unknown 0:53

I don't know.

Arthur Cole 1:14

Welcome back to the Newt Podcast. With me, Arthur Cole. Join us for a walk through the estate with our invited guests to the backdrop of the Somerset landscape and its wildlife residence. This week we're joined by Charles Dowding, no dig King, a neighbour of the Newt. Charles actually came to Hadspon when he was a young child and knew it intimately. We're gonna go and pick him up with the car, head off to the compost pad, show him Avalon Farm and the controlled environment agriculture, and of course finish off with breakfast in the garden cafe. Let's jump straight into it.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

My father was dairy farmer and I remember the churns leaving the farm. Really? And but they were going in those days to Wincanton to the lorry. Unigate in Win Canton. Yes. You have to be pretty strong to load those churns onto the visiting lorry. And my father would take a little bit of cream off the top of each one highly illegally. Because then we made butter in the house.

Arthur Cole 2:28

Really in the house with a probably with a with the spinner.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Yeah, they came to cream over a week, so it was starting to go off a bit, which apparently better for the butter. And then, yeah, my mother had an electric paddle cream device. Lovely butter. Alright, here. This is your main composting operation.

Arthur Cole 2:47

Yeah, let's get off here. I've never seen that. Oh amazing. Alright. Why don't we walk through the process of the current hoop?

SPEAKER_04 2:56

Or the current additions. But you're then gonna shred it, presumably. Exactly.

Arthur Cole 3:00

So we've we we do. So so we're standing here in the compost pad. Um giant Lego bricks around us. And in Bay One, we've got well, we've got gosh, we've got everything from rose clippings, leaf mould weeding, we've got someone's been weeding the beds. This is a beautiful mixture.

unknown 3:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:24

You've got some oranges there, you've got you've got a bit of food waste, you've got estate waste, you've got garden of waste of all kinds, green and brown.

Arthur Cole 3:32

So Charles, so so uh so for our audience, for our listeners, you won't have been able to see Charles' eyes light up as he sees the different colours that are going on here. Charles, can you talk to our listeners through why it's so attractive, this first pile?

SPEAKER_04 3:48

Well, because for example, you've got grass moes here, which is high nitrogen, and that will give you heat. But if you just make a heap with them, it's gonna go into soggy airless state. So that's where the leaves and all these little bits of wood come in and brassica stalks and um sedgy grasses and the wood though needs shredding, so that will be excellent, you know, when when as a balance for the green. You've got green and brown bracelet.

Arthur Cole 4:13

Right. Green and brown small time. And some some all those tropical bright colours going on over here.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

Yeah, well, coffee grounds, big time. I mean, that's the you all your restaurant waste is it's a lot, isn't it?

Arthur Cole 4:27

Perfect. So this is where we've now thankfully moved to after a few years of trying to get here. The kitchen separate out the waste that we can use here. You mean from the plastic or from from windows to windows, and we can see you can see the chefs' knives have been on this, it's the bottoms of things, it's the bottoms of cot um of shovels.

SPEAKER_04 4:48

They've really cleaned up that kale store. Being very thorough, no, exactly. They're very thorough. And it's a huge bay. Yes. I mean, is this are you filling one of these bays?

Arthur Cole 5:00

That's tons of compost. Well, this is the this is uh stage one, this is the first dumping ground. And we never used to be able to take the food waste from the kitchens because there wasn't a system, a clever you know, a simple system of their separation. Now we've got that system, and the vegetable waste is separated without ever coming into contact with any meat or anything that would encourage rodents in here, and so now we're taking this, and so you can imagine just how happy our peat, our composter is, that we're able to get even more coming in here rather than this going off to landfill or the big municipal bird.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

The other one that's a problem for restaurants is oil. Because I was at Raymond Blanche and they've got a kind of rocket composting device there. But they were saying that the amount of oil coming from the kitchens in the kitchen waste was was actually spoiling the compost a bit because it it coats all the the um other materials and slows down the breakdown.

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:00

But it looks like you haven't got that problem here. I don't know how you do it. No.

Arthur Cole 6:03

Um Philadelphus flowering in the background there. So not just compost going on here, but um But are those parts uh finished and they're gonna be. No, these are these are just being held here, I think, because the the great thing about having great big bays like this, which are sort of what would we say, eight foot, nine foot or something like that, um, is that you then get these three-sided nine-foot high uh bays which are for sheltering and really sheltered. So then we've got these.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

It looks like it might have been a Chelsea Garden or something like that.

Arthur Cole 6:38

Yes, exactly, something along those lines. Um, and then different aggregates for different purposes.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

And because Pete, your compost maker,'s been here a while, hasn't he? And he's really passionate about it.

Arthur Cole 6:49

Pete's been here um, oh, it must be about eight years now, something like that.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

That's superb if you can keep people for a while and they really get to know the topic.

Arthur Cole 6:59

Well, absolutely. And Pete's really got to know his topic.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Well, yeah, here it looks like you how how often is he turning them? Because this looks fairly recent windrow.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:09

Huge windrow of hundreds of tons of compost, probably, or a hundred tons, steaming away.

Arthur Cole 7:15

So he doesn't let them get any taller, and he's very specific about this. He doesn't let them get any taller than 2.7 metres. So for our American listeners, I don't know what that is in feet, but it's um it's like eight feet, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 7:31

It means it gets less it keeps more air at the bottom. Correct, absolutely.

Arthur Cole 7:36

So get any higher than that, you begin to compact it, you begin to get anaerobic.

SPEAKER_04 7:40

But there is plenty of wood in there, yes. Which at this stage is definitely a good thing. I mean, I guess you can screen it later, but it helps to hold the air in there, doesn't it?

Arthur Cole 7:48

So can you talk us through what's going on in these piles here? I think these were created from all of that raw material back in um I think the winter that's just passed.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah, maybe November, December. Yeah. And we're now early March, so yeah, only three months old. I mean it's still quite immature.

Arthur Cole 8:07

Yeah, you've got some brussels.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Yes, exactly. Not everything is decomposed. Um, but it's beautiful, it's a beautiful mixture, and and having the larger bits of wood that you certainly wouldn't want in your final compost at this stage is really helping to hold the heap open because keeping air in a compost heap is is the thing that really makes a difference and it makes it smell sweet, and um that's why turning it also obviously makes a difference and speeds up the decomposition. Um but I he's probably not trying to get it too hot. I don't do you know what temperatures he reaches?

Arthur Cole 9:43

He says he gets it to about 70 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

Yeah, that's about 155. But that that's good because um if you go above 70, you lose beneficial micros.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:55

And um I mean I try and keep between 60 around 60 actually is best. And these probably peak at 70 and then slowly drop down, which is where you want to be.

Arthur Cole 10:04

So for the uninitiated, can you just lead us through what's the process that's going on there from raw material into what we can see now, which is certainly quite large bits of wood in there, as we assume, even some undecomposted uh vegetable waste. What's going on inside? Who's at work here to create compost?

SPEAKER_04 10:25

An amazing collection of microbes that I think we still don't understand all of them because for me, compost is a bit of a magic process, almost like alchemy. And you know, you can watch it change from the very recognizable stuff you put in there into this what looks mostly brown, uh, but with quite ununiform structure and texture with all these bits of wood and everything. Um how it changes like that, I don't really know. But uh the the hotter you get it up to about 70 degrees centigrade, as we were saying, you know, the faster that will happen. But you don't if you go too fast, it it like the so you can get these really black composts, uh green waste they're called, and they get them too hot, they go up to 80, and that other a lot of beneficial bacteria die, and uh it spoils the quality because you you've got a kind of dead compost. This is probably very alive with all the microbes that are still helping the decomposition.

Arthur Cole 11:23

You can see little um fruity bodies from the uh the fungus.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

Yeah, look at that, that is so good to see, isn't it? Tiny little mushrooms.

Arthur Cole 11:31

Tiny little mushrooms.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

I think they call them little girl or something. Um and I mean they look that's a good sign, because that means you've got fungi as well as bacteria and great, you know.

Arthur Cole 11:40

And so the two of them together you'll you'll Pete says that he doesn't create the compost, but what he does is he creates the conditions for then the real workers to get in there. That's so right.

SPEAKER_04 11:53

Yeah, that's a great philosophy. Yeah. Yeah, but that's what we're doing, and that's the joy of gardening, isn't it?

Arthur Cole 11:58

So come and look at this then, Charles. Oh, blind. That looks beautiful, but this is this is what this so this is what this time is. Do you know how many months different? Two or three, maybe? Oh, I it's a very good question. It's a shame we don't actually have Pete here to talk about it, but um, we're probably gonna do a whole episode with Pete. Oh, you've got the grader. Yeah. So this stuff is I mean, oh, it feels great, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 12:27

So that looks about five mil or something like that.

Arthur Cole 12:31

Yes, yeah, it's a pretty fine five mil in it in terms of its grain, it's pretty fine. It's taken out the big bits of wood, but yeah, still little bits of wood in there. Still little bits of wood in there, and that feels great. There's a little bit of grain, there's a it feels like sort of little bits of of um like grains of sand. There's a little bit of wood, there's sort of decompos, there's definitely a lot of organic matter in that.

SPEAKER_04 12:54

Yeah.

Arthur Cole 12:54

It doesn't have a smell to it.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

It doesn't um No, it's remarkably odour-free. It's remarkably odour free. But you you can crush it like that and it holds it, it holds together, but it's not going into a soggy lump. No, because it's keeping it structured. And it's the same I find with worm compost where the the worms have excreted their worm casts. Uh they they have a really good structure.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

And it's all the sort of glue coatings. But I don't know if you're getting worm action here because it's probably too hot most of the time.

Arthur Cole 13:26

I haven't seen any worms in in these. Um I guess the once this is then up.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

They would arrive a bit later. It's got to cool down first.

Arthur Cole 13:35

So this looks to me like it's got quite a bit of cow manure in it at some stage. It does, doesn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:40

And this is quite soggy wet.

Arthur Cole 13:41

This is soggy, stodgy, a lot heavier. I suspect what's happened is this is from the cows. This has come into this bay, and and I imagine then Pete will either be incorporating it in with the other stuff.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

Yeah. I would be happy to use that on its own for vegetables. Would you? Okay. Yeah, that that something like that can work. That's decomposed cow manure. But it is a bit soggy, and I find that a really good way to use it is to get it on before spring, so during the winter, and it has time on the surface, it has time to dry out then.

Arthur Cole 14:11

Okay. And cow manure versus horse manure, what are your feelings on that?

SPEAKER_04 14:16

Well, they're both really good, but cow manure does have a bit more oomph, okay, a bit more nutrients, and yeah, vegetables love it.

Arthur Cole 14:29

We're now approaching the controlled environment agriculture area. Well, what does that mean? That means so this means Is it hydroponic? Hydroponics.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Oh okay, yeah. So peppers. Two meter high tomato plants.

Arthur Cole 14:48

Yep, they went in in January. January. January, yeah. Look, they're setting the first trusses. We'll take our first um uh you can see the beef stickers, yeah. The peppers already setting fruit.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Crazy.

Arthur Cole 15:06

Is these receiving any extra light as well anyway? Uh yes, so they've got um uh so when the light levels drop below a certain uh level uh to keep them on the the length the LEDs kick in. This is real high-tech farming or growing I should say. We're gonna go up into the keda houses and see some prop.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Yeah, this is where I came before and where there'd been a big problem with soil being messed around from yes. I don't know if there was some problem with it.

Arthur Cole 15:54

Alright, let's have a quick look in here. Hopefully better. So we've got we're now at the top of Avalon Farm, we're in the oldest part of the nursery, and these were constructed in about 2017, the first tunnel, 2017. And let's have a look. What have we got in here? Okay, so this is this looks like ornamental. So we've got uh peonies, tulips coming up in pots, these will all be going out. Oh gosh, I don't know. Maybe to the new Yarlington Lodge.

SPEAKER_04 16:33

It's a lot of planting for somebody, yeah.

Arthur Cole 16:36

So Yarlington Lodge, which has just been uh we've been working part of your new hotel. It's not, it's a it's a rent, it'll be a um an area which is uh it's it's a nice manor house in Yarlington, which is going to be short-term uh rent, sort of short-term less.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Arthur, this is like a sort of industrial complex here, is it? Yeah. There's concrete in buildings more than growing, but then you suddenly got this amazing beautiful plant.

Arthur Cole 17:09

So what have we got here? We've got a fair bit of ornamental, but also looks like there's pea shoots. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:18

Um peas growing in modules to the tops on. I guess it's microgreens, yeah, it's microgreens.

Arthur Cole 17:27

So we've got deed trays in front of us, absolutely chock a block. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Chefs love this, don't they? This is garnished. Comets doing a yeah, different colours, red and green, purple. Pack choy. Red pack choy, very nice. Red pack choy. So the third of February. So that's about a month uh they could be cut now, couldn't they? Just cut across the top. I wonder if they get a second cut as well. It looks like they might be doing that. So do you do microgreens? No, I don't, because I I mean this is restaurant stuff. I mean, I'm supplying a local pub, but with more sort of serious amounts of food, not because this doesn't give you a lot to eat, it's just pretty, really, isn't it?

Arthur Cole 18:12

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

And it's very beautiful. So that's interesting. That looks like they might be doing broad bean tops. Broad bean tops, that's right, yeah. Which is a bit of a rare thing. I mean, because they have a strong flavour. Oh, I love broad bean tops.

Arthur Cole 18:25

It's one of my favourite crops, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

It's the flavour of broad bean, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. Isn't it great?

Arthur Cole 18:31

Um and it's and it's it's instead of eating the bean, which can be some people can find it quite hard on the stomach of the beans to digest. But the the tops, those people that maybe suffer a little bit with the the the toughness of the actual bean, don't tend to get that with the actual leaf.

SPEAKER_04 18:51

Yeah. We're just about to start harvesting some from outside growing this week to put in the salad bags. And you've also got um is that carrots for tops?

Arthur Cole 19:01

Carrot tops, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 19:03

Because carrot leaf, you can make a beautiful pesto, can't you? Carrot leaf pesto, can you? Okay. They might be doing things like that.

Arthur Cole 19:12

And then we've got the ultraviolet. Uh well, that'd be purple light. Grey lights. Yes, the purple grey lights.

SPEAKER_04 19:21

So these will be for what propagating?

Arthur Cole 19:25

I think probably again for microherbs, so pea shoots and bean tops. How many people are managing this? It's probably two to three in here. Across the whole the the whole site of the nursery.

SPEAKER_04 19:42

This needs a lot of managing, doesn't it?

Arthur Cole 19:44

Oh no, this is time consuming into a tropical uh into a tropical into the tropical house where we have strelitzias in flower. Oh god, amazing um the bird of paradise.

SPEAKER_04 20:05

This is like the Caribbean.

Arthur Cole 20:06

Yes, it's like being in the Caribbean, quite nice coming in here every now and then. And just a good mix of tropical looking plants.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

On quite a cold morning. I mean it's been quite chilly going around, hasn't it?

Arthur Cole 20:18

It has been a bit chilly going around, but in here it's it retains its warmth. Picture planting flower? Oh beautiful. Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 20:31

I'm a little bit amazed actually and impressed by how much stuff you've got here and how much is going on and the amount of management it takes. Have you got one person kind of in charge of this area who oversees the just just deciding what to do every day, you know, huge range of edibles and ornamentals and meeting the demands of your restaurants and well talking about the restaurant, should we head off and go and get breakfast?

Arthur Cole 21:01

Oh yes, please. Alright. The sun is up.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

Yeah, nice, it's warming up now.

Arthur Cole 21:15

Yeah. Breakfast is calling. Let's go and see whether or not the chef's got any of our market garden produce on this.

SPEAKER_04 21:22

Well, yeah, I think we must make sure about that. That's something that would worry me a bit. It's um you need an understanding chef of what's going on here, you know, and for them to be prepared to use what's in season. Yes. I'm sure they do, but sometimes I don't know, I I wonder how good the communication is or how much the chefs are prepared to adapt to whatever comes their way.

Arthur Cole 21:49

So we're very lucky with our chefs that we're we're gonna be eating breakfast in the garden cafe, and so Dale Pilton, who's the sort of executive chef that oversees the garden cafe, the food that goes to the cider bar that goes to and then he has his own chefs in those areas. So we have uh Beth, who's the chef, what we call the cider bar kitchen, that's the food that comes out at the cider bar, and then we've got Charlie Marshall who's gonna be cooking us breakfast. And these guys have been on a journey with Dale really since I mean almost seven years ago for some of these guys, and learning that they've got access to what's coming out of the market garden in all of its forms, as we've seen, you know, um then they are allowed to play and experiment, and they're not they're not curtailed by it, or I think they see it as an opportunity to experiment and play.

SPEAKER_04 22:51

Well, I hope so, because it really is. And in fact, I noticed this at a hotel I was at in Ireland where they had a kitchen garden and they had some beautiful cherry tomatoes, and you know, I said to the governor, um the the restaurant must be loving these at the moment. He said, Well, they're not taking them yet. I I I couldn't get them interested, and I don't know why, but anyway, I I managed to say to the chefs about it and and get them enthused. But I you know, there is honestly sometimes a disparity of communication and understanding that they need explaining.

Arthur Cole 23:24

Absolutely, and I think that's the case with so much of food, not just when it comes to vegetables, but the variety of vegetables that are out there, it sometimes seems surprising that we are only, even in our own homes, only one broccoli and potato carrots, and it doesn't seem to get much fun. And yet the amount of variety that's available, all you've got to do is pick up a seed catalog and see what's going on, or head down to homemakers and see all of the different colours and the shapes and leaves. Coming up.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah.

Arthur Cole 24:00

Why do you think that we're not more adventurous in our culture and our society?

SPEAKER_04 24:05

I think some of it sadly is economics. You know what we saw done in the field of kale there is it's it's easier in a slightly mechanized way to grow big blocks of a few crops and not have so much variety in. If you look at my garden in most of the year, there's an incredible, beautiful diversity of shape, colour, texture, and that translates to the plate as well when you're harvesting. But it's a more expensive way to do it because you know it's a little bit here and a little bit there, and you can't be harvesting quite so fast if you get it all of one crop in a big box. So yeah, and also the the way you're doing it here, I mean you you you there's more potential I think that could be explosive because you've got that what you call the environment control greenhouses. And we didn't go in there suddenly, but you know, there's so much you can do in places like that in the season. Um because like you said, most people don't realise they don't, they've maybe never grown food and they don't know the whole uh process and and how much how much time is needed actually and and how much care and attention goes into that growing that food and how precious it is.

Arthur Cole 25:24

Yeah, how precious it and how much potential jeopardy there is. You know, you we were talking about what was it, um flea beetle.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Um yeah.

Arthur Cole 25:32

Um you know it doesn't take much, especially when you're growing something if something's tasty to us, you can be sure it's gonna be tasty to something else.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

Absolutely, and and I think vegetables are underrated for for that difficulty of growing them, and that's why I keep talking about compost, because if you can get enough compost in soil that makes plants stronger and healthier and more vibrant, less interesting to pests, and much more tasty to us as well, more succulent and juicy. But I I I do reckon there needs to be more emphasis on or understanding of how difficult it is to grow really good vegetables. Um, because also in your environment controlled area, that's a lot of time, effort, and money has gone into that, hasn't it? Yeah, those greenhouses fly, mate. It's like space action. Yes! I mean it's just an incredible place here because you've got I mean look at the size of it and you know all the different operations going on. It's a it's a beautiful sight to behold. Yeah, there's a lot to say.

Arthur Cole 26:32

The beach, look, oh it's so amazing when you see the beach leaves. The first and just the first look at those butts. I mean they they were like little crows um toes, and now they're turning into these really fulsome but about to burst, but just before you see the leaves. That's this to me is the most exciting and hope. This is the most hopeful. Yeah, it's the most amount of potential stored up ready to burst.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Is that your idea after the crow's toes? I've never heard that phrase. It did look closely at a crow.

Arthur Cole 27:12

It do look quite like a crow's toes, didn't it?

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Brilliant.

Arthur Cole 27:21

So Charles, you when we started off this morning, you pointed out down near the entrance, you said that's where I used to you used to go to nursery as well.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

Preschool, yeah.

Arthur Cole 27:33

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that's wonderful. You've got this very long connection with this stuff.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

I do feel that, and I remember coming up with my parents when Paul and Penny Hoppers uh gave us a supper one evening, for example. And it was just when Penny had got into gardening. And I remember her talking with my mother, and my mother was saying, Yeah, so what what what are you doing? You know, where what is this is this what what are you trying to do with writing about gardening? And um, I wish I could remember more of what she'd said, but she was clearly really passionate about it and saw lots of possibility and potential.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:09

And realised that she had this lovely parabola here. She must be amazed now when she looks in such a different way. Um but there was a time when uh they were selling the estate, uh, I think it must be before Coos had bought it, and Neil was hoping to do some kind of project in the market garden. That's right. In the parabola. With um uh what Lucy and Robert Carter were there.

unknown 28:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 28:36

There were some people, local people took on plots, and a lot of them were doing no dig. And Lucy and Robert bought a load of compost that they brought put in there and grease and garlic, all that kind of thing. Right. So that was about ten years ago. And I remember coming up one November and even spreading some biodynamic preparation because I do that as a way of um enlivening soil and bringing in good influences from the universe and um electrical and magnetic forces, um, you know, biodynamic way. And I was doing that in the soil air because I I was you know I was involved with that and wanted to get that soil really good.

Arthur Cole 29:12

So we're looking out across the so what Charles has pointed to here for Alice is this is the curvilinear wall garden, which is which was built oh sometime between 1785 and 1809. That's the actual walled structure. And we're looking at it with its 330 different cultivars of dessert apples now, all trained in an Espalier way.

SPEAKER_04 29:38

And some very immaculate topiri hedges and that's right, yeah.

Arthur Cole 29:42

And look at little birds who I mean this is filled with nests in here with the birds. I remember there's a uh there's a mallard which likes to make its nest under the prostrate rosemary up there. And um uh she would fly out each time that I walked past in order to, you know, sort of say don't come and have my eggs. But the time that you're talking about, this looked very different. What you it was allotments or sort of it was productive?

SPEAKER_04 30:08

It was for for two or three years it was allotments, yeah. And you know, it wasn't that long ago, that's 15 years ago, maybe 20. Now it looks quite established, doesn't it? Um stone walls and paths and Penny must be amazed.

Arthur Cole 30:27

Yeah, absolutely. Uh well she when Vanel of the Hobhouse came and I took her around, she said, You've changed everything, and I thought, uh oh. And she went, quite right too, because I did as well. And she said, every new orchard, every new gardener that gets in here that should put their own stamp on it. If you had tried to garden like I would like I did, you would have got it wrong. I think that was a very complimented stamp.

SPEAKER_04 30:53

Yeah, yeah, that was very wise words. Yeah.

Arthur Cole 30:55

Well, because also then you had Nori and Sandra, didn't you, in between? That's right. So Nori and Sandra, the glamorous Canadian plants couple who were here from the mid-80s to the mid-2000s before they went back to Canada.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

Majored on colour. And so that now it's it's very different because it's quite green, but they they had a lot of turnip tulips, didn't they?

Arthur Cole 31:16

That's right, and they started up in because they wrote a book called Colour by Design, which is still very relevant to today. And they and Nori says in the book that he started up in that corner, the farthest sort of um the highest point in the walled garden there. And he said that the plum purple of the bricks was where the the colour journey and the colour wheels started, and it's from that corner with the plum purple of the brick is what gave him his idea of what to plant and start the colour from there.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

That was fascinating. That's a nice example of adapting to your space and seeing the possibilities.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

Yeah, well, I mean, what are the differences? I remember coming out here when they were running out of the garden and no one could have imagined, I think. Yeah, that little what's now well that was a tea house, wasn't it? A tea room.

Arthur Cole 32:09

That's so beyond the walled garden, um uh there is uh in the sort of middle ground, there is a little cottage with a thatched roof on it. And um when you go in there, there's just it's just one room in there. They say that um uh a gardener lived there with um his uh with his wife and his nine children, but it depends whether or not these reports are cheered.

SPEAKER_04 32:41

I wonder, but it's certainly true that people lived in smaller accommodations spaces, didn't they? Because that is tiny.

Arthur Cole 32:47

That is tiny, and that was the old tea house, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:52

No, I remember you know growing up nearby here in Chap de Montague, and um my father described uh the vicar walking through the village one day, these these farm cottages for farm workers, and there was one man who was had a lot of children, and the vicar asked him, Well, how many children have you got now then, Fred? He said, Oh, he said, I don't know, it's about eleven. When they were living in a tiny little cottage. Yeah. Amazing.

Arthur Cole 33:23

Charles, you said that you came in when the parabola was productive and people were grazing. And you said that you started to incorporate biodynamic goodness. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I'm fascinated by um the idea of biodynamic gardening, although I know very little. Can you tell us what you did in this parabola back then, which was biodynamic and what the purpose of it was?

SPEAKER_04 33:49

It's the for me, it's the main part of biodynamic, which which affects the soil. And it's um stirring oh god, this is gonna sort it complicated, but you take a little bit of fresh cow manure, which has been matured through the winter in a fresh cow horn. Uh, and the reason for that is because a cow horn is conical, in other words, vortex in shape, which is a very powerful way of concentrating energy. A vortex, it can pull in energy from a big area and concentrate it down into a little point. And so you you mature your manure in that, and then you just take a thimbleful of it, just a very small amount, uh, put it in, in this case, maybe 50 litres of water, and stir it for a whole hour, making more vortices. So you make a vortex one way and then you make a vortex the other way. And that energizes the water by pulling in energies from the universe, which we can't measure, which is why scientists will poo-poo this and say it's all you know superstition. Uh, but for me, that I you know, I feel I feel I can feel the energy coming in and then going out when you spread the water. So it after an hour of stirring, you've basically got energized water. And I think of it like energy bombs that we're flicking with. Take a big paintbrush and flick it onto the ground in droplets. No, you're not spraying it on just a few droplets here and there. And that lands on the soil and and spreads this energy that you've put into the water. Water's got memory. You know, this is becoming well known now, but it was very radical early on. And water can remember. So if you if you're stirring water and you have really great thoughts like productivity and um power, love, whatever you feel like that you want to get into your garden, you can add it in this way, and we're thinking those same thoughts as we flip the water on the ground. So that's what I was doing there. So it hasn't been done since probably that's about 15 years ago.

Arthur Cole 35:56

I mean, I am so up for being that uh that process back in here. I mean, I certainly amazing.

SPEAKER_04 36:04

I I think you know, there's more acceptance of that as a feasible thing.

Arthur Cole 36:09

Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_04 36:10

It's quite economic that one, because you you can, you know, you've got an hour of stirring the water, obviously, you can you can actually buy the the the uh energized manure you could buy it from the Biodynamic Association. Right. In and and an acre for to enough to cover an acre, you you would cost you about ten pounds. It's not expensive. You've just got to put in the time of stirring the water and and and having the good thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

It's a way of focusing your mind and and thoughts and getting it into the ground. And I feel that's really important. We we can do more than we realise like that. Yes. And the power of intention, and that's I think also what is green fingers and what makes a good gardener. Because as a gardener, right, unlike a farmer who's in his sitting in his tractor, we we've got much more intimate contact with our plants, and that's the value of handwork as well, uh, which you don't have with mechanized approach, that you can bring more of yourself in there. And I think even that can increase the health of your plants and probably reduce the growth of the weeds as well. Uh, because you know it's all part of the whole picture of what you want, and and that the universe is responding to these thoughts we have. There's no doubt about it.

Arthur Cole 37:17

It's the difference between survive and thrive, isn't it? I think this is this is this is the case of crop in throughout the whole of nature. You can and they've done these studies on where they have the same, the same crop. To all intents and purposes, you've got the same sort of genes that that are in these cells, and one is neglected, well, sort of shown a different way of growing up, as it may, and another one is is it has the gardener with them. It's yeah, the gardener puts that intention into and surrounds that plant in it. And the one that has that attention and that that intention around it, they're both weeded in the same way, we're both fed in the same way, but the one that gets this thing that we can't measure that energy and that intention is driving. And the other one survives. Yeah, but the other one thrives. Yeah, but this is fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 38:11

I think the same for us when we eat them, you know.

Arthur Cole 38:17

Yes, yes. Lovely, thank you, Rosie.

SPEAKER_04 38:19

Look at that. This is delicious, isn't it? Carrot and turmeric.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Uh yeah, carrot, apple, lemon, ginger, and turmeric.

Arthur Cole 38:27

That's a really good one, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Anything else would you like then?

Arthur Cole 38:30

Well, do you like anything? Do you like any sauces or anything? Oh, it's good, thank you. That's great. Thank you, Rosie. So this is um, yeah, this is the halumi style cheese that we call satin brew, which is made down in the um it's it's not buffalo. It is. Oh, it is the buffalo grill. It's buffalo milk that's turned into that.

SPEAKER_03 38:52

Oh, it's a lovely cheese. Mmm. Well, they've grilled it a bit.

Arthur Cole 39:00

Mmm.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

Yeah. Very nicely done. Oh, we got we have got the kale.

Arthur Cole 39:06

Yeah, let's have a look. What have we got in there? We've got kale. What they've done is they've taken these little peppers that uh Ellie grows in the um uh in her glass house as well as over in the market garden. They're those tiny little, you know, the little sweet chili peppers. Oh yeah. And then they pickle them. And so then they're this bit of the chili here, that's that's a pickle of chili. Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:33

Does that reduce the heat a bit?

Arthur Cole 39:35

I think it does, yeah. But it now allows the flavour to develop.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

Oh delicious. Really good bread as well.

Arthur Cole 39:48

Really good bread. That's made by our bakers. Where we were this morning, and all of those sort of you know, sheds and whatnot. That's where the bakery is down in there. And the salad and the starter was um made from back in 2019 from the wild yeasts, from the cider watches, from the first pressing that we did for the cider. So we took some of that pumice, the the waste product, and our baker at the time, Karen, made her starter from it, and it's the same starter.

SPEAKER_04 40:32

They've kept it going brilliant. There is a lot of goodness in this meal. I'm really happy to be chewing it for a long time and flavour it.

Arthur Cole 40:43

Food should be medicine in many ways.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Yeah, classic, isn't it? Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.

Arthur Cole 40:50

And yet, we seem to be in a position now where the residues that are left on commercially grown plants, and and it the residues are there because they're trying to make sure that the plant survives, gets through from a threat from pests and disease. And yet we then have this food that causes us such problems with our gut, with um our immune systems, all sorts of things. And what we've got now is something that's meant to be sustaining us and keeping us alive, and more than that, not just surviving but thriving, and it's doing the opposite. And it can't be that somebody's trying to engineered that, it's just it's an unhappy consequence of our, I guess, our industrial commoditization of the food industry way of growing.

SPEAKER_04 41:43

Yeah, so true. Well, I think my wish would be for you guys, because we have got resources here to do it, don't you, would be to not look at that market garden as a economic asset, but as a food and health asset. Um because you know, from what I can see, this it's a huge estate, and that you're in a position, you could tell an amazing story here of how food can be grown differently.

Arthur Cole 42:15

Charles, that sounds like a beautiful way to round off this podcast.

SPEAKER_04 42:26

Well, thanks for showing me around, and I've really enjoyed seeing it all and getting a sense of the whole operation here and then having this lovely breakfast.

Arthur Cole 42:34

It's always a pleasure having you, Charles. We always know that we're gonna get um uh two barrels, and it's always gonna be uh it's always gonna be honest from you, Charles. It's fantastic. Thank you for listening. Subscribe and tune in for more episodes from the estate every month. See you next time.