Lazy farming

This past week we have been planting fava beans. They are an amazing source of UK grown veggie protein. But sadly they are not part of the national repertoire of foods so they tend to get exported to the middle East where they love them!

We are now doing more and more no-tillage farming. Instead of pulverizing the soil with heavy machinery until it becomes fine and crumbly, we are relying on earthworms and roots to do this for us.

In this case planting beans using a special ‘no till’ seed drill, which cuts through the dense residue of a previous crop and plants the bean seeds directly into the soil below, closing the slot immediately afterwards with the little wheels at the back of the drill.

The drill is ultra low soil disturbance. The photo shows the before and after and while the foliage is slightly compressed, the soil is almost untouched.

This method improves soil health, water holding capacity, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration and much more. Yields on our farm have not decreased using this method.

It has also reduced our diesel consumption from around 55 litres per hectare for establishing a crop to just 8 litres per hectare?

What’s not to like? Really not a lot. But it will be more of a challenge when we convert to organic production, when we will rely on mechanical methods to destroy weeds instead of chemical methods.

But it gives us lots more time and now Annabel can spend as long as she likes changing the depth settings on the drill because we aren’t in a rush! And I have more time with the family.

I see this as trying to work with and learn from God’s creation instead of against it. It does need a ‘renewing of the mind’, an unlearning followed by a relearning.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?”
Job 12:7‭-‬9