24th Jan 2022
An excellent morning kicking off with Tim giving us an update (see pdf of slides below), a superb presentation from Ed Horton who farms 6000 acres just outside Cirencester (audio to follow) demonstrating his regenerative techniques, followed by some useful workshops to get feedback on what our members would like to see the Cluster achieve in 2022. To wrap up FarmEd provided a delicious and nutritious lunch - with most ingredients grown on-site by the Kitchen Garden People, a Community Supported Agriculture enterprise, and cooked by super chef Chloe @Oxfork.
If you missed our meeting up at FarmEd, here's Tim's presentation slides to bring you up to speed
And here's Ed Horton giving his talk with a backdrop of his magnificent crop of phacelia
Delicious winter salad growing in the Polytunnel at FarmEd served up for lunch along with squash risotto
Vicky Robinson giving us a quick update on ELMS
Tim Field, our facilitator, presented on zoom after having to isolate. Here he talks us through several ongoing projects all funded by a large FIPL (Farming in Protected Landscapes) grant from the AONB. 36 farms are participating in the carbon baselining, and 28 farms in the supplementary feeding of Winter bird food - 1.5 tonnes of mixed feed per farm. Sunflower seed, rapeseed and cereals, bought from local farms, mixed, rolled and distributed from Matt Izod's farm in Lyneham. Participating farms spread a bucketful a day along a hedgerow from December to May to cover the hungry gap. We have funding for 3 yrs which includes monitoring of the uplift by an Oxford university project.
Other ongoing projects include setting up raptor boxes on farms, Windrush Floodplain meadows restoration and a collaboration between 4 farmers to restore a brook and create a series of overflow ponds and wetlands.
The Cluster is proving an exciting vehicle for enabling action to happen on the ground. If you'd like to be part of this change, please email Tim contact@cotswoldfarmers.org
We have plenty more planned in the pipeline!
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