Category: Trelonk

This week on the farm, we welcomed the arrival of ‘the budders’, two experts in rose grafting that will spend the next 10 days to 2 weeks on the farm, grafting our chosen varieties onto our already established root-stock. The process is a relatively simple one, but one which requires the steady hand of an expert. A slice is made into the stem of our root-stock, followed by a crosscut towards the top of the first slice.

From the budwood – essentially bundles of sticks, each with several buds along them – a bud is carved away and carefully inserted into the sliced area on the root-stock. A few more choice cuts are made to ensure adequate stalk to bud contact, and then a patch is applied to protect the area from contamination whilst it heals. The process is repeated 20,000 times until all the species have been grafted.

As another busy week on the farm draws to a close, and the seasons switch as seemingly as night gives way to day, it is worth remembering where we’re headed and where we’ve come from. You’ll have to forgive the nostalgia; it was brought to me in the shape of a beautifully illustrated and remarkably insightful book; Culpepper’s Herbal (1653). I have coveted a copy of this careful curation of cures for time immemorial, a bible for those of us ever-desperate to connect to our collective past. The book, an encyclopaedic epic depicting the wildflowers of Britain alongside their medicinal uses, chimes back to the pre-pharmaceutical days where ailments were unnamed and cures just as mysterious. It won’t be lost on the regular readers of this update that we are teetering dangerously close to describing Nutraceuticals!

Indeed, in Culpepper’s time, cures would have derived from flowers, roots, tubers and seeds as naturally as the sun sets in the west. Since the early 40’s however, antibiotics have displaced hundreds (probably thousands) of native plants as the cure we reach too when in ill-health; and with serious consequences. Resistance to antibiotics, according to the NHS, is becoming an international epidemic. The more we rely on antibiotics, it seems, the more we generate the necessity to discover newer antibiotics to replace the old, now defunct ones. This is not a race we want to be part of, a rat-race to the bottom when, as the American actress and one-time comedienne Lily Tomlin points out, “the winner of the rat race is still a rat”.

And so we come, at long-last, to my point. And here it is: like an awful lot of things, we did it better before the 20th century. Medical journals and experts in the field are collectively calling for a more preventative approach to healthcare, one that rejects the pop-the-pill culture of the 1900’s and returns instead to the days of Nicky Culpepper – ever the tomorrow-man that he was. Healthcare’s trajectory is now firmly on the diet and lifestyle table, with herbal and natural ingredients back on the menu. Preventative medicines derived from natural sources are the fish of the day and personalised diet plans and exercise regimes are the specials. In regards the healthcare space, Trelonk is sat firmly at the table of tomorrow.

Trelonk welcomed visitors to the farm this week, providing us with the perfect opportunity to discuss our project and methods with the current crop of custodians of the countryside. Move over you lot, we’re coming for you and we’re shaking things up!! Jokes aside, it is vital we get a chance to connect with farmers, to learn from them and to understand their way of thinking. It is not lost on them that when we talk about ‘investing in natural resources’, ‘protecting ecosystem services’ or some other well-meaning gobbledegook, we are advocating for farming practices that would have been commonplace in their fathers/grandfathers’ lives. Like most things, agriculture has come full circle.

The group we were talking to were of the ‘bigger is better’ generation, party to the notion that chemicals will save the day. Satisfyingly, by the end of the day, some of the conversations the group were having (“what do you think of that crop?” “great, I might try it myself!”) brought it home just how far we’d come. Opportunities to share ideas, to inspire and influence people in the world of agriculture seldom present themselves and so it is with a great deal of pride that I engaged with the group, confident I had more to learn from them then they did from us!

All Images © Trelonk Ltd

Looking out over the farm this morning it struck me, the predominant colours I can see are brown and green. The brown of the earth still visible between rows of germinating plants, the greens of hedgerow trees and shrubberies spilling over both sides like an eagerly poured pint. A little further into the day however, and the opportunity arrived for a closer inspection. As I embarked on my weekly bee and butterfly hunt, I decided to take note of the flowering species too, an off-the-cuff decision to see how that data will compare to bee populations. I was staggered to arrive at a total of 29 different flowers, all peacock-ishly demonstrating their various colours, patterns and aroma’s.

Nature is often like this, portraying a vision of stillness and lifelessness to all but the most discerning passers-by. Ironically, the best way to ensure you can see and appreciate the landscape for all its wonders of life is to embody stillness and lifelessness yourself. A moment of quiet contemplation in the countryside can so often turn into an adrenaline-packed search for that thing you saw out of the corner of your eye that might just be something or other. This is the best way to enjoy nature, in my humble opinion, not through pictures or documentaries, not through others’ eyes or agenda’s, but by going out there yourself, sitting still for a while, and recognising your place within the world.

Here’s a list of the plants currently in flower on the farm:

Common Fumitory, Nettle, Poppy, Gorse, Pink Campion, Cow Parsley, Herb Robert, Hedge Mustard, Germander Speedwell, Elderflower, Creeping Buttercup, Oilseed Rape (volunteer), Red Dead Nettle, Bramble, Wild Rose, Honeysuckle, Foxglove, Dandelions, Clover, Sorrel, Scarlet Pimpernel, Ribwort Plantain, Navelwort, Cocksfoot (grass), Black Medick, Pineapple Mayweed, Yorkshire Fog (grass), Annual Meadow Grass (grass), Daisies.

This week I have a few suggestions on how we can all change to make a positive contribution to the cause. There are several things we can all do to help our wildlife out, from adding bird boxes to our gardens and keeping them topped up with seeds, to cutting small holes at the bottom of our garden fences to allow hedgehogs and small mammals an easier passage through to their next feeding/breeding ground.

Another good’un, I’ve found, is to fight against the natural instinct to want to mow our lawns. Lawns, a bizarre contribution from those crazy Victorians, are like little green deserts to most of our wildlife, and lawns that are treated with chemicals or mown every other Sunday are likely to be even less productive. To see this at first hand, give me a year or two working on the wildflower meadows and then let’s see the results, I’d imagine (and certainly hope!) that we’ll go from barren, deathly-quiet stubble to ‘over-grown’, full-of-life, productive meadows in the space of about 5 mows!

On the farm this week, our crops continue their development and our rose stock gets its first ‘thumbs-up’ from the experts!

After the rapid emergence of our crops over the past couple of weeks, one could be forgiven for thinking the hard work was now behind us. This, unfortunately, is not quite the case. Indeed, planting conditions are crucial, and it is true that we planted in near-perfect conditions. The focus now, however, has shifted, and my job now is an entirely different one to the one I was working only a few weeks ago.

Crop husbandry, the practice of raising crops, is an exhaustive and exhausting proposition. Daily checks on germination rates, plant health, soil conditions, influence of climate, pests and diseases become routine and, where once I looked forward to the steady demise of a busy week, I now look forward to spending my Fridays surveying wildlife and building an intimate connection with our fields.

Our rose stock, as mentioned at the top of this update, is going along splendidly. Stewart Pocock (of the Cornish Rose Company) visited last week and was happy to note their health and condition with respect to their planting date.

Interestingly, I noted an orange glaze on some of the stock on the morning of Stewart’s arrival and he was able to confirm my suspicion that it was ‘Rose Rust’. The least serious of the “Big 3” rose diseases (the remaining two being blackspot and powdery mildew), rose rust can be easily controlled with the addition of a sulphur-based fungicide. All being well, we should have a weed/pest/disease free crop by mid-July, at which point we’ll be grafting on our own selected species. All Images © Trelonk Ltd

Finally, after months of research, planning and organising, our crops were drilled into the ground over the course of last weekend. Satisfying as it is to see them go in, the feeling is elevated all the more by the near-perfect conditions we were able to sow in. A sprinkle of rain now and we couldn’t really have asked for better, the ball is now firmly in the court of the crops themselves!

Despite the ideal conditions prevailing for drilling, they weren’t so ideal for small, lightweight lepidoptera. Indeed, all week long I have kept an eye on the winds, waiting for them to drop to give me a window of opportunity to asses our pollinators. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’ll happen this week and so, with the full guilt of a missed survey, my hand is forced.

In other news, trial products have been created from the vegetation found around the site (Nettle, Lavender etc.) and these can be found in Plover, most of which require another few weeks infusing before we can see (and test) the results. This small, seemingly insignificant gesture towards product development is in-fact a milestone for our farm, and certainly an indication of the outside-the-box thinking required to get us here. Turning primary produce into saleable products is the cornerstone of our operation, the main component from which all else is required to complement.

Cornwall, a region particularly suited to growing niche crops due to its propensity for long warm summer months (don’t all shout at once, we’re talking relatively), is ideally situated to exploit the trend of the agri-economy towards the production of small-scale, high-value niche crops.