FARM NAME: Mindrum Estate, Northumberland
FARM SIZE: 465ha
DESCRIPTION: Mindrum is a mixed farm on the Scottish border, led by Tom Fairfax, a conventional-turned-organic farmer sick of watching his profits shrink year on year. Now in the midst of a regenerative transition, Tom draws on a foundation course by the Soil Food Web, to practice a holistic understanding of soil health and plant-animal biology.
Amongst other arables, he grows 40ha of winter wheat for Wildfarmed and has short-horn crosses, fat lamb breeds, and bantam chickens.
Tom also does school visits to his farm to help get children excited by regenerative farming methods.
THEIR APPROACH TO FEEDING THE SOIL:
Tom has worked to implement regenerative strategies to feed the soil and spent considerable time looking into compost, grazing strategies, seed mixes and rotations. His aim is to harness the productive power of the ground system so it does most of the work building growth momentum. For Tom, that means enhancing the natural productive assets on his farm and regenerating them through agroecology, agroforestry and permaculture principles.
As part of this, Tom harnesses Bokashi (also known as Korean Natural Farming) to help feed the soil, a practice with clear guidelines and tools to produce natural supplements for growing. In simple terms, it’s a process of collecting indigenous microbes including fungi and bacteria, and deploying them to improve soil diversity, carbon and water retention, and nutrient generation. These practices also unlock natural soil fertility and balance predatory soil organisms, to help prevent nutrient runoff into surrounding watercourses.
In addition, Tom makes use of vermicomposting, an approach to compost harnessed by worms and biodynamic soil dressings which are drip primed on seeds at the point of sowing.
At Mindrum, you’ll also find herbal leys, that are let to seed at least 1 year in 3 which, with a little disturbance to lose the seeds, creates a soil seed bank that itself becomes a productive and labour-saving asset, allowing the ley to be perennial without additional reseeding.
CHALLENGES:
Quorum sensing is an emerging area of interest for Tom, where communities of bacteria harness chemical signals to adjust their behaviour according to population density changes but reading bioindicators and learning to use them to inform operational systems is still a learning process!
Like so many of us, Tom is also grappling with how growers can get society to take more of an interest in how our food is produced. Read his blog for some of his insights.
TOP TIPS:
If you can’t collect Bokashi microbes yourself, you can also buy samples in bulk online to start your KNF journey.
Follow permaculture principles and try and ensure each regenerative adjustment adds value where your land specifically needs it.
Tom sees a microscope as an essential bit of farm kit and encourages growers to really look at their soil and watch it come alive. It can also help identify if there are mites in cereal storage or the composition of your soil seed bank.
Note though – when using your microscope, a soil sample you look at on a frosty cold day will look quite different a few days later when thawed and brought inside. A whole new array of microbes will ‘wake up’ or ‘go to sleep’ so Tom recommends refrigeration to help maintain sample temperatures.
Tom uses insulating layers and pallets for his vermicomposting surface alongside tubular heaters to keep a gentle heat for the worms.