Please try to join us for a Special General Meeting this Saturday, 20 May at 11.00-11.45AM in the lounge above the Shambles indoor market. (Come in from the churchyard entrance to the church hall and up the stairs.)

There is a single issue on the agenda, which is to approve some changes to our Rules: not very exciting but very important to make sure that we comply with Financial Conduct Authority Rules. We really need a quorate meeting so I really do hope you can pop in briefly whilst you’re in town doing your shopping!

It will be a great opportunity to also say hi to other SCA members and share a cup of fresh mint tea.

There are 3 changes proposed:

1. stating explicitly that members can’t sell their shares,  (as required by the Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates us as a Community Benefit Society)
2. changing the amount of money Core Group can spend without consulting members from £5k to £20k (the original rules were written in 2002 and inflation since then means £5k is no longer practical) and
3. incorporating our Secondary Rules into our Primary Rules so they’re all in 1 document (by adding in the Objectives at the beginning and the Operating Rules at the end (as recommended to SCA in a Governance Review carried out by an Independent Adviser last year)

Please see below the explanation and also the draft new Rules.

SCA IPS primary rules revised

Rule Change Rationale May 2023

If you can’t attend, you can vote by proxy by contacting any of the Core Group below and indicating your approval (or otherwise) of the changes.

Clare at clare.hudman@stroudcommunityagriculture.org  OR

Carol at membership@stroudcommunityagriculture.org  OR

Sebastian Billing sebastian.billing@stroudcommunityagriculture.org  

Thank you on behalf of the SCA Core Group

It has been a challenging winter at SCA, with staff changes and extreme weather we are all looking forward to Spring and some more sunshine! The big freeze before Christmas which saw -10 degree temperatures wiped out our purple sprouting broccoli crop, which is a massive player in the share during the hungry gap. Luckily not a lot of other crops were damaged unlike other neighbouring farms so we were lucky in some respects. The tunnels have been our saving grace, with plenty of salad to go around and greens to keep us all going.

We are very excited that we will have a full team again bursting with fresh energy and ideas. There is nervous excitement amongst the team as we are on the cusp of starting the ‘silly’ season, and we are all aware in a couple of weeks work load is going to ramp up as we take out old crops and replace with new!

We said goodbye to the pigs for the time being as due to increasing pig feed prices it was no longer viable. The heard of cows are nearing the end of their stay in the barn and as soon as it dries up will be back out on the field, which is exciting for both cows and farm team.

The amazing amount of fundraising money received has allowed us to improve the infrastructure vastly at SCA and for that I want to say a huge thank you on behalf of the farm team to those who donated, it is making work life and soil life much happier.

Veggie fields

One of the things I love the most about being a veg farmer is witnessing close up, the changes of the seasons. The subtle arrival of Autumn with its fresh mornings and bright sunshine, is the best when stood in the middle of a patch of brassicas. It is a joy to see a full field of deep green leafy veg which back in the middle of the drought (desperately moving irrigation around the field whilst sweating profusely) looked like it wouldn’t make it! Hurray!

Work on the farm has largely moved away from the veg fields and on to fixing, planning and organising for next year. We are very excited to be moving all our field scale veg (these are veg fields we cultivate, plant and weed with tractors currently at Brookthorpe) to Brentlands. We have installed irrigation to each of the 9 blocks we will be growing in.

Currently most of the blocks are under mustard, which in the spring we will work in as a deterrent for the wireworm. This is the major challenge we face on these fields, as the pests eat through the tender roots of baby plants, and can cause a lot of damage. If we can get the plants established we are confident they will thrive in the rich clay soil in these fields.

The green manures we sowed in October at Oakbrook and at Hawkwood had a great start and will protect our soil over the winter and by late spring will provide lots of organic matter to work in and help rebuild the soil structure. We managed to get everything planted on time and the tunnels are full of salad and greens, which we will carefully pick over the coming months.

Thanks to our new team member Blue we have started fixing up the tunnels and hope to have them finished for next season. The next few weeks you will find the farm team staring intensely at excel spreadsheets and going a wee bit cross eyed – that’s right, it’s crop planning time! This time of year we audit the seeds we have left over from last year, review what varieties or techniques did or didn’t do well,
do a lot of maths and mostly get excited about what’s on offer on the seed websites. As a team we have learnt a lot over the last season and with the new addition of Blue we feel prepared and excited for next year.

Animal news

Winter is starting to settle in on the farm and beautiful frosty mornings are here! As you are all aware, Farmer Sam has said good-bye to us and with that came some changes to the animal side of the farm.
We have dispersed our sheep flock – at least for the time being. There is still some lovely lamb and mutton available in the packing shed.

We have also said good-bye to our lovely sow Rosanne who has moved onto Ruskin Mill. Word has it she’s been well received. Nine of her piglets are still on our farm, doing mischief and huddling up in their sty on the field behind our packing shed.

Our cows and the bull are now in the barn for the winter. The young cows are out-wintering on our Hawkwood pastures and getting fed delicious hay on the field.

All in all, although winter is settled and promises a chance to breathe out, the farm team and core
group are still busy – winter projects, fundraising, tidying up and making sure the animals are warm
and well fed takes time and effort.

Veggie fields

September is here and summer already seems on its way out. This season on the farm has been as busy as ever. During nearly 2 months of drought a lot of our time and energy went into irrigating crops and protecting them from this incredible heat. Luckily it started raining again after what seemed like a lifetime. This means that crops have started growing again, but inevitably so have the weeds.

Summer crops are now coming to an end. There are still tomatoes, beans and courgettes coming but the bulk of them have gone. Our cucumbers did not fare well this season due to the extreme heat and no overhead irrigation – cucumbers like it humid. There is still plenty of chard, spinach and kale on the ‘Pick Your Own’ patch for members to pick! The flowers this season were brief but beautiful – we prioritised watering food crops during drought. We definitely have the squash harvest to look forward to!

We are still having trouble with couch grass in many of our fields. Our beautiful team of work sharers and volunteers (join us on Wednesday mornings!) have been bravely tackling it down in Brentlands farm where we are hoping to grow all our field scale vegetables next season. There is also the wireworm to deal with of course…

On a more positive note, we have converted our first polytunnel into permanent beds and minimum tillage. Come take a look! First crops – overwintering salads – have already gone in. We are hoping to convert the rest of the tunnels in the next year. This will hopefully help build fertility, reduce compaction and make them easier to manage.

Animal news

Autumn is here, gone are the long, dry, extremely hot days, replaced by cooler, showery days, with heavy dew, a distinct chill in the early morning air.

For months the grass hasn’t grown at all, fields cut for hay in June grew little more than a couple of inches. This made grazing our animals quite tricky. We came very close to feeding hay meant for winter feed to the animals. Thankfully now, it has started growing, hopefully it continues for a while to build up a reserve for winter grazing.

Our sheep are currently down in Brookthorpe, on the grazing land we have down there.

Just recently, our amazing sow Rosanne had a litter of 14 super cute piglets! Please feel free to visit them, they are in the farmyard at Hawkwood but please don’t enter their pen, and remember the fence is electric! Our mother cows are grazing at Hawkwood with Lucifer the bull. Although not as cute as piglets, (arguably a matter of opinion) they can also be visited remembering to take care around the animals.

Veggie fields

The farm is busy, busy, busy! It feels a lot like fire fighting right now! As the year progresses there is always this feeling of quickening, the daylight hours get longer, the workload increases… and weeds stubbornly continue to regrow! After a day out in the fields we often leave work searching for a cool, dark corner to sit in.

Weather-wise, conditions for growing have so far been pretty good this year; we have had enough rainfall and the sun has been out just enough. Over the next few months we expect to be harvesting courgettes, tomatoes, beans, lettuce and many other leafy greens. July, August and September will hopefully be a time of abundance, the items in the vegetable share should increase as well as quantities.

Animal news

The lambs that were born in the spring are now nearly ready to be weaned! We have sheared the few sheep we have with fleeces. Our main flock are all wool shedding sheep, which means their fleeces fall out naturally.

The cows are enjoying the sunshine. We recently sold 7 as part of a new herd starting on the Isle of White! We moved to pedigree traditional Herefords to help maintain this rare breed, so it’s great to think another herd is starting up and among them are two home bread heifers of ours, Brookwood Juliet and Brookwood Meg.

The 12 piglets born at the end of January are now huge! The next litter of piglets is due in the second week of September.

We have made most of our winter feed for the cows in the form of hay and silage. We have a few more fields to make, they are mowed at the moment, fingers crossed the fine weather continues.