… were the oft repeated words of my eternally optimistic father to my increasingly exasperated mother, between bouts of staring into the abyss of commercial ruin. For all his madcap, failing projects, I find myself happily settling into his wake – mercifully with the support of my equally socially entrepreneurial wife, Geetie.
The inspiration for this newsletter is normally what I have seen in my immediate surroundings. Often, that is the 150-acre Baddaford Farm, two miles up the valley from Riverford, that Geetie and I bought ten years ago. Our aim was to farm hand-in-hand with nature, going above and beyond organic standards. Unlike most farmers, I have two great luxuries: firstly, the financial cushion afforded by selling Riverford into employee ownership, and secondly, having Riverford as a customer. Knowing that everything will be bought for the agreed price, that we’ll will be paid promptly, and any disputes will be settled fairly according to our Supplier Charter (read at riverford.co.uk/growers) is unique in our ordinarily cutthroat industry.
Alongside the 50 acres of vegetables grown almost entirely for Riverford’s boxes, we host five relatively small growers, including Vital Seeds (open-pollinated seeds, largely for gardeners), Incredible Vegetables (perennial veg plants, again mostly for gardeners), Green Ginger Organics (small-scale veg, largely grown for Geetie’s The Bull Inn), plus Red Earth Herbs, PIGMENT Organic Dyes, and cattle and sheep grazers. On better days, it feels like a diverse, supportive, productive, and yes, beautiful community, which we share with a burgeoning and (mostly) celebrated population of barn owls, deer, hares, kestrels, and skylarks. Perhaps it is an attempt to create a mini version of the kinder world that so many of us want to live in. Find out more at baddaford.co.uk.
Can working together make such small, human farming commercially viable, amongst the prevailing dash to scale? It feels like a social and agricultural experiment. Looking at our fine stone barns, larger than any others in the area, I wonder: am I repeating the hubris of my predecessor 200 years ago, who built Baddaford as a ‘model farm’ to show their neighbours how things could be done? But it is better to go down fighting for what you believe in. You never know; one day, we might even get there.
Photo taken at Baddaford by Emma Stoner
thank you Guy