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Google Alerts directed me to a film centred around the father of Canadian seabuckthorn yesterday – Colin McLoughlin and his passion for developing an industry centred on the plant in Canada. The 8 minute film illustrates the belief that everyone has in the potential for sea buckthorn, but also the challenges.

The range of products that come out of not just China but Europe, Russia and the US offer quality and functionality. Colin McLoughlin makes an early remark as to the multi use of the plant – but although this translates into product, he also voices comment about claims. Health claims are often made on product but again we come to that subject that they are so difficult to prove in research. This is frustrating as products are used both in humans and animals for skin issues and internal diseases such as gastric ulcers, liver and heart disorders. Although research may find it hard to prove cause and effect, but continued use is as good an indication as any that consumers believe in sea buckthorn product quality and ability.

All those that follow sea buckthorn also know how much research is continually being published. These might not be the large scale studies that develop pharmaceuticals but the reality is that the seabuckthorn industry is small with limited resources. Even so, the dedication of researchers to continue to investigate the qualities of the fruit and leaf are another sign that sea buckthorn is not a fanciful concept. Neither is it a magic bullet for specific issues, but seeing the results of its use is enough to drive investment. For me, having taken oil capsules daily since September 2009 I look for stamina. Stamina that is derived from my body being well, continuously. Stamina that allows me to do long hours of physical work.

Away from the sales pitch – Colin McLoughlin’s film shows one of the challenges as harvesting. It shows the use of the wire tongs that are a favourite tool in Russia. It also shows striping the berries with a thick heavy glove. Both methods work but it relies on the next stage of processing to then remove the leaves and twig that have been pulled off the plant in the process.

Having picked most of my berries this year the old fashioned way – just picking off individual berries by hand, I know how slow and un-commercial this is. It produces a quality sample which is important. It returns to the store a bucket of berries that need little picking over to clean of trash. But this will only work when your time is your own, or your pickers are paid a minimal wage.

Yesterday I restored to my Russian style tong in again a frustration to improve my harvesting rate. Askola and hergo are both smaller berry size varieties. My hergo berries are bunched up tightly in branches. The berries need to be still quite hard to pull them out from these clusters – but of course one wants to harvest when the berries are ripe.

Askola is a variety that I like as a grower because the plants grow well and they are high yielding. This equates the variety to habego. The berries do not seem to cluster so hand picking is sort of possible, but the size of berry just makes it too slow to recover any economic weight of berries in an hour.

The other problem i have yet to master with Askola is harvesting time. I find the berries sharper in taste to habego. Consequently I taste and wait – looking for the sharpness to temper. Last week ( up to August 29th ) they were still hard; the colour pale, more yellow than orange; and the taste bitter in my view. So I thought I could leave Askola to this week.

The result was a mess. Their taste is perfect – in fact I would say as good as habego, but in terms of hand picking around 20% of the berries were too ripe. With small berries the result was like picking wild berries – they just burst. The result is a sample that is very moist – almost wet with broken berry juice. I also tried shaking the bush – maybe not at the right strength or frequency, but the ripe berries would not fall off. So I can see that Askola I would grow for mechanical harvesting.

Alternatively pick them earlier and wait for them to ripen. My experience with the few Russian berries that I saved this year and kept in the fridge was that they did ripen. But there is nothing better than a fruit ripened on the plant – so I think this is a compromise.

So although there are great products out there from sea buckthorn, it is essential that hand assisted or mechanical harvesting is cracked as the principle challenge that faces growers.

Once this has been mastered I believe that sea buckthorn will become a viable crop that will be grown far more widely.

Without question the qualities inherent in the plant drive the passion of people across the world to bring it to the market. Grown in 40 countries across three continents this is no fad. All it needs is investment and its natural nutritional value will drive appreciation and demand.

The advent of the Nutrition and Health Claims regulations came about because there was concern amongst regulators and politicians that products were being sold in the European market with health claims that were false or unable to be substantiated by science. From that moment on regulators made it clear that in their view food is not a medicine.

A medicine is defined as a drug or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease. Over the past fifty years the pharmaceutical and retail industries have developed a readily available selection of drugs for minor ailments that keep us away from doctors. Pills or a course of anti-biotics have become part of life as the means to allow us to carry on with our lives without being troubled by minor illnesses.

Food therefore has become a means of providing the fuel to keep us going. Product nutritional detail is angled towards basic dietry characteristics. Some staples then try to improve their ability to provide more for us by being fortified with vitamins and minerals. Vitamins and minerals are accepted as being good for us, and the fear that food does not provide all it should has developed a massive industry in the supply of supplements. So what drives this fear. We are continually told by agencies and health professionals that we must eat five a day – fruit and vegetables to have a healthy diet. People do not like being preached to as to what is good for us. The pace of modern life and the distractions that it offers do not always fit with a daily habit of three meals of cooked food. Processed/ pre-prepared foods provide the opportunity to reduce everyday routine tasks improving lifestyles or allowing work to fill longer hours.

Food has become a “have to” function as opposed to a necessity; a family affair; a social opportunity; or even dare I say it – the means of keeping healthy.

As farmers we produce the commodity food staples that go to processors to be converted into food products. These products are controlled by regulators to have labels that tell the consumer how well a product will go to providing a “healthy” diet. But for all this we have a country with almost 62% of the country’s adults defined as obese and frighteningly 28% of children also in that category. It has been said this week that this could be the first generation where there is a risk of children dying before their parents.

We also have a government that is having to enforce regulation to make hospitals provide food that is good for patients. I find it staggering that diet has so little appreciation in the NHS as to its potential to influence health.

The concept that food and health are connected seems to have drifted apart. Food can be bad for you we are told time and time again. Too much salt; too much sugar; too much of the wrong sorts of fats; – all negative attributes. Eating a food item because it is good for you might indicate that we are afraid that we might have an illness. Anyway one could say that it is irrelevant whether food is good for you, because we cure our illnesses with pills.

It seems that food has become disconnected from being the natural way to keep your body healthy. It is no big deal. It is just a fact that food that has the right nutrient profile, when eaten with a range of other foods to provide a balanced diet has a good chance of giving you the best opportunity to be healthy. That means healthy without taking supplements.

But of course there is a view that says that modern agriculture is not geared to producing commodities to have widely beneficial nutrient profiles. The way that food passes off farms into the food supply chain does not check nutrient levels at the farm gate. That is the processors job, and if the processor finds the product wanting then the product will be fortified with vitamins and minerals to make the consumer feel they are getting a good deal.

But going back to the Nutrition and Health Claims regulations – one of the reasons why so many applications to have health claims accepted by EFSA have failed is that the research that backs up a claim does not go far enough to prove benefit. Research needs to include detailed and repeatable clinical trials. Clinical trials are the accepted process when testing pharmaceutical – but these tend to be based around single active ingredients.
Food products from natural sources do not include single active ingredients – they are built up of multiples of complex phytochemicals all working in synergy to interact within the human body. Food is grown in the natural environment in which the weather is an ever-changing variable. Soils; plant varieties; management techniques all go to providing a totally inconsistent manufacturing process. From one year to the next; from one farm to the next food product are created but the variable that influence them will ensure that the nutrients within them may have the same profile, but not the same concentration. So from all this, it is not surprising that one cannot prove whether a food product is good for you by scientific means alone.

Having said that some agronomy systems may be able to improve nutrient production better than others, but the economics of farming is such that a more critical view of the production of food nutrients is not valued – in the same way as the NHS seems not to value it either.

But against all this there is nutritional science that identifies the physiological connections between the body; diet and the biochemistry within the nutritional value of food. These are inter connected and this knowledge is not new. So although the European Food Safety Agency may not agree that there is a cause and effect reason why many food can provide benefits, we all know that good food is nutritious and a good diet helps to keep you well.
So if that statement is real then food is as good as medicine, and we should start to value it as such.
The problem with health is that you never value it until it is threatened.

Harvest is progressing this year with varying numbers of helpers depending on the availability of other members of the Eagle family. It has also been a week of classic British weather – sunshine and showers. I think that August on the whole is not a good month when compared with July, but then the year is creeping towards autumn. If anything the temperature this week has been more like autumn. But for all of that the Habego; hergo; Leikora; Frugana and Dorana are all ripening.

In terms of ripeness, Leikora are ripest. Having started picking on Wednesday, August 20th. next year I will pick these a little earlier. They have a thicker skin than Habego and require more of a pull to remove them. The other phenomenon of picking was the cries of despondency as the thorns on Leikora are more prolific, longer and positioned to ambush the un-wary. Having said that the reason for picking them was down to taste which we thought was definately good enough to fight off the pain.

As a comment, I do think that hand picking can be less painful if you pull the branch up with one hand and pick from under the branch, always pulling towards you. This seems to avoid the majority of the problems.

It is a concern that hired in pickers may object to being stabbed to often. Hand picking seems to be the cleanest and best way – time consuming but it needs the sensitivity that fingers provide. Gloves would have to be leather to fend off thorns and I question whether one can pick at a commercial rate with gloves.

In terms of picking rate, variety effects rate. Large berries; yield on the bush and ripeness I would suggest are the principle factors.

My Habego is being really frustrating. They are the largest shrubs and the yield is heavy, although I would say that this is similar to Askola. The problem this year has been that several ( but not all) of the shrubs are ripe in the middle and lower branches and partially ripe in the upper branches. So this week these bushes have been half picked and the tops will be repicked as they come ripe. In terms of yield, the best Habego will have yeilded over 10kg as the middle/lower pick came to 9kg. The berries are large on most bushes which makes huge difference to hand picking.

Yesterday I picked the ripe berries out of the yellow clumps on the upper branches of the habego. The process is slow, but it has freed off the thick clumps of on these higher Habego branches. I am hoping that this will speed up the picking process when/if these yellow berries ripen.

By comparison the Leikora berries are even larger still than the habego making picking easier. Ripeness alters daily and the degree of firmness changes the ease of picking.

The current concentration is on clearing the habego but that will be followed by Hergo. It is unfortunate that these are a smaller berry, although the flavour is good. With thorns also being an issue, I am not looking forward to hand picking these Hergo plants. I am going to cut some of the branches and freeze them. They need a prune and it will speed up the process.

In terms of actual picking rate I have struggled to pick more than 3kg per hour by hand. The habego bushes that I have picked with the part ripe top branches i have found that the rate slips below 3kg. This puts a price on the berries. With the politicians talking about moving the minimum wage to an economic living wage of £7.60/hour this puts home grown berries at a premium.

A truely thornless variety would speed up the process. So my ultimate choice of variety has to look for a big berry that has a good flavour – that need not be sweet, but from a plant that yields more than 10kg and is thornless.

Then of course one should start to look at nutritional content – but that is another topic.

The Siberian plants having been picked by the rooks all that is left is the German plants.

With no facility to make product to sell that has been certified by the Environmental Health this year is focused on product design.
Having started on August 18th there are some observations worth making.

There are not as many berries as last year but they are much bigger this year than last. Average 50 berry weight is 28g., with a size between 8 and 10mm wide and 10/12mm long. This being for Habego.
They are mostly ripe, but it is the berries in the middle and bottom of the plants that are most forward. Some plants are being half picked and the remainder will be taken next week.

Picking is still with last year’s stainless steel tongs. Branches are first striped with the tong and then because of the size of the berries the picking is finished with a hand pick to clear the fruit around the end of the branches.

I am taking the Askola and leikora after this first picking of habego as these seem to be further behind the habego. Hergo – the berries are smaller but have a good taste and will be taken next week.

Picking starts now at 10am and goes through until 2pm, after which the berries are spread on mesh trays and leaves picked out; then put into a mesh screener and shaken to remove the small bits of leaf and small and broken berry. A wash through and shake to dry and then frozen.
All very cottage industry, but at least it is a real harvest of sorts. It certainly would not pay to have hired in help – but with all the family picking everyone gets to have a say on how we can do things better.

The weather is not helping and afternoons have been hit with rain showers, but the forecast is not bad so I hope that picking will be over by the end of next week.

What is weather? As a farmer the weather is a variable over which you have no control. One can try to manage the consequences of weather but before taking action the qustion is – is this a normal phenomenon or a freak incident.

This last winter was very wet and I held off planting the new stock from Siberia until the ground conditions improved in the early spring. But in reality the water table was still high and the young plants hated it. In fact I have lost a lot of them.
Rain may not be a big problem, but combined with heavy clay soil the effect is a soil that is nearly anaerobic.
We are told by climate change experts that the weather will feature extremes so heavy rain, and potentially periods of drought.

Some of my mature german plants have suffered from 90% leaf drop this summer. Is this a result of the wet ground conditions. In reality it is only two plants, but when it is a five year old plant it is a concern to see such a problem without knowing the background reason.

I think it was a result of drainage – or waterlogged ground as a result of a long period of heavy rainfall.
The German plants this year have a smaller yield, but larger berries.

Waterlogging will also mean a draining away of natural nutrients – so I am putting this down to my poorer yield that I should have compensated for with additional foliar feeds.

This is topical as over the past week we have had 30mm of rain in four days. The bonus is that it is becoming easy to pull weeds, but after a wetter than average year, ground conditions need to be good in the autumn in order to spread the mulch compost.

So I need to be thinking about improving the drainage of the orchards.

But the immediate focus is on next week – as a start on picking the German and Finnish berries.
Without machinery this means by hand. Then onto mesh racks to pick out the trash of leaves. Awash through then air dry and chill before freezing.
Now that sounds simple doesn’t it.

I will be timing the process against yield picked and how much we achieve in a day.
I am going to trim off the outer leaves first to give some better access to berries. Last night I thought that we should turn these into tea. So the evenings next week will also be steaming and drying leaves.
Probably at the same time I am going to mix in some gogi leaves, and possibly some lemon thyme for additional flavouring.
Wouldn’t it be good to have a 36 hour day.

The rain has stopped now – so that’s the end of the ramble. But one thing that is certain is that growing seabuckthorn here is built on experience. That is why this project feels like a ten year learning curve.

Before I sign off – it is more than a learning curve – it is a challenge.

At the back of our fridge I put some berries from the Siberian plants that were picked in June.
They came out after supper a couple of nights ago.
Not all varieties were edible, but the Elizaveta was sweet and very good.

This is a problem, because Elizaveta is the one variety that I am really struggling with. At the moment its leaves look curled and not happy – although a good colour.
How am I going to get this variety to grow like the others.
I could give it up, but I think the berries are so good that it is worth giving them extra effort to see if there is a method to bring them into good condition all year.

So 2014/15 another challenge on the list will be to persuade the Elizaveta that the UK is a good place to live – and hopefully reward the effort with some precious berries.

The rooks may have pillaged my Siberian berries, but the German varieties are still ripening.
Sirola has again been the earliest – a July variety. My Orange Energy are still my favourite variety. This year particularly the berries are larger although the crop does not look so good. I would put this down to a very wet winter. The leaves on these plants are also remarkably bold and large this year. The berries are still a little sharp and I expect that I will start to pick the week after next.
Askola seems to provide a larger crop, but for my taste I still prefer the Habego. I will try this year to combine the varieties when making some products – but taste is always king. Selling berries is fine to those that know seabuckthorn but introducing them to new customers comes through quality product. The best tasting produces the best results.

Having taken a week’s holiday in July the last fortnight has been catching up with routine mowing and then spraying with another foliar feed.

Up until now I have been using a conventional compost tea mix which has been pre-mixed with starter for 72 hours and then allowed to brew in the aerator. With a 100 lt brewer I am finding that one mix will provide enough spray for 600 of the larger three year old plants. Since i am hand spraying with a back pack sprayer I expect the plants get a larger dose than if I was applying from a tractor sprayer. All leaves get a good soak plus a dose on the ground – probably a metre square around the plant. I have also been using tap water which then introduces another delay as it has to be aerated for a hour to bubble off the chlorine that is added to the water by the water company.
The whole process is protracted and with 5000 plants to spray it means each week spraying is a routine operation of one block of plants.

Alternatively I was offered a pre-brewed product, along with a hydroscopic seaweed product. This removes the whole brewing process – although it still requires a brewer for mixing. As a live product it does require efficient delivery from the supplier and then it needs to be sprayed within 24/48 hours of arrival.
This can be a problem if the weather turns against you, but as a soil health product rain just makes it an unpleasant job.
I have now rigged up an IPC to collect 1000lt of roof water, so that has removed the delay on using tap-water.

Is the process better? Having now tried both I think as with most things in life, nothing is perfect. Strangely I still like the back pack spraying process as it allows every plant to be closely inspected.
This last week I have removed a number of catepillar web cocoons from plants that would have meant trouble in the future. It also alklows assessment of how each variety is behaving. How young plants are progressing. Whether there are any signs of discolouration or disease.
It does take time and as a single operator time is often a precious commodity.

Trying to spray all 5000 plants with a back pack sprayer within 48 hours has just proved impractical unless I am going to hire in help. So I will cut the job in two.
But at the same time I will keep some conventional compost in stock so that I can give some additional boost to some areas where the soil is poor or the varieties are weak.

This time of year the hot weather bakes our soil hard. This is a real test of which varieties have adapted to the local UK conditions. Sadly, of the Siberian varieties Elizaveta is suffering. Last year Elizaveta and the male Gnom were the worst varieties to suffer from my disease problems.
This year Gnom look really good, with strong lush leaves and strong growth.
Elizaveta however cannot make its mind up. Its leaves have retained colour but they have curled as if they are suffering from lack of moisture. At the same time however they are also sending up long new shoots which show a complete contrast to the curled leaf on the old branches.
I assume that the growth characteristic of this variety is to rely on surface roots which will be most susceptible to desication as the clay soil becomes hard as a rock.
So the plants may be surviving, but from a commercial perspective for me I do not think I would plant them on in heavy soils.

Chuiskaya looks superb. Altaiskaya is also a favorite; Inya had large berries on it ( before the rooks had their feast); Klaudia and Sudarushka both have needed some extra care. Klaudia is the variety that is hardly dormant at all, so it has not really adapted to the UK climate. If ity produces a good crop and does not demand extra management then it still may be a viable option.

Etna; Rosinka and Jessel have all established well and responded to the Compost tea/seaweed management regime, but they are all young plants as yet.

I have to say that the Latvian varieties – Sunny; Mary; Tatjana; and Goldrain have all established well and are strong good looking plants that produced a few berries this year. There are some thorn issues which may make harvesting interesting. Certainly they have adapted to my local environment without a problem.

So that sounds like more of the same.

Plans for the future – over 100 tons of compost coming in next month to mulch the plants/ hand operation is too time consuming but I want to find a low carbon option/
harvest method – hoping to develop a hand tool over this next year/ processing – I need to set up an environmental health agency kitchen so product development can progress out of the farmhouse kitchen!

And finally – it is only fair to you the reader to start to include some photographs of the site.
And – if anyone reading this wants to come to the site please email me on cottonmist.eagle@virgin.net

There is a routine in the farming calendar and my seabuckthorn is no different.
The year from January to harvest will be a rotation of foliar/soil feed and weed control.
My aim is to create a viable agronomy for a small seabuckthorn orchard unit that can be worked as a high value additional enterprise on a family farm.
It is easy to go out and spend money on capital equipment – or to lease, but with a crop that takes several years to establish I see it as essential to keep outgoings to a minimum. With no income on a crop for five years, any spend needs to focus on plant establishment and make use of whatever existing facilities are available without having to buy in special equipment.
Having said that time is money and if your time has to be spread over other enterprises it is easy to allow the “new baby” enterprise to take preference. If the rest of the farm is the core business then it has to be an equal or more important priority in order to keep providing surplus investment funds to develop the new enterprise.
I am not good at that.
It is becoming clear that especially the regular three week foliar feed is an essential.
After that, maintaining some measure of control on weed growth is also necessary. You will notice I say some measure, because mulching should provide this.

This year has been the year of establishing confidence in the use of compost for mulching and compost tea for foliar feed. The combination of these two has provided me with healthy seabuckthorn plants.

Next year I need to mechanise the application processes to allow more timely applications and provide more time for other priorities ( such as marketing/harvesting/processing ).

A visit this week has set part of this development in motion. There probably are mulch applicators on the market. There definately are sprayers. Harvesting tools are a real need – and this year has shown that bird control is a factor.

But I return to my original aim – finding a viable agronomy process. So a visit last week by an engineer to start to develop technical solutions was a milestone.

The first issue was a mulch applicator. The brief for such a machine is simplicity. A tractor pto driven rear mounted hopper which is either self filling or fitted with quick release fittings on the rear arms of the tractor. The mechanism demonstrated last week was robust, powerful and directional in applying the material to rows.
This may take six months to perfect – but a solution to removing manual shoveling from heap to trailer to row.

The second tool was a first prototype for a hand tong to strip berries with speed and minimal damage to the plant. Leaves will still end up in the harvested berries, so the next stage of thought is a vibrating table to seperate the berries from the branch-lets that will contaminate the sample. Again, this will develop over the next 12 months.

The third issue was an means of scaring birds – the Norfolk rook expeller. I will not explain what it is until I have proven that it works, but it is very cheap. Requires managing regularly, but has been tried and tested for years.

Having said that capital spending should be kept to a minimum I need to find a more efficient solution to weeding. Cutting between the rows with my garden ride-on mower works fine. The compost mulch keeps down the weeds between plants but they still keep coming. 100% no-weed tidiness comes at a cost. Since using the compost tea, it seems that the youngest plants are thriving even with competing weeds surrounding their mulched area. So 100% is both costly and not totally necessary. But I need an efficient tool to allow for a rapid cut between weeds.
I am looking for solutions that are electric based that can be recharged with solar.
I am an enthusiast for Husqvarna equipment, having found it reliable, well made and designed.
So my next investment is in a battery system Husqvarna strimmer. It is light, affordable (£400 for the system including two sets of batteries) and is well recommeded.

So that’s the development topic update – now another comment about quality.

This last week there has been more news about the National Health Service plans to try to solve some of the rising issue of diabetes linked to obesity. The option targeting a proportion of the 850,000 people as risk from the disease linked to diet issues.

It occurred to me that one of the problems we have with a culture that demands cheap food is that it has devalued the whole concept of what food is and its importance to our overall health. Food and health are divorced from each other. You eat food because it is provides the energy you need to do what you want to do. On-the-go food outlets have taken over high Streets forcing out grocers, butchers, fishmongers and sellings of raw food ingredients. Food is something that is fitted into a lifestyle and taste is as, if not more important than nutritional quality. Cost is a prime consideration, and there is a concept which says that “you pay peanuts and you get monkeys”: The lower the cost, the lower the perceived value.

Until we start to value food properly the health of populations will decline and that is what the NHS is having to face now. If we produce good quality food and the cost of that food reflects its value, then consumers will start to take food seriously. Good health allows for a quality life style.
Food should be valued as a key ingredient and and appreciated as a means to lifestyle.
Its cost should reflect and reward the effort that goes to ensure that natural quality transmits right through from field to plate.

The hot, dry weather is now cracking our ground wide open. It is remarkable though how this does not stop weeds – particularly docks; ragwort and thistles from still coming back as vigourously as ever. The field with the German and Finnish varieties had been mown tro perfection a month ago, and it had a trim in between, but this week it looked like a jungle – so last week it was manicured to a lawn. The timing was good because i woke this morning and we have had a steady rain last night which will provide some relief for stressed plants.

Stressed but on the whole the plantation – even the youngest one’s is looking good. That said, there is always a problem lurking somewhere. This time it is with a couple of the fully mature german plants.

One has been gradually losing its leaves over the summer, and now a second has joined it.

In this field I have had experience of plants that die back, but return the following spring and now look normal and strong growers. I have also had one that died last winter from being a 2009 planted plant this is disappointing, but it was so wet that i expected some issues. The ground became waterlogged – and this is an issue that I need to improve – probably with a subsoiler rather than a formal drain.

((This is a red herring to the blog, but last Wednesday was our pre-arable harvest farm walk. The crops look really good – including tares that went in in the spring ( due to weather) rather than the autumn when one would normally establish them. Drainage was on the discussion list. The farm was last drained after the 1953 floods, when our seawalls where destroyed. So after 50 years it is time for the farm to be re-drained across the whole farm. A process that will probably be done over five years.))

Back to seabuckthorn – the German plants have not been given any compost tea or seaweed. Why? Well, because as productive, mature plants they seemed to be getting on fine without help. But as disease is something different, so yesterday these two plants with leaf loss had a good dose of seaweed and next week will have compost tea.
The seaweed having been applied yesterday with a good spray around the plants will be helped by last night’s rain – so for once, this is a management plan that is working with the weather helping.

Management is on my mind at the moment because there has been a circular email from the organisers of the EUROWORKS conference to ask for content of presentations by the end of next month.

Why is this relevant? I am an advocate for establishing standards in growing seabuckthorn. I am also giving a presentation at the Euroworks conference.

There will be growers/processors/ even researchers that believe that standards are un-necessary complications that are irrelevant and undeliverable. I sympathise with some of these views because seabuckthorn is a grown crop which means that every year the end result is at the mercy of different weather. There also are many different varieties which have been bred over the years that have different genetic characters that have a limited capacity to deliver different qualities of crop.

Standards can be interpreted in many different ways. They mean something different depending upon the audience to which they are directed and to which they are relevant.
They can be as much of a management tool; as a marketing aid; as a consumer understanding of a product; and in some cases a regulation.

The EU is covered in regulation, which is why many in the UK believe that the EU represents a bureaucratic and authoritative organisation – missing the point about its strength in binding Europe together in both security and global competitive advantage.

I do not see standards as regulation.

I first of all see them as establishing a management system so that I can produce a crop that is consistent with other EU growers. The term “Local” food is a marketing term that can mean anything. It can comes from the village next to a shop. In a global context it can come from the continent that you live in. So as a grower in the UK, I see myself as a European grower, growing a crop for the “local” market, which is a European country.

So a common set of management standards establishes an understanding that any buyer of my crop/product will be able to understand. This can be anything from standards for staff; standards regarding how one manages waste; to common practices that are understood to provide a buyer with a crop that has disease control, a harvesting method that minimises damage to fruit, is stored in a way that ensures it is ready for use and in a condition that is fit for purpose.

None of that says a set concentration of vitamins/minerals/polyphenols. These are issues that are subject to weather and varietal character.

Taste is an issue – but again it is subject to the variables mentioned above.

Part of the discussion is to develop an understanding in the marketplace as to what European seabuckthorn is and how it is differentiated away from other seabuckthorn that is grown around the world.

This issue is important as it should underpin a crop price for the grower; a confidence in market buyers and a recognition of the strengths of seabuckthorn grown in Europe that builds consumer loyalty.

This is a subject that will develop up to the Euroworks conference in Finland in October. The other two topics are cultivation technology and pests and diseases, which promises to be a valuable conference.

In terms of my current problem – losing the first tiny Siberian berry crop to rooks I gather that the same problem existing in Russia. But as there is so much seabuckthorn grown there, the problem is shared across many farms with a possible loss of around 10% of the crop.

I did find an American system – Bird gard, which transmits an alarm sound across up to 30 acres that only the birds can hear. I also have an engineer caming down this week with an “Rook Expeller”. I am not sure what this is – but I cannot wait to see.
As with many scarers it will probably need a number of different devices as birds soon get used to the one’s that do not create a fatal impact on them.

So for now it is back to the farm to brew up next week’s compost tea. There are developments and refinements in this that are exciting in that they improve the speed of the brew process. But that will wait for now.