Rural Hub News

Rural Hub celebrates

Over 60 farmers and rural businesses gathered on the evening of 17 2024 July to celebrate the 21^st anniversary of Warwickshire Rural Hub.  The anniversary event was hosted by Ragley Estate, which is a member of one of the Rural Hub’s sustainable farming groups.   The event started with a farm tour showing the estate’s commitment to environmental protection and the huge range of natural habitats which have been protected alongside the farmed land, and concluded with celebratory drinks and Napton water buffalo burgers, sponsored by Syngenta.    

Warwickshire Rural Hub Chair, Karen Ellis, raised a toast and said “Warwickshire Rural Hub has gone from strength to strength during the past 21 years and the directors and I are thrilled to celebrate this milestone anniversary in such a beautiful setting.  Henry Lucas, a Kenilworth farmer, was one of the founders of the Rural Hub and is still very much involved as a director today.   Farming and rural businesses have seen huge change, challenge and opportunities over the 21 years.  Warwickshire Rural Hub has moved with the times with its activities, but networking and knowledge sharing are still a key element of all our events.  Here’s to the next 21 years”.

Wonderful 

The summer finally arrived on 17 June 2024 when the Rural Hub visited the Warwickshire Walnut Farm in Burmington.  Twenty two members joined brothers Tom and David Tame to enjoy a tour of their orchards and hear about their journey into growing walnuts, pecans, hickories, heartnuts and cob nuts.  The brothers started their diversification project in 2013 and since 2020 a further 300 nut trees have been planted.  All of the orchards are also used for grazing sheep.   As well as supplying nuts, nut oil and beauty creams, the farm is now the largest supplier of grafted walnut trees in the UK.    After looking at the orchards and hearing about the planting trials and the work undertaken to establish the trees and harvest the nuts, we then viewed the drying and pressing machinery.  At the end of the visit we all tasted the walnuts and oils, before stocking up on purchases from the shop.  It was a fabulous visit in beautiful sunshine and one Rural Hub member commented, “Really interesting and informative and thanks to all for a great visit.  I only wish I could have stayed longer!”

Maya gives 11 free massages

We were back at Rugby Livestock Mart cafe on 10 June 2024 offering health and welfare advice to farmers during another one of our regular “Fit for Farming” events. Paula and Mary from Parish Nursing engaged with 29 farmers, taking blood pressure readings and offering general health advice. And Maya our massage therapist gave 11 free back and neck massages. We were also joined by Allyson from Farming Community Network to offer welfare support. We’re back again in the cafe on 12 August.

Agroforestry in Action 

Rural Hub members and farmers from our Sustainable Farming Groups drove a little further afield on 21 May 2024 in order to enjoy a fascinating visit to Helen Browning’s Eastbrook Farm in Wiltshire to hear about the benefits of agro-forestry.   Our host for the morning was Ben Raskin, Head of Horticulture and Forestry at the Soil Association, who funded Ben’s time with us.   Eastbrook Farm started their agro-forestry journey in 2016, motivated by a desire to become more resilient during climate change and widen the diet of their dairy herd, as well as offering them some shelter.  We firstly visited an orchard planted with apricots, almond, gooseberry and sea buckthorn trees, which are all harvested for local producers of food and drink.  We then moved on to an area planted with willow.  Ben told us that large areas of plantings had not been as successful as areas with fewer trees, and trees protected with wood chip mulch had grown much faster.   We moved on to visiting the browsing blocks, grazed woodland and a riparian shelterbelt before we viewed a parkland setting with new plantings, where Ben told us that trees didn’t thrive being on their own, preferring instead to be planted in groups.  Everyone on the visit picked up some great advice on planting and protecting new trees and the benefits of integrating trees into a farming system.  Many thanks to Ben for sparing the time to host our visit.  

Visit to Weaving Machinery

Weaving Machinery near Evesham hosted a fabulous Rural Hub members’ visit on 23 April 2024.  Simon Weaving and Harry Clark spared 2 hours to take us on a tour of their factory to watch production in action followed by a visit to the warehouse to see their state-of-the-art storage systems.   

Weaving Machinery is a family firm with traditional values which produces low disturbance seed drills and cultivators.  Simon Weaving explained how his father had started experimenting with changes to seed drills in the 1980s and over the last 40 years the family has developed the company into a supplier of new and re-furbished farming equipment to countries as far away as Brazil.  They produce all of their equipment in Evesham, use local suppliers wherever possible and are customer and staff focussed.  It was a fascinating visit!

Foot and leg health advice 

It was a busy morning at Rugby Farmers’ Mart cafe during our Fit for Farming event on 15 April 2024.   Parish Nurses Gill and Sue held some really important conversations with farmers on a wide range of health subjects, as well as conducting their usual general health checks. For the first time we invited podiatrist Sarah, and ten people whipped off their socks and boots to receive some advice on foot and leg health. We also welcomed Sam from the Nursing and Midwifery Council who came along to see how the farming community is being supported with their health.  Allyson from FCN and Caroline from RABI completed our team.  We’ll be back in the cafe on 10 June, when Massage Therapist Maya will return to give her popular neck and back massages.  

Over 125 delegates 

On 12 March 2024 over 125 farmers and representatives from rural business support organisations made their way to Warwick Crop Centre in Wellesbourne to attend the Rural Hub’s first major conference, “Preparing for the farm of the future – what could it look like?”, which was expertly kept to time by Chair, Karen Ellis.  

The opening address was delivered by Tim Cox, Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire.  First speaker was Charlie Ireland, Partner of Ceres Rural and adviser to a number of high net worth farmers in the home counties.   Charlie spoke about recent volatility in markets, the key objectives of government and the fundamental drivers for agriculture.  He said that sustainable food production had huge opportunities and outlined the grant funding which was available.  Charlie also encouraged farmers to join a local network group, to share knowledge and learn from best practice.  In conclusion he saw the farm of the future as being a diversified business, with crop production on a larger scale, fewer but more technical staff, more use of technology and incentivised sustainable production.  

Charlie was followed by Jim Egan of Kings Crops, who outlined how a profitable farming business could work alongside care for the environment.   Jim said that planning was key, and believed that between 5 – 7% of a farm’s total area could be managed for wildlife without any detriment to net yield by selecting the areas which were difficult to farm.  Jim outlined the range of private and government funding which was available for environmental work and said that the Sustainable Farming Incentive could work on most farms.  

The next speaker was Prof Simon Pearson of Lincoln University.  Simon concentrated on how robotics and AI might help agriculture.  He showed a video of robotic strawberry pickers but said that in the future, it would be a gradual process for technology to transform agriculture and that human labour was likely to remain an integral part of the farming scene, as it was much more difficult to replicate dexterity in robots.

Antony Pearce was the fourth speaker.  Antony is a 3rd generation farmer who has seen his family farm severely impacted by the building of HS2.  Antony shared 5 lessons in diversification; to have a clear plan and know your constraints, access professional advice, understand the likely timescales and the difficulties of maintaining momentum, manage available finance with market demands and not to be afraid of having those discussions about succession.  

Farming is an isolated profession and it’s important to practise self-care during periods of uncertainty and change – luckily we had our resident Parish Nurse Gill Fenner on hand to deliver the final presentation and be available for health checks in the margins of the conference.

Once the presentations had concluded it was time for lunch, networking, a health check with Gill, to take part in the County Insurance prize draw for a hamper of goodies and to enjoy a test drive in an electric UTV brought along to the conference by Off-Road Electric.   Feedback about the conference has been extremely positive and Rural Hub Directors will now discuss whether a conference will become an annual event.

13,000 trees 

Over 13,000 trees plus associated stakes, guards and ties were collected by 38 farmers from Tubbs End Farm in Butler’s Marston on 17 January 2024.  The free trees for farmers project was funded by Stratford District Council and co-ordinated by Heart of England Forest, whose staff were on hand to offer advice on tree planting and management.  The Rural Hub promoted the project to its members and was on hand on the preparation and collection days to offer support and a warming cup of tea on two very cold days.   We also recruited some further members to our South Warwickshire Sustainable Farming Group.

A big thanks goes to Hugh Forsyth for letting us use one of his barns at Tubbs End Farm for the event. 

Branded Rural Hub coffee mugs