Vegetables and ley
Our large-scale vegetable growing area is part of our wider soil improvement and fertility plan. Crop production combines with livestock grazing and areas of ley grassland to form a sustainable five year vegetable rotation system. Overall this increases the fertility of our land and also supports our aim of becoming less dependent on fossil fuels.
At any one time we have one plot in use for vegetable growing, the other four are sown as temporary grassland (a ley) and used for a combination of grazing and hay production. The aim is to make our soil fertile enough for the vegetables without importing any addition nutrients and provide enough fodder for the animals throughout the year.
Grazing and Hay
The land is grazed by our small flock of sheep, which are a mix of Soay, Hebridean, Manx Loaghton and Suffolk crosses. The ewes lamb in spring so that the lambs are raised on plenty of lush grass and flowering legumes in our increasingly flower-rich meadows. We now also keep Red Poll, the traditional cattle breed for East Anglia.
As well as the stock being an integral part of our sustainable land management system, they are also run as a Community Supported Agriculture meat scheme, providing members with beef, lamb and pork, as well as allowing them to learn a range of home butchery and meat processing skills. In parallel with our veg box scheme, the meat is also sold as a meat box in the local area.
Pollination
In our smaller back field we have been keeping bees in traditional to-bar hives, primarily for pollination rather than honey. The bees benefit from our flower-rich meadows and orchards, and are also a symbol of the close and inter-dependent relationship between biodiversity and agricultural production.