then be used to put up more solar panels or to do other sustainable projects on the farm.

This system was designed to do 3 jobs: produce electricity, collect rainwater and keep the rain off our machinery. Aim number 2 hasn't been realised yet as we still have not fitted the guttering but we think the other two aims have been admirably achieved.

The Beast of Radford

    It’s big, its yellow, its dirty and its quite clever! It’s a bad, bad boy. It’s our 1973 JCB. 

    It’s very handy to have a powerful and versatile machine like this on the farm. It's engine is a 4 cylinder diesel that in its heyday, pumped out 76HP. It's still going strong after 39 years of service. Sometimes however it does need a little work and here we see the injectors being removed for checking. We have just treated it to a new battery and fuel filters and will shortly be changing the air filter and throttle and stop cables. That should just about do it for another 39 years!

    Last may we built a fab new bridge to ford the Cam Brook, that meanders through the farm. The JCB was right in there lifting the finished item into place. Note that it works best with several people standing nearby, studiously watching and offering advice.

    The JCB is used for moving heavy items around, digging out banks and ditches, lifting work, banging in large posts, digging trenches, shifting manure and all sorts of other random things.

Long live the Beast of Radford!

Flying the Nest is Such a Wren-ch

    Birds have been nesting in our workshop and today I got the best view of one so far. This little fella had just jumped out of the nest and was wondering around on the floor. It's probably a good job we don't have cats!

    I think it's a Wren, the commonest breeding bird in the British isles. They are often seen on farmland and in wooded areas but rarely use chainsaws and tools, so why he's in our workshop I don't know. Lets hope he's had his safety training.

    The RSPB website says the Wren eats insects and spiders, which explains his reluctance to eat the worm I dug up for him. Lucky for the worm, who crawled away unharmed to wriggle another day.     

Seaching for Our Pot of Gold

 

It must be close!

A view across our valley yesterday evening, looking at Summer Leas field.

Out On The Tiles

    Our philosophy on life is the old and well worn mantra, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Why spend your hard earned moola on new stuff when there is perfectly good stuff available for free or almost nothing. Every time you buy something new you are using up valuable resources for no valid reason.

    With this in mind we are keen addicts of freecycle and freegle in our local area. Just last night we collected a used toilet, a couple of beds and a great treasure... 307 roof tiles in perfect condition. They were collected from a builder who had been doing repairs on a property and just wanted to get rid of them.

    Big result!

    Here are the guys unloading. We have no exact plan for these at present but you can be sure we will put them to good use soon.

     It's mind blowing to think of all the raw materials that have gone into the products we have bought over our life times. Think about all the energy consumed to collect, process and transport all those raw materials and the energy used to make the products. Then think of all the energy to drive the ships, planes, trains and vehicles to ship the products around the world, just so you have the latest thingamy Dyson Mc-i-wotsit, just like the neighbours thingamy Dyson Mc-i-wotsit. We are all a bit susceptible to advertising and peer pressure but maybe it's time to actively say 'no' and start to reduce, reuse and recycle, all the time!

    Why not find your own freecycle or freegle site and become a member. Not only can you give your unwanted stuff to people who will use it but you can also collect your own items from others and save yourself a little money. And best of all... it's free to join and use! Good luck!

http://uk.freecycle.org/
http://www.ilovefreegle.org/
http://www.ilovefreebiesuk.net/free-cyclesites.htm
http://www.freegive.co.uk/

What's Cooking Arnault?

    So what will you do if you come to volunteer with us, here at Radford Mill Farm. Well we do our very best to try and vary the work but when it all comes down to it, we have a lot of manual work in the soil (I'm trying not to say the 'W' word ...  weeding!). It's an organic farm so to produce great tasting healthy food, the weeds are a part of our life! C'est la vie :) 

    Sometimes though we change things around a bit. A snapshot of the tasks from today is as follows: planting leaks, picking gooseberries and blackcurrants (and weeding them), weeding out an invasive species (Himalayan Balsam) from our willow plantation, repairing a trailer, planning a rainwater harvesting system, doing improvements to the mill building, collecting a large number of old stone slabs and a used toilet for reuse (thanks freecycle!), more planning for our soon to be fitted new solar photo voltaic systems and of course everyone over the week, takes turns washing up and cooking. 

    Many people find it a challenge to cook for 10 or 15 people but theres always help at hand and once completed, you can enjoy a great sense of achievement, when you produce a nice meal for everyone. Don’t forget to cook something for the vegetarians though!!

    Here’s Arnault from Brittany, one of our long term WWOOFers, cooking us all pork chops, which were yummy! Arnault will also give you advice on anything to do with Cheese because everyday is cheeseday! Arnault is also a big fan of cakes and is a dab hand at making them.

    This chocolate treat graced our dinner table for nearly 2 whole minutes! You can't buy any of Arnault's cakes as we are guarding them with a high security fence but we will be selling our freshly picked, organic gooseberries and blackcurrants throughout July. You can get these at the Radford Mill Farm shop, in Picton Street in Bristol. Pop in if you're nearby and treat yourself! 

www.facebook.com/#!/radfordmill

Look No Rain

    Yes it's hard to believe but we almost had no rain today! At least it's quite good for the crops but the little sunshine we did have today, put a smile on people's faces and everyone was in a good mood.

    WWOOFers come, WWOOFers Go. Here's the current gang at Radford Mill Farm. From left to right we have Richard, Lea, Rico, Aida, Liam, Arnault, Lou, Chris, Valentin, Carlotta, Sam, Cyril, Tom and Mikael. Shortly before this picture was taken we had just had a lovely pasta dinner and an impromptu game of Boules!

Run Away Chickens!

    City folk who go out on an evening, often see foxes roaming the streets. Sometimes furtively and sometimes as bold as brass. I myself saw an adult fox last winter, sitting on top of a VW Polo in a London street. The fox was watching its cubs playing in someones front garden, just half a mile from Tower Bridge!

    The country however is a different matter and foxes here are far more wary of people. Just recently however, we have been graced with some sightings of a new resident on the farm. Ok its not a great picture but here is the new fox in the neighbourhood, caught on film a few days ago one sunny evening (yes we did have a sunny evening), down in the Alder Bed close to or willow plantation.

    We had been keeping an eye on this fella as we previously lost 2 chickens within a few days. Foxes are known to stalk their prey just like a cats and they often play with it before they kill it. If they aren’t hungry they may even catch a small animal just for fun, then let it go. A fox’s hearing is very sharp and they can hear a watch ticking 40 metres away. I saw this particular one on a disused railway embankment we have here, about 100 metres away and he sat and watched me for 2 minutes. As soon as I started talking on my phone he ran off.

    Apparently the fox is seen as a sacred animal in Japan so perhaps we should treat this one to an all expenses paid, one way trip to Tokyo. Sadly we shall probably have a friend come in and take care of the problem, as we only have 10 chickens left now. Its still nice to see some real wildlife and not just an animal hanging around some dingy bins, behind a back street Chinese restaurant.

It's Not All Fun, Down On The Farm

    Working hard as we do, to grow our crops and bring them in, we work our machinery and tools quite heavily too and sometimes they break. It’s quite frustrating at times but fortunately we have a number of people with some engineering skills, to get things moving again. In the last few days the safety brake on the chainsaw and the steering arm on our little Yanmar tractor have both failed.

The Husqvarna 230 is a cracking little chainsaw

    The chainsaw part was a nice simple fit once it arrived, courtesy of an excellent ebay shop. A quick clean of the air filter and a top up of chain lube oil and its ready and safe for action.

 Yanmar mid repair

    Here is the Yanmar mid repair, with the kingpin and bearing in clear view. Of course the spare seal we bought to compliment the new steering arm wasn’t the right size!

Our Yanmar Workhorse 

    The Yanmar 1500D is our main workhorse for all the small jobs on the farm. We have 5 tractors in all and the bigger ones are used for lifting and ploughing but the little Yanmar mops up all the small jobs nicely. It’s perfect for shifting loads of stones, soil or building materials around and moving tools or irrigation water to newly planted leeks and squash. A quick trip to Shepton Mallet and a new seal for £3 will get her back in action shortly and we shall be working and smiling again. Yesterday evening after dinner we had a lively debate about whether work is necessary to be happy. A working Yanmar certainly is necessary to keep the farm running smoothly and happy! 

Cider With WWOOFERS

    WWOOF or 'Willing Workers on Organic Farms', is a loose network of national organisations that facilitate placement of volunteers on organic farms. There are placements available in 99 countries around the world, with each country's WWOOF organisation, responsible for running itself, to loosely similar standards.

     At Radford Mill Farm we rely heavily on 'WWOOFers' to keep our fields and polytunnels in good order, as well as making improvements to the facilities and buildings here. The current crop of 'WWOOFers' includes one American, one Welshman, two from England and 5 from France. WWOOFERS get to improve their English and have a cheap working holiday, as well a chance to learn a little about organic farming and food production.

Left to Right : Chris, Lou, Liam, Valentine, Caio, Ben, Leah, Mikael and Ben

    Here's the current motley crew, pictured shortly before returning to work after a hearty lunch. If you fancy a little time down on the farm, in a peaceful part of the beautiful English countryside, why not get in touch with us directly or through the WWOOF organisation. In exchange for 6 hours work a day (Mon-Fri) you'll get fed and be given a bed and you can enjoy a little community living to boot. Work includes planting, weeding and harvesting, a bit of painting and woodwork, garden maintenance and all sorts of other things and we try and tailor your skills to the work that's needed. We look forward to sharing a cider with you!

richardrmf@hotmail.com

www.wwoof.org

Attack of the Giant Gooseberries

    Another crop coming on nicely at the moment are our gooseberries. We have a 30m long row so harvest 50-100kg of fruit during the season. We recently cut back the undergrowth around the plants, which was starting to stifle them but they are still cropping really well.

    The rainfall and lack of sunshine of late, have had their effect and the fruit still has a week or two before it starts to ripen properly but soon we shall start picking. We wait patiently for the ripening fruit to start changing colour.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/radfordmill

    Some will be sold at the farm shop in Picton St. Bristol and some will be frozen or used fresh for the staff and volunteers on the farm. Did you know that some 19th and early 20th-century cultivators produced single gooseberries that weighed over 50grammes! I think we will stick with our lil ones and I look forward to some gooseberry crumble in a few weeks time!

Creepers, Comfrey and Cheering Spuds

    A while ago we told you all about our potato growing, up in Espalier Field. http://radfordmillfarmblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/crops-are-growing-its-been-while-since.html I thought I'd let you see an update of how they are doing now.

    As you can see the field is looking really good with only medium weed growth and lovely healthy plants. There are a number of invaders and you can see we have just this morning pulled all the thistles up.

    We leave them on the field to help suppress further growth, by denying light to the soil and eventually the nutrients from these weeds as they decay, will return to the soil and be absorbed by the plants we do want to grow. Now was a good time to remove the thistles before they seed.

    Here's a comfrey plant to the right, growing in amidst the potato crop. We like comfrey as it digs very deep and brings up minerals the other plants can't get to. It's important to weed out the comfrey in the potato patch as well, because it is a "hungry feeder" meaning it consumes nitrogen in order to grow. It is not "nitrogen-fixing", meaning growing little nodules on its roots that affix nitrogen in the soil as it grows, such as beans, clover, etc. However, the leaves are full of nitrogen, and once they are cut it is a good idea to get them back into the soil, either as a mulch or to line the trench when planting potatoes, or to make a liquid feed. Here is a bit more about our friendly plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfrey . At Radford Mill farm we have a small field dedicated to growing comfrey but I'll post more info on that another day.

    Here you can see a morning glory creeper climbing up a potato plant. We shall remove these shortly, before they get too established and the spuds will no doubt all cheer us on!

    As a long term established organic farm we pride ourselves on growing natural food so we do not use pesticides to control the crops. Over the years we have enriched our soil naturally and we reap the benefits of this with strong healthy plants that crop well and taste fantastic. If you are in the area of Bristol, why not pop into our very own farm shop and try our wares.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/radfordmill

Solar PV Workshop

    Here at Radford Mill Farm we are very keen on renewable energy and already have 2 solar PV electricity generating systems in place. These are mounted on top of a barn roof by the main farmhouse and have a rating of 4 KW each. We will shortly be installing a third system at one of our other barns but the new one will be quite innovative.

Our current PV roof with to four KW systems installed

    The new system is slightly out of the ordinary as we are designing it to replace a piece of old barn roof so it will become the new roof, instead of mounting it above tiles or corrugated iron. It will also be set up to collect rainwater that we can use on our crops and obviously it will produce electricity too.

The barn roof we will replace with the new system

  As you can see the corrigated section of this roof is quite tired and rusty so we will be replacing this with the new solar panels. sadly the elderflower trees have to come down but they will take a second harvest of flowers from them to make cordil and wone from, when we ct them down. We also have a lot of elderflower on other parts of the farm.

    With all this in mind we thought it would be great to offer a workshop so you can come and learn all about a solar PV system and help to build this system. Here are the details:

Solar PV Installation Workshop

Date : 21^st July 2012

Location : Radford Mill Farm, Timsbury, Bath, BA2 0QF
Join us here at Radford Mill Farm for a one day, hands on, Solar Installation Workshop. You will have a chance to learn the basics of how a Solar PV system is fitted and works and you can also help with the construction of a multi use installation, that generates electricity, harvests rainwater and is designed to become the new roof of our barn.

Our new system (the third PV installation here at Radford Mill Farm) will have a capacity of 4KW and will have an adjustable mount, to maximise generation potential year round.

Workshop Structure :

0900 to 0930 : Registration and tea/coffee

0930 : An introduction to Radford Mill Farm, our philosophy and a short tour of our current PV installations
1000 : Introduction to solar PV
1030 : Safety and site risk assessment
1045 : Introduction to our design and tea/coffee
1100 : Fitting of panels to new solar roof frame
1300 : Yummy lunch using organic food with home made apple juice, produced on the farm
1400 : Completion of panel fitting, wiring in of PV panels and raising of installation into position
1645 : Discussion and Q&A with qualified installer, about electrical installation, equipment choice and feed in tariffs
1730 : Turn on of system and conclusion

How will the workshop be run?

Through a series of short talks, videos and hands on practical sessions.

Who is the workshop for?

This workshop is for people with a keen interest in solar PV, who would like to get a little hands-on experience of actually fitting an innovative system to a roof. It is not designed to teach you how to design your own system but it is a good introduction for those with limited or no photovoltaic experience, wishing to learn more. It also enables participants to gain some confidence and experience in fitting a system. At the end, you will also have a chance for a Q&A session with a qualified installer to help you choose what’s right for your own system.

What will you get out of this workshop?

-          There is no highly technical content within this workshop but you will gain a knowledge and basic understanding of the principles and practice of photovoltaic systems
-          basic understanding of health and safety issues associated with PV installation
-          a chance to help install an innovative system that may give you some ideas for the design of your own installation
-          a chance to ask a qualified installer all the questions you are unsure about, regarding fitting solar PV. This may include evaluation techniques for the suitability of your roof, how to estimate how much energy and money your PV roof could produce and choice of equipment

This workshop has been developed by the staff of Radford Mill Farm and the maximum number of participants is 12.

Workshop Cost : £50 pp, including lunch, tea and coffee. To encourage car sharing there is a free bottle of homemade apple juice for the driver and 1 passenger, for cars arriving with more than one person. Let us know by email if you’d like to be matched with someone for a lift share when booking. Radford Mill farm will provide hard hats and gloves but you must wear reinforced toe shoes or very sturdy boots (eg. hiking boots) when on site.

To make a reservation : Please contact us at richardrmf@hotmail.com or by phone on 01761 479391 or 07908 088369. Payment should be made when reserving a place and this can be by credit card over the phone or we can supply our bank transfer details. All payments are non refundable. 

How to find us : Please follow directions here : http://radfordmillfarm.com/getting-here.html

Hogging The Limelight

    A few weeks ago we built a pig roast spit for events we hold here at Radford Mill Farm and last weekend we got to take it for a test ride. The pig was around 40-50Kg and made a fine photo opportunity for the 150 people we easily managed to feed from it.

The fire was prepared early to get the and stones nice and hot.

Once cooked the pig is removed from the spit 

and placed in our a purpose built tray until we are ready to carve and serve.

Our big secret ingredient is of course Nigella Lawso... I mean music...

    Our eco-cooler (the stream) did a great job of chilling the wine and I'd just like to state for the record, that I was placing wine in the water and hadn't consumed too much.

    The kids at the event were queueing up to learn how to carve the pig and all children were returned to their parents with all fingers counted and intact.

    The pork was juicy and succulent with some excellent crackling. The meat was accompanied by roast vegetables with herbs and generous helpings of apple sauce. So all in all a very successful first roast. I can report that a number of people (names withheld to protect the guilty) had third helpings!

The Crops Are A Growing

    It's been a while since our last blog post but life is busy here at RMF. Our crops are growing fast, now that the sunshine has arrived. We are transplanting leeks and potatoes to the fields around the poly tunnels and also the big fields. Last week we finally got the spuds in after weeks of rain, when the soil was too wet for the planting to commence.

    The job was completed by Richard, Sirio and Giammarco, together with one of our trusty Ferguson tractors. The Italians are volunteer WWOOFers with amazing potato planting skills, among many others. The job was all done in just 3 hours but the

workers did take a short break when we were inundated by a 10 minute hail storm!

    Although they toughed it out for a while, the soil started getting sticky so the work was abandoned.

    It finally dried out and we finished. Spuds done, time for a glass of cider!

How To Roast A Dinosaur

    One of the other projects currently being worked on, that is linked to our upcoming farm wedding, is a pig roasting system. We have designed and made a spit in the farm forge, capable of being used to roast a pig over several hours. Remember a pig could weigh over 100KG so we need a very sturdy piece of equipment to achieve this.

Mario in the RMF Forge

    Step in one of the Radford Mill Farm's main staff Mario, who is an expert blacksmith and engineer, with a design no doubt capable of roasting a dinosaur! Mario used the heat from the forge to bend all the steel, into an ornate but immensely strong design. We plan to do a test run before the wedding with a lamb, so everyone here at RMF is really looking forward to that!  

The Sliding Clamp of the Pig Roast Spit