‘We’re doing our bit to nurture things that matter’
Boudicca FoxLeonard meets a pair of aspiring farmers whose organic plans are coming into bloom
In the middle of a barren, former maize field in East Sussex sits a 50sqft box blooming with cornflowers, cosmos, calendula and many other species of flora. It’s not just flowers though, there are also bees, ladybirds and spiders. Looking at this small island of biodiversity, you can’t help but wonder, how did all this nature get here?
For Sinead Fenton and Adam Smith it is proof that if you farm for nature, then it will come to you.
In February this year, just before lockdown started, they arrived at Aweside Farm, a four-and-a-half-acre plot in Polegate that had previously been used to farm non-organic maize for 30 years.
They set about transforming it along Regenerative Organic principles, building healthy soil, which traps significantly more carbon. RO techniques include cover cropping, crop rotation, intercropping, low- to notilling and composting.
Before their arrival, it had been “the classic case of lots of pesticides, fertiliser and a monoculture of one crop over 20 acres”, says Fenton.
Standing and looking at their new
“farm” for the first time, it was clear it was going to be a struggle, but the 28-year-old says that was exactly the challenge they were looking for: “We wanted to go to a place that was not in good health and do it ourselves and see if it could thrive,” she explains.
“We’re trying to do our bit to protect and help nurture the things that are often suffering at the hands of the way our society decides to live.”
So far that has involved creating raised beds, planting thousands of trees, two hedgerows – 220 yards long and each full of hawthorn, blackthorn, and field maple – constructing a greenhouse ready to propagate and raiding their seed bank for the best colourful heritage veg.
Two city kids with no connection to farming, they started out on an allotment in London in 2017, initially as volunteers in a community garden, but went on to take over the whole site. “It was pure naivety. We thought, ‘They grew plants, we’ll grow some plants too’,” says Smith, also 28.
A few photos on their Instagram of their edible flowers and unusual greens led to people getting in touch to ask how they got hold of what they were growing. Suddenly they were supplying high-end restaurants, from Chiltern Firehouse to the Conduit Club.
The couple dreamed of putting down permanent roots on their own land, but thought they would have to work for years to be able to afford a farm of their own.
Then, at a farming conference in Oxford, they heard a talk by the Ecological Land Cooperative, a social enterprise that enables aspiring farmers to set up their own residential smallholdings on marginal agricultural land.
“We went to their talk twice because we didn’t believe them the first time round,” says Fenton. “An organisation that set out to do some good and make land accessible all seemed a little bit too good to be true.”
Founded in 2009, the co-op sought to address the imbalance in land ownership in England, where nearly half the land in England is owned by just 25,000 people – less than 1 per cent of the population.
Since then the ELC has helped set up farms across five low-impact, sustainably managed sites in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Gower and East Sussex, covering a range of farming practices. By buying up larger plots of land and breaking them down into smaller, more affordable chunks of land, it means people like Fenton and Smith can enter the field of agriculture. It is a grantee of clothing brand Patagonia’s 1% for the Planet movement, which is raising awareness of the power of RO farming practices such as those at Aweside to fight climate change and keep the planet healthy.
While the ELC offers no-deposit arrangements, Smith sold his flat in Southend and in December the couple
signed the lease. At the start of this year, Smith left his job as an insurance broker in the city. Fenton, meanwhile, who had previously worked at a food think tank in London, worked as a pot washer to bring in extra money to buy trees. She hasn’t ruled out returning to a side job in the winter, Covid allowing.
“Unless you’ve got a lot of money, there really aren’t many options for people to get on the land,” says Fenton. “The main option would be to rent some land from a farmer, but you’re never going to get a lease over five years because after seven years the arrangement changes and costs the farmer a lot of money. So it means you end up working the land in a shortterm way. Why would you plant for the future when you’re not sure if you’ll be able to stay?”
Having a 150-year lease means that they can confidently invest in trees and perennials, with an emphasis on regeneration, not just sustainability. “We’re putting in things that we won’t see grow to full capacity in our lifetimes,” says Fenton.
They are planning to plant an acre and a half of woodland in December with lots of native trees; oaks, poplars and elders, among others. It will be set aside for wildlife.
Still, the pair still seem rather in shock that their dream has become possible. “I still feel like I’m going to go home to my mum’s at some point,” says Fenton.
Home at the moment is a 1997 static caravan with solar panels and a composting lavatory. It’s a lowimpact lifestyle. If they can prove over a five-year period that the business is profitable, they can apply to build a house on the land. Although, says Fenton: “It will be a while until we have the money to do that.”
This year has been a wipeout. The restaurants they would usually supply have been shut, and even getting a water supply installed on site has been delayed.
Their land is in a drought-risk zone, and the delay means they decided not to plant as much as they had planned. Even so, some of their plants bolted during the hot weather, as they struggled to get enough water from a standpipe down the road.
Right now, they are planting winter veg and salads, as well as flowers for next year, to make up for what Fenton says has been a “strange year and a strange start”.
They always intended to spend this year setting up the whole site. Their aim was to squeeze three years of infrastructure into one, planting trees, shrubs and perennials so that next year they can focus on growing and harvesting, and even making a profit.
Their neighbours and fellow ELC leaseholders have a three-and-a-halfacre plot doing veg boxes.
Well aware that our current food system is incredibly devalued, they doubt they could make a decent living from just growing organic veg, so Aweside is concentrating on cut flowers and heritage veg. They believe the cut and edible flowers, which have a higher value, will give them a secure income.
Although, Fenton jokes: “We both grew up fussy eaters, so the fact that we’ve become people who eat flowers is quite unusual. We just fell in love with all the colours, shapes, tastes and textures.”
They are aware that their “messy” style of farming isn’t always popular with many of the local farmers. “There’s curiosity about whether we’ll be able to make it work,” says Smith. “Someone said to our neighbours that we’ve been duped and we’d never be able to grow anything on this land, but we have.”
Still, before they started working the land, it did indeed look like a bleak prospect, devoid of all life. The key to their success has been using a no-dig method; laying mulch, cardboard and compost and wood chip. Rather than rotating the soil, the idea is to feed it.
Meanwhile, they are working on a slow un-compaction with trees, shrubs and perennials. By creating healthy soil and having different plants at different rooting depths, nature will do their work for them.
They now have three blocks of 16 x 30m, with 10 to 12 beds within each one. “We’ve got 60 beds now, and altogether we’re aiming for 120 – so we’re halfway there!” says Fenton.
One of the good things about having lots of flowers, she reasons, is that it helps to grow healthier vegetables and encourage biodiversity. Although she knows that farming in this way isn’t viewed traditionally as being very efficient.
“Around here, there are lots of farms growing the same thing; huge fields of green and brown. People see that and think that’s good, but if you go to those places, you don’t hear anything. But you come here, which is deemed messy, and it’s teeming with life,” says Fenton. “All we did was put in a few flowers and it helped nature. I think it’s a farce when people say it’s too hard to make these changes. It’s not.”
Smith points out, though, that this isn’t about one group attacking another, but the need for a conversation between conventional versus organic. “We need to find a middle ground to chat with each other. Hopefully we’ll figure that out in time,” he says.
They don’t have all the answers at the moment, and say they’re making a lot of mistakes. And learning from them. “We’re finding our feet here and building our resilience as our land builds up its resilience too,” says Fenton.
With Brexit looming and talk of US trade deals that will mean potential imports of food of lower quality, market gardens like Aweside are essential in offering more choice to consumers looking for produce grown to RO standards.
They might be outsiders, but Smith sees their input of a fresh perspective into the countryside as imperative, saying: “It’s in the industry’s interest to have new people coming in from different backgrounds, and for there to be more diversity.”
And in nature’s interest, too.
‘Unless you’ve got a lot of money, there aren’t many options for people to get on the land’
‘Someone said we’d been duped and we’d never grow anything on this land, but we have’