Community Smallholding News January 2012
NECS. Barn-storming and plans afoot...
As you'll know from last month, we're hoping to make use of the Norfolk 4 Course system on our community smallholding in 2012. The 'farm' itself has, for many months, been in existence at numerous locations around the village – and if anyone remembers the updates about our bullocks, you'll know that those locations were somewhat of a loose concept at one point. Have to say, our bees are much better trained. Now though, we're starting to focus on plans for next year's crops – and how regular crop rotation will be vital for tasty, healthy vegetables.
BEGIN WITH A BARN
While crops will be sown, land cultivated, soil dug, and seeds chosen (not necessarily in that order), our livestock need looking after immediately. Winter is – technically – here. The bees are content; the chickens are tasty; the pigs are as happy as the proverbial. But bullocks need a little more attention, which means building them a temporary shelter.
Contrary to a rumour that Buzby was moving to the village, If you drive along the Brisley Road then you'll see we've started putting up our bullock shed. Telephone poles make ideal barn-building materials: all that's needed is a little elbow grease and a lot of hole digging. (I'm not very good at digging holes. It's harder than it looks.)
We had some hole-expertise to hand though, and much tea and tasty sustenance to fortify the digging process. Over two weekends, we've been able to erect the phone poles and also build the 'walls' of the barn. Much measuring of phone poles, chainsawing of wood, levelling of spirits, wedging and wolloping goes into planking-up a barn. Hammering nails, too. (I'm not very good at hammering nails. It's harder than it looks.)
LAND AHOY!
After the bullocks' shed, we can turn our attention to the land. The Brisley Road site is 4.25 acres in all, and we're 'farming it' for efficiency with a variety of crops rotating through the seasons. Already, we've pulled up enough wild horseradish to keep all of Yorkshire in puddings for a week.
Over the coming months, we'll fence off the land into large sections: four in all. At least one of those will play host to our livestock: natural fertiliser is a good thing. Incidentally – we're not going organic. 'Natural crops' is a better description of what we'll grow, introducing heritage varieties into our vegetable calendar where we can.
That calendar works in segments: rotating through potatoes, legumes, brassicas, roots and more besides. In practice, we're unlikely to cultivate the land as we would a traditional allotment. Instead, we'll divide it logically into large areas that can be given over to many, many mixed crops. Companion planting is high on our list of priorities, as is resigning ourselves to the fact that this is a huge learning experience for the first twelve months. The Norfolk 4 Course system is what we'll be following in theory – and we're very excited about putting it all into practice.