My natural farming story began while I was serving in the military. It was my return from Afghanistan that was the catalyst for the journey I am currently on.
Returning home made me question a lot about myself and made me nostalgic for my childhood, which was spent mostly playing in the woods and meadows around my family home. It was often a place I retreated to in my mind during hard times.
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After seeing so much destruction and injustice, I really wanted to nurture and protect the environment I was familiar with as a boy. At the time, I naturally presumed that gardening would protect and defend nature, so I enrolled on a horticulture diploma. I learned the basics I needed, which then led to great opportunities to work and learn in some of the greatest gardens around the world.
Natural farming is about your own love and passion for food, nature and people, and I now see it more as a personal philosophy than a set of instructions
I developed the skills and knowledge I needed to care for these gardens, but it always felt that anything too ‘wild’ or ‘messy’ was strictly removed, no matter the habitat it created. Chemical management was common, from fungicides to herbicides. Self-sufficiency was seen as impossible and when I questioned any method, the response was, usually, ‘That’s the way it’s always been done’ – a phrase I would argue is the most damaging to nature in our society.
I could also sense an underlying sickness. Soil seemed poor even with copious amounts of added compost. Roses still got sick even with the cocktail of sprays, and plants and lawns never seemed fully happy, not to mention the rapid changes in our climate challenging their resilience each year. The desire for this unattainable ‘perfection’ shared by many gardens, charities and owners was destroying the idea I had of horticulture as a way to protect biodiversity.
We converted an old dairy pasture and set out to prove that food can be grown as part of an ecosystem where every animal and insect, friend or foe, is welcome
This led me to work and study in the USA and Japan. I wanted to compare other horticultural styles to see if they had the answers I was looking for. Compost, soil health and the use of cover crops became the main topic of my time in the USA. I looked into regenerative farming, but found myself questioning the vast amount of inputs required, such as squid ink or crab shells. Surely self-sufficiency was key to sustainability?
Japan, on the other hand, was everything I hoped for. The people, gardens and landscape still inspire me today. My dream was to learn natural farming, something I had been fascinated by since reading The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. However, I soon found out that natural farming wasn’t a working practice to be scribbled into notebooks. It is a belief or idea that only you can translate for yourself. It’s about your own love and passion for food, nature and people, and I now see it more as a personal philosophy than a set of instructions.
Unfortunately, when I returned from Japan, I quickly found myself being told to remove habitat such as leaves from under shrubs. When I asked why, I was told, again, that that’s the way it’s always been done. Looking back, I think it was in that moment I resolved to dedicate my career to natural farming.
I was very lucky to find an employer in north Devon who would support natural farming, with all its weeds and organised chaos. Birch Farm, part of The Collective at Woolsery, wanted to grow local sustainable produce for the The Farmers Arms pub in the village, and fully understood the importance of biodiversity and climate resilience.
Four years on, our natural farming has gone from strength to strength. We converted an old dairy pasture and set out to prove that food can be grown as part of an ecosystem where every animal and insect, friend or foe, is welcome, and external inputs are kept to a minimum. I am not one for using compost to suppress weeds, as I believe that in doing this, all we are doing is suppressing nature. Consider also the fuel, water and haulage required to make these inputs – let alone the plastic contamination in municipal composts.
Weeds play a crucial role here at the farm. They encourage pollination far more suited to local insects. They build fertility through diverse root systems and create easy, complex polycultures with our vegetables. Many are also delicious, such as sow thistle and nettle. We’ve banned the hoe and instead manage our weeds to grow in harmony with our produce, with any unruly ones sickled and used as mulch.
Like weeds, pests are an important part of our system: more slugs means more beetles. Buzzards and hawks keep the pigeons away, attracted by the mice who love our weedy habitats, and who, in turn, also eat slugs. We as farmers must try to not interrupt the processes nature creates, but it can take years to reach an equilibrium.
Much like Manasobu’s teachings, agroforestry and perennials have come to define our natural farming now. Food forests, perennial vegetables and syntropic agriculture have become key themes as annual production becomes more unsustainable with our changing climate.
People often ask me how the farm works, why weeds don’t compete, why slugs don’t eat everything – which they have in the past, but we are finding this just isn’t the case as each year passes. Soon enough owls, thrushes, kingfishers, adders and newts return and the ecosystem rebuilds itself, and you find them living under your lettuces and cabbages, right there with you in the field.
Each year we find a new beetle or bee. We find ourselves free from the need of compost, cardboard, netting and fleece. The introduction of perennial vegetables will hopefully eliminate the need for polytunnels, by extending our season. One important lesson I’ve learned is not to separate myself from the ecosystem. We as humans are just as much a part of it, and compassionate intervention is just as important as the mole or worm.
So, instead of doing things the way they have always been done, why don’t we try something different?
Useful information:
Find out more about The Collective at Woolsery at woolsery.com
