FARM NAME: Village Farm, Oxfordshire
FARM SIZE: 150 ha
DESCRIPTION: Village Farm is a mixed farm with 90 ha grazing beef cattle and 60 ha variety of arable crops including wheat, beans, oats, and barley. The farm has been in the family for over 100 years, and from starting life as a dairy, it now wild farms on about 2/3rds of its arable land, with linseed, wheat and bean, and oat and bean bi-crops.
Tom’s background is in soil science and chemistry, and the farm makes use of stewardship and SFI agreements, as well strong involvement with local landscape recovery projects.
In terms of trials, Tom is interested in those that push the science of protein hydrolysates further and provide an evidence base for the growth of positive microbes.
THEIR APPROACH TO FEEDING THE SOIL:
For Tom, it all began in the veggie patch, with compost trials and interplanting. Here they also practice the ‘No Dig’ method after Charles Dowding and have seen significant improvement in the soil and produce quality four years down the line.
On the whole though, Tom recognises that he’s been fortunate with the history of dairy and FYM on the farm which has meant existing soil organic matter levels of 6-15%. To support these numbers, Tom also bi-crops without pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, and practices static aerated pile composting, Johnson-Su composting, and experiments with vermicomposting too
For their Johnson-Su, they make a doughnut-shaped cylinder, about 1m diameter, with two pieces of chicken mesh, and position this under tree cover. Into this, Tom puts mostly wood chip (80-90%) with cow manure and some lawn clippings or nettles to add heat at the thermophilic phase. Lastly, Tom will add an inoculum from a previous pile and then let it break down over the course of a year.
In general, he will have large bags of hot compost (static aerated pile), vermicompost, Johnon-Su, and garden waste leaf mould separated on pallets and ready for use directly or for extracts.
In addition, he has brought livestock integration into his arable fields.
CHALLENGES:
For Tom, the main challenge is working out how high-quality on-farm composting can sustain a whole farm system, from soil health to environmental resilience.
That means he’s on the lookout for scalable composting equipment and is also working on how to seed inoculate. Using a cement mixer has proven time consuming but interest in equipment sharing for the simpler process of liquid drill applicator has yet to gain enough interest from nearby contractors.
Other than that, while his Johnon-Su hasn’t had any issues with rodents, in their static piles this is more common and soil compaction with grazing livestock is also something they have to manage.
TOP TIPS:
Position your Johnson-Su under tree cover. This means in the summer it remains shaded and in the cooler months it will better collect the rain. The result, in the UK at least, is less time invested in watering (perhaps once or twice a week in the summer only).
Partner up with nearby growers, neighbour farms, or even create a larger cluster to invest in composting equipment together. See what different people can bring to the collective for example: ride on machines or the solar power to charge them up!
Be the instigator in your community. So many farmers and growers have interest in soil practices but may be hesitant to know how to start or initiate a collective scale project.
Trial out composting and inter-planting methods on a small-scale vegetable patch before scaling to field size.