Churchill Fellowship Covid Action Grant update - Phase One Family Support

Back in January 2022 I was fortunate enough to receive a Churchill Fellowship Covid Action Grant. My grant proposal was made up of three phases with phase one focusing on whole family group sessions within care farming.

I conducted a twelve- week research project considering 'the benefits, challenges and considerations when taking whole family units onto care farms'.

Although some participants had taken families, most were not comfortable to do so. Participants felt that this was a very specialist research area and out of scope for most family farms. 

My research will shortly be published on my Churchill Fellowship page please take a look.

 

Churchill Fellowship Covid Action Grant Phase Two Update - Education Courses for Prospective Care Farmers

In January 2022 I was awarded a Churchill Fellowship Covid Action Grant to support a three phase project.

Phase Two of the project focused on the design and development of an 'Introduction to Care Farming Course' in order to meet two of the recommendations in my report and the findings of my focus group meetings with farmers.

My report recommendations included: 

• The development of a robust care farming information package that would help prospective care farmers to make well-informed decisions. 
• The development of a comprehensive training programme for farmers who might be considering setting up a care farm.

Over recent months this introductory course has taken shape and I'm delighted to announce that the pilot sessions will be run in July and October 2022 at FarmED.

The sessions will cover: 

• The history of care farming.
• Care farming today. 
• The types of clients care farms might consider taking. 
• What a typical care farming session might look like?
• What skills / training will staff need in order to be effective?
• How to prepare the farm before clients arrive.
• Health and Safety considerations.
• Legal and Business considerations. 
• Securing funding.
• Finding potential clients. 

There are now only a couple of spaces left available for the July and October courses so if you want to attend, you should not delay! For more information and to book your place please go to the FarmED website.

I look forward to sharing the updates from Phase One and Phase Three of the project shortly.

Introducing my new Churchill Fellowship Covid 19 Action Fund research and project

I'm excited to announce that I am a recipient of the Churchill Fellowship Covid 19 Action Fund. Forty five fellow's projects have been selected to receive funding to tackle issues that have arisen as a result of the pandemic. Following on from my Churchill Fellowship report, I will use this opportunity to set up a three phase research and pilot project focusing on supporting vulnerable families within care farming projects on working family farms.

During phase one I shall be conducting a twelve week research project focusing on supporting vulnerable families within care farm sessions.

Phase two will focus on designing and developing a robust training programme for farmers considering offering care farming sessions.

Finally phase three will support five farms in the South East as they prepare to take their first care farming clients.

I look forward to sharing more information on phase one in my next blog.

Carbon Farming

Back in November I attended a Carbon Farming course at Cotswolds based FarmEd. Before attending the course I hadn't heard much about carbon farming, so I was keen to find out more and see where it might fit with setting up a care farm.

The aim of carbon farming is to increase the rate and amount of carbon that is sequestered into the soil. This is done by rebuilding the soils organic matter and restoring the biodiversity of that soil, carbon is drawn down from the atmosphere. Although this topic is being seen as 'new' it is in fact, based on traditional methods of regenerative farming. 

If you have a couple of hours spare I would highly recommend watching the film - Kiss the Ground as this can explain the role of regenerative farming, carbon and soil health in sustainable food production and helping to balance our climate more easily than I could.

The course was run by Glyn Mitchell, a soil food web microbiologist from The Carbon Farm Jersey  Glyn is a champion of localised food and green waste composting and using his 'recipe of fungi and bacteria' to turn that waste into a fresh compost for farmers fields.

The Carbon Farm is leading regenerative agriculture in Jersey by supporting farmers with simple solutions and practices to ensure their soil is healthy such as:

• using minimal or no tillage of the soil
• reducing the synthetic inputs that are added to the soil
• ensuring the ground is covered rather than being left bare
• using a diverse cover crop
• Integrating animals through practices such as mob grazing 

But why would farmers do this? The most immediate benefit is the reduction of inputs used on the land and this in turn saves money. Farmers may also be paid for looking after the health of the land and soil.

My final takeaway from the course was that 'every farmer should be a carbon farmer'.

Researching Care Farming through Doctoral Studies

I've have been involved in education for almost twenty years and during that time I have worked in schools, universities, local authorities and charities as a teacher, leader and advisor. My specialisms are supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and those at risk of exclusion from school and helping vulnerable families with complex needs.

In 2018 I was supporting a young person at risk of exclusion from school, when I heard about a local care farm. After my first visit I knew I wanted to learn more about how care farms operated and supported individuals education and wellbeing.

My initial investigations were purely for my own interest but in 2019 I decided to apply to study for a Doctor of Education with a focus on exploring green care and care farming.

Initially I knew very little about the topic and tried to find out as much as possible by reading papers, articles, reports and books. Looking back, the first year of my study was focused on reading about and visiting care farms to look at the structures in place, the similarities and differences between the farms and the successes and challenges of setting up a care farm.

Year two was focused on further reading into the wider green care discipline and the place of social horticulture and animal assisted interventions within care farming. I also used the time to gain a greater understanding of the different theoretical frameworks being used within care farming and green care.

The Doctoral journey so far has been interesting and challenging in equal measure and the scale of the task should not be underestimated. As I move into my final year of study and with a sharpened research focus on 'Care Farming an impossible task' I look forward to my next phase of qualitative research gathering and sharing my results in 2022.

Soil to Sales - learning about community supported agriculture and market gardens

While researching care farming in Italy for my Churchill Fellowship I came across the concept of setting up market gardens within care farms to inform members of the local community about local growing. The idea being that the clients who attend the care farm regularly gain valuable knowledge about growing and harvesting processes and are then able to pass this information on by teaching members of the local community during open sessions to the garden throughout the year. 

This was an idea that interested me and I wondered how that could translate to UK care farms. So when I saw a 'Soil to Sales' - 'how to set up a Market Garden' course running at FarmEd I decided to enrol.

The key element of a market garden is that you sell directly to your customers through veg boxes, local shops or markets rather than trying to sell to large supermarkets and wholesalers. 

We spent three days in early October in the beautiful Cotswold countryside with The Kitchen Garden People learning about every aspect of setting up a market garden and community supported agriculture from crop choice, rotation, dealing with pests and weeds to harvesting, getting your products to your customers and general business management. I learnt that a 'weed is just a plant out of place' and that weeds can act as environmental indicators that help us decide where and when to grow certain crops. I also learnt that to be a good grower you need a balance of 'head, heart and hands'.

So after the three days I headed home with a head full of ideas and finger nails full of Cotswolds Brash soil to ponder how market gardens could be introduced to UK care farms. Watch this space .....

Sustainable Food and Farming Working Group

As some of you will be aware, one of the findings of my Churchill Fellowship Research was 'to establish a working group with partners to investigate how care farms might introduce more sustainable farming approaches'. A number of the care farmers I spoke with were already introducing more sustainable ways of working such as agroforestry, permaculture and carbon capture methods but were also interested in finding out more about other approaches.

In July 2021 and in conjunction with OxCan - the Oxford Climate Alumni Network I created the Sustainable Food and Farming Working Group. The group is aimed at Oxford University Alumni, Staff and Students as well as interested non Oxford individuals. Some within the group work in food or farming or research related topics but the majority of members are simply interested in learning more about food and farming.

Our main aims are: to identify topics of interest and take a deeper dive into these areas, to arrange peer to peer visits to farms and food producers, to collaborate with other organisations and to share our findings and outcomes.

If you would like to learn more about the working group or express an interest in getting involved then please follow this link to our OxCan news page.