SUCCESSFUL ORGANIC
GROWING IN WORCESTERSHIRE

Rolls Hill, Suckley (Continued)

After much consideration, we put up quarter of an acre of tunnels at the beginning of our third summer, and this development proved the best investment that we made. The organic wholesaler at Pershire had indicated that salad crops might become the best line and his advice stimulated us towards the tunnels; these were the large sausage-shaped plastic structures which are now familiar throughout vegetable growing areas. At that time, including their irrigation equipment, they cost in total about £1,200 to buy and I think £150 to put up. We grew courgettes and self-blanching celery first of all, followed by winter lettuce, and then the next summer, cucumbers, peppers, more celery and so forth; there were only a few weeks in the middle of winter when we were not growing a crop and taking it to market. Except for the fungus attacks on lettuce and the need to pay strict attention to hoeing the chickweed, we had no other problems, and our produce - like all the produce from our holding - conformed to the Soil Association's Organic standards.

We began our fourth year with a certain feeling of stability. We knew what our successes could be and what our weak points could be. We had established our links with the locality so that we could rely on casual help when needed (augmented by long term WWOOFers, whose efforts became indispensable) and also borrow machinery from neighbours. Our vegetables were attracting slowly more and more gate customers and our wholesalers were beginning to place reliance on our performance. At the same time and underlying this, we were able to make quite effective crop production plans and costs. Nevertheless, problems remained. We had not devised a satisfactory method of weeding the soft fruit. Although the tractor or hand rotovator cleared between the rows, there was an important area around each plant which had to be kept free from weeds. Also we had not been able to assure ourselves of a regular 'supply of farm-yard manure. On our heavy soil both the organic bulk and nutrients of this were essential. We needed to have a stack always available for spreading as soon as any ground had finished cropping. Return-ing to weeding, we found it difficult to manage the slow germinating seeds like parsnips and leeks because the sowing line became swamped by weeds - generally fat hen - before the seed leaves appeared; hoeing was accordingly more time consuming and trying. Finally, we were too conscious that we spent more time on producing than on marketing, in that the organic customer was still concealed from us, save in very small numbers, in relation to the quantities of produce that were coming off Rolls Hill.

Nonetheless, since our house had been built, the tunnels were in production, and a reasonable inventory of machinery had been bought, we felt we should let the pattern remain undisturbed for a year or two more while we struggled with improving our production methods and lowering our costs; for we could do little, if anything, about increasing our sale returns. But the 1975 drought interrupted these hopes and severely reduced our vegetable production. In that year also we had heavy radiation frosts on the 1st June, 5th July and 8th September; the first and last of these did great damage to our .soft fruit. We felt that such a perverse year could never be repeat-ed while we were at Rolls Hill, but 1976 opened with a tornado on 1st January which flattened some of our tunnels and their emerging lettuces; and later on the summer drought, which followed yet another cold and dry spring, was deeper and longer than the one in the year before. In this situation, any kind of improvisation helps and we extended the tunnel irrigation system to bring forward some of the outside vegetables. And we started picking soft fruit very early in the morning to prevent it from being cooked on the way to market. Looking back, it is remarkable any young plant survived at all.

At the end of that year, we knew we had decisions to make. We had had an enormous run of personal satisfactions from working with people in a small-holding enterprise and from our customers. To a large extent we had proved that growing was sustainable without relying on man-made chemicals and fertilisers, and that our produce, as regards its weight and appearance in the market place was fully equal to the chemically assisted example from other growers. We had indeed a growing reputation. But on the other hand, we had had two consecutive years of much reduced income, but high costs, only a short while after starting out. And we had a family responsibility that required our being away quite frequently. To continue at Rolls Hill we could have put down three-quarters of it to grass for graz-ing and haymaking, and maintained the remainder and the tunnels in production; outside employment could have made up the difference. But we decided that this choice did not really exist in view ofour family responsibilities. If we had been younger, selling Rolls Hill would have been very hard; but we felt that enough achievement was in evidence and that like all living things we had to adapt to the push and pull of circumstances.