Richard's Spring Rant!

As a farmer all my life I've seen many changes and challenges in the industry throughout the years. Now in it's latest state our farm produces solely for the shop. Through this blog Tom allows me to keep everyone updated with the bigger picture and generally get things of my chest.... So to my first topic!

DEFRA has recently published figures showing that we now only produce 59% of the food we consume. Not since 1968 have we been so dependant on food imports. NFU president Peter Kendal recently argued that the Government must change its policies to encourage more self sufficiency.  Over the past decade governments have repeatedly insisted that: ‘ food security is based on an international trade’. In other words it’s cheaper imported – but for how much longer? With political instability in Africa and fuel apparently heading for £2.00 a litre, surely shipping perishable food around the world could soon be a very expensive and possibly unreliable pass time, and things can change very quickly! 

Our tractor fighting last winter's snow!

 Here we try to maximise the food we produce but in a sustainable way. We have recently signed up to the Bradford on Avon Community Area 2050 Carbon Neutral Declaration, so work on reducing our carbon footprint in underway. Our new Case Tractor has an innovative new engine which will run on used vegetable oils which we can produce on the farm.  However, the biggest area for carbon reductions would be investment in renewable energy.  As nearly all of our produce is now stored / prepared here on the farm for the farm shop, we use a lot of refrigeration with electricity consumption to match. Our options range from a wind turbine to Solar PV panels or Bio- mass digesters, but it’s a very big investment and will no doubt be the subject of future rants. 

We would welcome your thoughts too.

All the best

Richard    

The First One!

After trying my hand at a bit of twittering and trying to develop a different approach to facebook to try and get the Hartley Farm word out there, I thought the next most sensible thing would be to start a blog. So here I am.

2011 is almost a quarter done, a scary thought indeed. At the start of the year I managed to attend a conference with my fiancee Tamara which dealt with farm retailing and its future. It was a brilliant opportunity to meet and talk with people who are going through the same processes as us. The most resounding theme of the few days was that we, as farmers and farm retailers, have a real opportunity to offer so much more than the multiple retailers and if we don't do that well, then they will learn fast and do it better! The thought of Mr Sainsbury's, Tesco or Waitrose peeling off the Hartley Farm Shop sign from our doors and fixing up an imposing, garish, neon sign in its place was more than enough encouragement for us to have a really good think about what we should be doing.

So off we set back to the wonderful Wiltshire countryside, both inspired and daunted by the task in hand.

Since then we have had a real look at our farm and have thought, talked and decided upon our future. 2011 hopes to be a great year for us. We have two years of mapping through our future bit by bit and this year we see much of our efforts come to fruition.

Firstly, our on-farm allotments have been setup and the plots are already starting to take root. The allotment project was taken on and setup entirely by my father Richard, after many, many requests. It certainly puts the flag in the ground about what we intend Hartley Farm to be about: linking food, farming and the community.

We were also approached mid-way through 2010 by an enthusiastic market gardener who was desperate for space to grow her own produce commercially. Kate had lots of experience in growing fruit and veg organically and we jumped at the opportunity to have her enthusiasm and experience here at the farm. Within a few weeks we will start to see the fruits (one too many puns I know) of the market garden and I for one am extremely excited about this partnership.

Apart from our new and improved market garden we have much more to reveal but I can't use up all my enthusiasm on my first post!

So as Spring rolls along I will try to keep on track by revealing more and more about us here on the farm so watch this space!

Tom