I also use it for tea regularly in Spring/Summer. Once they're seeding I use the seeds for tea. If I have enough time to collect them I'll store the seeds for a garnish over winter.
The firewood can be harvested as part of a coppice rotation too, e.g a woodland broken up into 8 coupes with one harvested selectively each year, then starting again at the beginning after regrowth is sufficient. Friends of mine do this and it works well. They replant as necessary as they go.
It sounds like there have been some changes to the Guardian and Observer lately, such as the sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media. [0] Journalists were concerned enough to strike. [1]
It's not as simple as just installing more wind turbines. The grid needs improvement and we need things like regional pricing. See https://wastedwind.energy for example.
Here in the northern Scottish highlands it's hard to find good bread. Which led us to learn to bake our own sourdough. But there are some good things popping up, like a local baker who is now doing a People's Loaf pay as you can https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/sutherland-artisan-bak...
Putting the 'right to roam' movement in a greater context. Coming about after de-peopling of the land, trying to counter the effects that has had on people. By returning land access to people, people will regain a connection with the land and care for it more.
I love growing (and eating) Frank Morton’s lettuces. If I recall correctly, a lettuce variety he bred was grown in space. Here’s a good podcast interviewing him, also touching on Open Source Seeds and patents: https://osseeds.org/free-the-seed-podcast-03-hyper-red-rumpl... there’s another good episode on the Seed Grower podcast too.
I wonder if they knew they were coppicing the tree, rather than killing it. Thankfully the tree will continue to grow, I think the land managers have chosen to leave the tree there. Many of the oldest trees around (at least in the UK) have signs of coppicing and pollarding. Those who cut the tree have unintentionally extended its life (e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-203131...). The only issue is it wasn't done at the best time of year.
I've been building a private app on the side for market gardens (veghub.co) to manage their knowledge, plan their growing season and manage their weekly tasks. It's a really interesting little space which I could ramble on about for ages. When I got into market gardening and began seeing tables etc in books with crop timings, spacings etc, as a developer my brain immediately wanted to build something to help growers think less. Most growers don't want to spend their time in spreadsheet land (although there are quite a few farmer spreadsheet wizards - e.g Dan Brisebois). There's a small demo from a year ago recorded here: https://youtu.be/0FuAF95GceE?t=401
Some interesting aspects that have been fun to code with (the app is Rails + Elm btw).
- one key detail is Days To Maturity (DTM). This changes between varieties, time of year and latitude. A seasoned grower will know what to expect from a crop they have experience in on their ground. Local knowledge networks are important. The best market gardens know their DTMs and will be tracking it, using it to inform their growing on the fly (maybe their plans need adjusting). Doing things like this should be easier.
- an efficient market garden makes sure they don't have empty space. When a crop is harvested or terminated, a bed flip occurs where it's prepped and the next crop is put in (sown or transplanted). You want to have this planned, ideally in winter before the season starts. You need to know your crop timings (DTM, days in nursery, harvest period (once off harvest or repeat harvest for _n_ weeks). This can be used to ensure you have your succession sowings ready.
- efficient market gardens will most likely have a standard bed width & length, organised into field blocks. A grower will have spacings (distance between rows, in row spacing, multi-sow count). It's easy to calculate the number of plants, rows, seeds for a grower when they're sowing (taking into account a safety factor too). When knowing a seed weight you can also calculate a seed order. This also leads to being able to predict harvest quantities, which leads to knowing how many veg boxes could be filled etc and when coupled with pricing data, can predict yield. You want to know your $/bed-metre and use that as a metric for comparing crops and making decisions.
- if you imagine a weekly veg box scheme, that has _n_ customers (shares) of varying box sizes (e.g a 0.5 box, 1.0 box and 2.0 box), with a season from Some Date -> Some Date. You aim for _n_ number of different vegetables in the box. You can imagine some questions that are helpful for experienced growers and also newbie farmers:
- if I have _n_ acres, what's an efficient way to divide up my field into beds and field blocks
- if I have entered in my crop plan, can you show me what's going to be in the veg boxes each week?
- actually, I don't know what I'm doing, can you just fill in all my beds with a crop plan as a starting point? All I know is how much space I have
- ...how many shares can I support ...how much money will that bring in?
- if I have a sense of prices of my crops, how much value are my customers getting?
- At the weekly harvest: we have harvested and have all the different crops with quantities. We have a box scheme composed of all these shares & share sizes, divide up the harvest evenly so that we know what to pack in each box. Usually this is done each week by hand on a whiteboard or similar in a packing shed. It should be easier (and ideally predicted).
