If you saw my post in February, these are the beans me and my daughter Annabel planted, directly into the soil back then, with no cultivations….. they look great!
As I walk into the field I have never heard such a loud buzzing noise, with many different species of bee pollinating the beans, and thousands of them.
I am thankful that we have have made a policy decision to stop using all insecticides 3 years ago, with no detriment to our crop yields and with many benefits to the soil food ecosystem.
This fuzzy photo shows 2 different bee species pollinating the same plant.
It is almost impossibly beautiful, and what a privilege to work with our Creator. We do a tiny bit he does the rest.
Earthy Food, Heavenly Food 
I have to say James, those plants do look very healthy and the surrounding countryside beautiful. As a matter of interest what quantity would you expect to harvest from a field like that?
Charles
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Charles, thank you for your interest. This is a fourteen acre field. Yield averages around 2.5 tonnes per acre. So I would expect this would yield around 35 tonnes of beans. Or 350,000 portions of bean stew, probably for the Egyptians, who are the main consumers of our UK grown fava beans.
Most of our veggie protein such as soya beans, chickpeas, lentils etc is imported from other continents, which of course makes no sense in terms of resources/greenhouse gases.
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