Project Officer Chels recently sat down with David and Tracy who own Bucksum, a market garden farm enterprise in Long Crendon. David and Tracy are two of RTCT’s Thame Catchment Farm Cluster members, and recent winners of two impressive awards, Soil Farmer of the Year and The Caroline Drummond Award - Celebrating and Communicating Farming Excellence.

Chels: Tell me about the farm, how did Bucksum come tobe?

David: Bucksum is a small farm operating on 16 acres which is rented from my parents who own the 100-acre Shabbington Fields farm. Out of our 16 acres, only 4 acres grow crops each year. The other 12 acres are in a rotation to build soil fertility.This means that all of the soil at Bucksum is fed for 3 years and cropped for only 1 year, a traditional crop rotation method that builds fertility and biodiversity in the soil.

Shabbington Fields farm [which Bucksum sits within] is a 100-acre farm, originally a grass farm. My parents took over the farm in ‘77 when I was young. I started farming with them in the late 80s but ended up leaving the farm for other career paths in large-scale farming. I worked in mainstream agriculture, growing combinable crops and managing livestock units. It struck me that there was a lot of food produced by mainstream agriculture, but the farmers had no connection to the end use of the product. That’s part of how [Bucksum] came about really, because growing vegetables through a market garden is really my passion. The market garden means we can grow produce ourselves and supply directly to the customers who are going to eat it. We’ve cut the middleman out and we interact directly with the end users which gives us and our customers that nice feedback loop.

Chels: You grow about 40 different vegetables which you sell here in the farm shop which sounds like a lot! Are those available year-round?

David: No, we grow different crops throughout the year depending on the season. A frequent battle we run into with people is getting people to shift their eating patterns with the seasons. So for example, broccoli only grows in the summer months in this country but people expect to have it available in winter. We have other vegetables available in the winter,those vegetables won’t be broccoli, but they will be very nice.

Tracy: This year melons and sweet potatoes have been really good and people think you can’t grow those in the UK but you can. You just have to work with the weather that you get. In the winter, the salad is in polytunnels and then in the summer, as the salad moves outdoors, we grow peppers, tomatoes, chillis, aubergines, sweet potatoes, and early new potatoes. We rotate everything along the tunnel each year so we’re never exhausting the soil and we’re always looking after it. But this means the produce we have to offer is always changing.

David: We're very much encouraging people to eat seasonally, to eat what is local, to eat what is fresh. It’s much better for you, better for the planet and better for your pocket because the produce hasn’t had to travel the world, so it’s cheap and certainly fresher.

Tracy: To help people use seasonal produce, we share lots of recipes. We have recipes on our website and in our shop and share a ‘recipe of the week’. We run workshops on the farm, like the one we're going to run this week, where we’ll have people cooking 6 or 8 different dishes and eating together.

Chels: How have you seen the business grow and changeover time? Have you found that people are starting to eat more seasonally?

Tracy: Lockdown actually helped our business a lot because we moved everything outdoors so this became a safe place to do your shopping. Before the pandemic, we were probably 70% restaurant business and 30% farm shop. But then overnight all the restaurants closed and the entire world turned up on our doorstep every day for the next 8 months wanting to buy local produce. That really shifted things for us, people had time to experiment and try recipes and it really shifted what people eat. It got them interested in different greens and what you can do with them. In the past people would say “Oh my children only eat broccoli” or “I don’t eat that” and now we have people coming to us saying “What have you got? What’s new? I’ll try it.”.

Chels: Can you tell me about how you manage water on the farm and the ways that it benefits both your crops and the surrounding wildlife?

Tracy: We hold 1.5 million gallons of water in a reservoir which we use to water the produce. The farm is on clay so we were able to dig down and create a reservoir to provide water to our crops but it also brings a lot of wildlife into the growing area. The reservoir is also joined up with our agroforestry fruit trees. These bring in a lot of birds who help to eat all the caterpillars and other crop pests. The trees also act as a windbreak, roosts for birds and they produce apples, plums, gauges and some nuts. We also have half a dozen chickens that graze down that tree line. We move their chicken run a little bit further down the tree line each day so they’re clearing the ground underneath the fruit trees, keeping the grass down and eating all the insects that might damage the fruit trees.

Chels: Many of us here in the UK have been experiencing the effects of extreme weather events, particularly flooding from extreme rainfall this year. As farmers, you must feel these impacts more than most. How does maintaining healthy soil impact your crops and the overall farm environment, especially during challenging weather conditions?

Tracy: Having good stable soil, particularly with some form of green cover, helps when we see the extreme rain events we have had this year. Things like growing strips of clover under the crops make a massive difference in the winter when you’re walking up and down the lines harvesting. 5 or 6 years ago we would have been sliding around the mud in between the rows of sprouts and brassicas. And now, you’ve got something nice to walk on and it’s feeding the soil, so it’s a win-win.

Chels: How did you become involved in the ThameCatchment Farm Cluster?

David: We were initially involved with the River Ray Farm Cluster but were told “You’re right on the border of the river catchment, you might want to talk to the Thame Catchment Farm Cluster” and that is how we got linked up. And from there, we have done quite a lot with the Thame Cluster.

Tracy: It’s been a new thing to be going off-farm now and again, which is actually probably a good thing for all farmers really. It’s really easy to get stuck on your own farm because there’s always something to do, always something to catch up on. But if there’s an event that’s only a couple miles down the road then one of us will try and go.

Chels: What benefits have you found from being a part ofthe Thame Catchment Farm Cluster?

Tracy: It’s really good to share ideas and when you’re having a rubbish year it’s really good to go out and realise you’re not the only one. It’s really good to be able to have a cup of tea with other farmers and go “Right, so what is working for you this year?” and refocus on the positives. I think that’s been a really good thing about being part of the cluster.

David: The connection is important. The more people are connected, the stronger we are together. If all of us farmers are spreading the same messages then it’s a snowball effect of the public better understanding nature, farming and their local countryside. Having a strong cluster in the Thame [catchment] also serves as a good example to the surrounding clusters. And we can then potentially start working together on even bigger landscape-scale projects. It is all linked up and we can all learn from each other.

Tracy: Cluster meetings are good because they’re with people who get it. We recently had to cancel a meeting due to the weather but that’s okay, farmers get it because everyone needs to be on their farm tackling whatever the weather has just thrown at them. A good farm cluster recognises the shifting seasons and shifting of the farmer’s availability. For example, in lambing season or harvesting, those farmers couldn’t possibly be going to any meetings during those important times. But then as the light levels change and the days are shorter, then yes we can all get together and meet in the evenings. As the cluster has developed, we have adapted to these seasonal changes and learned what times are best for us as a group.

Chels: One of the great things that has spun out from your involvement with the Farmer Cluster is your Growing More Growers programme that you run. Can you tell me about that?

David: Locally, countywide and beyond, the market garden is a model that will help everyone have better access to fresh produce and better access to understanding what is involved in growing that produce. This leads more people to start asking questions about where their food is coming from which is going to be more and more important. We can’t keep relying on importing food from other countries that are already struggling with droughts and other climate change impacts. And yet, there’s a frightening percentage of market garden and small growers going out of business each year.

Tracy: The Growing More Growers programme started up after the Thame Catchment Farm Cluster watched Six Inches of Soil. One of the cluster members screened the documentary at their farm. When we went to the screening, we were almost trying to hide in the back. Half of the local village were there and we were worried they were all going to turn up at the farm shop the next day after they realised how important local food is. We don’t produce enough or have the capacity for everyone! We’re not interested in expanding. That would mean a bigger car park, bigger buildings, more land and infrastructure and employees. We would end up being managers instead of farmers and not actually doing what we love, which is growing food.

It was clear to us that we needed more market gardens and we thought “Well hey, we’ve got this farmer cluster, let’s reach out to them and see if they have an acre or two they would give up to grow produce”. We knew that watching Six Inches of Soil would have everyone feeling inspired but also would have shown them how hard it can be to break into that market. To help with that hurdle, we thought we could run workshops and provide some training using our experience and enthusiasm. We are now 3 or 4 meetings in, we’ve just run a workshop on how to start a market garden; what you need, what your infrastructure might look like, what your pest burdens might be, and the pros and cons of converting previously arable or pasture land.

David: We tell people “Don’t try to set up a massive market garden, try to set up a tiny market garden as part of your overall business.” Starting up a large-scale market garden isn’t always a viable business. What we want to do is encourage people to tack on a market garden to an existing farm business.

Chels: Growing More Growers is a great example of the benefits of farmers supporting farmers through the Thame Catchment Farm Cluster. You also communicate and engage with the wider community. Can you tell me about how you communicate with the public about nature on your farm?

Tracy: We tell farmers that one of the benefits of having a market garden farm shop is that it will bring more people to your farm, it will get more people engaged with your story, it will make more people more interested in looking after the countryside because you’re having lots of face-to-face interactions. For example, when we’re talking to customers in the shop in the spring you can hear the curlews calling and people go “Wow! What is that noise?”and we can say “Ah, those are curlews and that is the reason we want people to keep their dogs on a lead in the spring because they nest on the ground and if your dog chases the adults off they might abandon the nest”. When we have those interactions, we’re able to engage people with the bigger picture of nature and their relationship to the countryside.

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As facilitators of the Thame Catchment Farm Cluster, River Thame Conservation Trust would like to congratulate David and Tracy on their well-deserved accolades and thank them for taking the time to sit down with us and share their story. Their work at Bucksum, as well as beyond the farm, showcases the remarkable impact that passionate, forward-thinking farmers can have on sustainable agriculture and community engagement. We look forward to continuing to support farmers like them through initiatives that strengthen the connection between agriculture, nature, and local communities.