Sustainability is a central theme in my academic research. This is a vague word that can be used (and misused) because of its flexibility. Pamela Mason and Tim Lang recently addressed the concept in their book 'Sustainable Diets' (2017), and took it beyond the typical "social, environmental, economic" pieces, and added elements of social justice, governance, and (GASP!) taste, satisfaction and cultural ties - not such wild ideas when it comes to food, right?!
Academic references aside, this nebulous concept has been a big part of our decision making process as we develop our farm. So far, I think to us it means taking every decision and breaking it down into the component parts of who and how it can benefit most widely, with our environment and our community at the core of those decisions. Each decision takes careful consideration and reflection based on our vision for the farm. We want to design something that as the years go by, people come here to learn and are stuck by how each piece links up and has an important role to play to the wider world beyond our gates.
Yesterday on the farm, we cut down seven Rowan (Sorbus) trees along the driveway. We left the two that were the best established and produced the best fruit (for both us and the wildlife - Winter is coming...), along with two small oaks. Why?
We envision this strip as a forest garden (See Martin Crawford, forest garden wizard, and his book Creating a Forest Garden) - a concept based on biodiversity and multi-level planting (typically three levels: trees, shrubs and undergrowth) to mimic the structure of a natural forest. Forest gardens are designed using plant species that produce food: fruit, nuts, leaves, herbs etc.
So the next step is replacing those trees to start developing the first level of our forest garden. This is where careful consideration comes in for a few different reasons. 1) diligent planning reduces mistakes, which in the case of a forest garden may not show themselves for a long time; 2) as living things, we need to consider our climate when selecting species so they'll survive; 3) selecting edibles means we have to think about how they will be used, their flavour, storage, variety and how different species may interact (nitrogen fixers would help out nutrient hungry trees, for example)...
But thinking more widely on this, we want to consider how can we source these trees locally to most benefit our community/region and reduce transport? How have they been produced? Is it a family business behind the operation, or a big company? What are the values driving this business?
For all of these reasons, we've decided to order our trees from Ian Sturrock and Sons. This family business is based in Wales and has been seeking out and breeding native species of fruit trees for their hardiness to the local climate (we're 1.5km from Wales), and to revive rare breeds and preserve biodiversity. So instead of 'Gala' or 'Pink Lady', we'll have apple trees called 'Goose's Arse' ("named for it's shape, not its flavour"), 'Glan Sevin' and 'Nant Gwrtheryn' ("found in the quarry managers garden in Nant Gwrtheryn"). Add to this some hardy rare breed pears, plums, and cherries and we've got the fruiting trees of the forest garden sorted out. Just need to find some Autumn Olive trees as nitrogen fixers now...
The appeal of buying from this business came largely from this focus on maintaining breeds of fruit trees, and apples in particular. Biodiversity of apple species (and just about every fruit and veg) has been in decline since the advent of industrial agriculture and the supermarket giants standardizing and choice editing our food options based on - in the case of apples, what is sweetest and keeps longest. So consider our little decision to promote biodiversity as both an act of rebellion and as us doing our part for posterity.
In the promise of documenting our farm set-up process (and here with a healthy dose of academic food system critique), we'll keep content coming about how the forest garden and other aspects of the farm's development are coming along, and how our sustainability vision underpins that.