Joint Meeting with Stroud Rotary. Highgrove Farm Manager.

Mon, Sep 4th 2017 at 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm

David Wilson is the farm manager at Highgrove, the Gloucestershire estate of Prince Charles.
Venue - The Hill, 7.00pm for 7.30-m.


Joint meeting with Stroud Rotary

For our joint meeting with Stroud Rotary, held at The Hill, we were able to share an excellent speaker.   David Wilson is the farm manager for the Highgrove Farm, part of  HRH Prince Charles’ estate.

David related how  when he was interviewed for the job, although he had the relevant training and farm management experience, he was somewhat stumped when questioned about his knowledge of organic farming.   Anyway, it seems he was willing to learn, and found he became fully  committed to the concepts and disciplines of what has become something of a fashionable approach to farming.

Starting with a colour coded map of the total farm lands, mainly around Tetbury, he described how the natural geology caused the intrinsic  pH levels of the ground to vary.   With this knowledge one can take the appropriate remedial action required to correct it, for the crops intended to be grown.  Thus ground chalk or lime is used on acidic soils and animal or ‘green manure’ can be used to rebalance an alkaline soil.

David described how crop rotation was used extensively for successive cereal crops. A typical cycle might start with a crop of broad beans.  These have the property that bacterial nodules on the roots are able to ‘fix’ nitrogen directly from the atmosphere.  Nitrogen being an essential ingredient for all grass or cereal crops.  This eliminates the need for expensive nitrate fertilizers, much of which can be leached into the water table and drainage ditches, before being fully taken up by the crop.  Very wasteful and bad for the environment.  

Following this, subsequent years see crops of wheat, followed by barley and finally rye, as the ground fertility drops.  This cycle can then be repeated as ‘crop rotation.

David then showed more familiar crops of potatoes,  carrots and other vegetables and the methods used to plant,  weed and lift the crops.   Much of these processes being very labour intensive, but aided by some innovative farm machinery.   He also emphasised ‘his boss's ‘ other passions of rare animal breeds of, sheep, pigs and cattle and showed us several examples of each.

Finally, we got an insight into H.R.H.’s  passion for countryside skills such as hedge laying, of which he is something of an expert.

All in all a very interesting presentation of farming techniques, resulting in products less tainted with chemicals and providing diversity and variety.

Bryan Webster

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