Blooms & Berries

After a strange year full of the whole spectrum of possible problems and emotions, we are now looking towards 2021, and hopefully a more stable and predictable 12 months. Given the roller coaster ride that's just passed, It seems fitting to end this year's diary entries with a positive and a negative. The negative is one final drama for 2020, this time involving our beloved dog Pepper and a bizarre late night encounter, and the positive offers a look forward to Blooms & Berries (www.bloomsandberries.co.uk), which I hope will form the nucleus of our market garden venture for 2021 and beyond.

After a chaotic start, Pepper has slowly settled into a lovely dog. The days of chaperoning the children through the kitchen to protect them from her wild puppy fangs and her turd land-mines seem a distant memory, and I can even confidently walk her past the sheep without it descending into a Benny Hill sketch (see the previous post Meet Pepper). So, it was a big shame that a recent mishap involving an unplanned pregnancy has rocked the boat again, and reminded us of the trials and tribulations associated with dog ownership. It was always the plan to get her spayed as we don’t want to add to the current explosion in puppy ownership. However, the hope of a managed procedure following her first season (as advised by the vet) was obliterated after she was caught mating a local farm dog in the boot room.

Stumbling across this encounter was a surreal experience that, at the time, my brain struggled to compute. It was late in the evening, I was tired, and we were alerted by the unusual sound of Pepper yelping. Sarah looked at me with a sense of dread, and I propelled myself out of the chair to see what was going on. When I arrived in the boot room, the back door was open and Pepper was slowly moving backwards out the door in a way that defied physics - it was as if she had been possessed by some kind of poltergeist. As her startled face disappeared behind the door into the dark misty night, I managed to grab her collar to stop her being dragged into another dimension, and in doing so glimpsed a hairy creature with no head seemingly attached to her rear. Instinctively, and with my heart racing, I grabbed this faceless beast and it pulled away, disappearing swiftly into the undergrowth. It all seemed to happen so fast!

After calming Pepper down, I brought her in and tried to explain to Sarah what I had just witnessed. “Well, I ran into the boot room” I began, “and Pepper was kind of floating backwards out the door”. “What do you mean floating” she said, understandably perplexed. “I don’t really know to be honest, I'm just trying to work it out...I think something was attached to her” I replied. Looking increasingly confused and clearly pondering my sanity, she confiscated my drink and continued “attached, what do you mean attached, what was she attached to?" In a last-ditch attempt to make sense of this event, I sat down and played things back in my head before nervously suggesting “it was like a giant badger, but without a head”..........These unconvincing attempts to explain the incident went on for a while before the realisation finally dawned that this may have been some kind of mating episode. Turning to the ever-reliable Google I attempted to shed some light with some very carefully worded searches, and was finally enlightened about the strange “rear to rear” copulation process in dogs, otherwise known as the copulatory tie. Apparently, the dogs end up joined rear to rear, and the bitch can find it difficult to free herself, so can become at the mercy of the males movements. Although everyone I have spoken to since seems fully aware that this is how dogs complete the mating process, it's just one of those facts that’s completely eluded me. Anyway, it goes some way to explain the faceless beast and the floating backwards......although not entirely.

Regardless, the end result is a very young dog that’s pregnant and not ready to give birth and, with a short gestation period of just 60 days, this means fast action or a house full of puppies by February! Despite the festive period, and the ever-spiralling complexities of Covid, we managed to arrange an operation to get Pepper spayed a couple of days before Christmas, although its has been a difficult time full of guilt and indecision. Right or wrong we concluded it's just not ethical to risk Peppers health, as well as bringing more unplanned puppies into the world, despite their obvious appeal.

All this has gone on during a period of yet more home schooling due to a Covid spike, and yet more mess and upheaval in the house due to me ripping out the old oil-fired range and opening up the chimney ready for the fitting of a wood burner with a back boiler. This was a job we were planning for next year when the funds and time allowed, but the premature decommissioning of the 30-year-old Rayburn Royal has left us with very few options if we wanted any form of heat this winter, and credit card has taken yet another hit. It has meant that the nursing of Pepper has run simultaneously with the demands of three children, the shifting of a few tones of bricks, stones, rubble and iron, the restoration of an inglenook and the plumbing in of a wood burning boiler stove - all in the two weeks running up to Christmas.

Although, as I write this my toes are warmed by a lovely fire, and pepper is on the mend, albeit resembling more of a large radio satellite dish then a Border Collie - so it all seems worth it. Its always like this, a perpetual cycle of pandemonium and then satisfied calm.

On a more positive note, the development of the Blooms & Berries website is well under way, and I am so excited by its potential. After much deliberation around what crops to grow, when to grow them, how to grow them and how to sell them we have finally settled on offering soft fruits and flowers through a Community Supported Agriculture box scheme – so why?

Demand

Although it's not the usual market garden crop, we feel confident about the universal demand for fruits and flowers, and can see how no dig intensive agricultural methods can be applied to attain maximise yields. Fruits are appreciated through all age groups, and tend to demand a stable and healthy price. So, as long as we can compete on price and convenience, why would you not want to replace your supermarket bought fruits and flowers with better and more ethically produced alternatives?

Practicality

On a more practical level, the perennial nature of fruit offers useful advantages in terms of yearly planning cycles and the equipment needed. Furthermore, the focus on annual seasonal cut flowers offers the perfect solution to utilising the vacant strawberry beds resulting from crop rotations. It's also nice to have a defined growing period (June –November) so that the horticultural and marketing processes can find a yearly rhythm with few variables, and this will become as established and predictable as the seasons themselves.

Competition

The prevalence of imported fruit is another factor here, and we feel there is scope for local farming to compete. This is particularly true given the costs associated with the transportation and packaging of fruits from places such as Holland and South Africa - which of course will not be applicable to us. Moreover, the product we sell, both in terms of the fruits and flowers, is almost guaranteed to be superior, given the importance of freshness in regards to taste, appearance and shelf life. So, with similar prices and better quality, maybe we can compete with the supermarkets?

Scope

The developments in intensive orchards over recent years opens up opportunities to grow into areas such as apples, plums and cherries, which can be grown on dwarfing root-stocks (M9) in small areas, and in a similar way to soft fruits. It could be that around 2 - 3 acres of intensively managed fruit trees and bushes could successfully provide 50-100 families with the majority of there seasonal fruit requirements (apples, plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb, blackberries and hybrid-berries). There are also opportunities to utilise the waste fruits in terms of specialist chutneys and preserves. On a broader scale, Blooms & Berries could join forces with other local producers via the growing collection of online local food networks, and customers accessing a range of locally produced goods through a single online portal could eventually become a mainstream way to shop.

Site

Of course, there is no point deciding on a crop to grow that does not fit your site, and this has perhaps been the primary consideration. Smithy Farm is essentially 4 acres of south facing sloping pasture, situated at a slightly elevated position along a valley; and there are 4 key reasons this favours fruits. First of all, the slope makes regular land management laborious, so the relative permanence of a perennial crop has obvious advantages. Secondly, the south facing orientation is fundamental, as more or less all fruits prefer an open and sunny aspect, with the amount of sun being directly proportionate to yields. Thirdly, the no dig permanent beds also complement the sloping nature of the ground and encourage drainage, something most fruits prefer. Finally, the threat of frost is slightly mitigated by the physics of cold air movement, in that it generally falls to the lowest levels and as such will trickle down slopes to find lower ground. In terms of the flowers, these also enjoy sun, airflow and drainage, so are complementary to the factors above.

The Blooms & Berries concept is to specialise in and fill a niche of the produce market (seasonal fruits and flowers), and ensure the provision of these goods involves convenience and value for money, so the consumer decision not to rely on the supermarket is made easier. This is not a year round solution, and our goods will only replace mainstream alternatives for around six months, and our products are limited in scope; but they will be seasonal, local, fresh and better quality. Although we will rely a great deal on collection hubs, for instance at local markets, factoring in a delivery option will be a crucial part of this model, so customers continue to benefit from the convenience and choice modern commerce increasingly demands. Although there are a number of inherent challenges with this approach, I am keen to ensure Blooms & Berries is financially sustainable, broad and contemporary in its approach. We are not aiming to solve the problem of food miles, plastics and farming economies, but if 50 local families regularly bought their seasonal fruit and flowers from us, then its a good start. Eventually we could network with others, and who knows, maybe those same 50 families will end up getting all their groceries grown or made within a 20 mile radius, all year round, delivered to their door in an electric van...now that really would be revolutionary!

Merry Christmas, you deserve a great 2021 x.