The observational farmer
LOUISA ELLERKER
MEET THE NEW APPRENTICE
In May 2020, Louisa started the biodynamic farming apprenticeship at Plaw Hatch Farm and will be here for two years. After spending time in The Netherlands completing her masters in Food Geographies, and subsequently working on a biodynamic orchard, Fruittuin van West in Amsterdam, she decided to move back to England to benefit from the work based learning Plaw Hatch offers. Around the farm, Louisa is aiding the farm team with daily feedings, milking the cows, egg collection and helping the arable operations. She has also travelled WWOOFing, where time in Kenya and Jamaica solidified her dream to combine food and farming as a career: "I am enjoying the practical elements of working on the farm, learning the temperaments of the cows, the routine of the chickens, operating the tractor and learning to make Biodynamic preparations, all with a team of fantastic farmers! I am excited about being immersed in the farm, watching the seasons change and how they have a direct impact on our work.”
Louisa writes an informal blog, and has offered an article, ‘The Observational Farmer’ (below), for our Farmer’s Daybook. She explores the political nature of farming as well as discussing how even the most seemingly mundane tasks on the farm are hugely important for a Biodynamic system.
THE OBSERVATIONAL FARMER
LOUISA ELLERKER
A large part of my day is caring for chickens on a biodynamic farm. Feeding them twice a day, removing the dust from the water drinkers, scraping poo from where they lay eggs, and of course, collecting the eggs in the afternoon. We have around 400 laying hens and get around 350 eggs per day, all collected by hand and sold in the farm shop for 46 pence each.
In the UK there are estimated 500,000 battery hens via the industrial farming system (aka conventional) – these hens are caged, which largely means they never see natural day light, have never been out on grass, and are largely fed antibiotic concentrates to prevent the spread of disease. The caged hens’ poo is likely to drop into a nicely automated waste removal mechanism. For a farmer with 20,000 hens, that’s a lot of chicken poo to deal with. This type of industrial farming really took off post WW2, where the farmer aims to reduce costs to maximise profits through controlling the environment of the cage/barn through technology and commodification of the animal. In the supermarket, caged eggs are about 8 pence each.
These daily chicken tasks create a connection to my scrambled egg breakfast. The eggs from the farm hens have a bright yellow yolk where you’d think turmeric has been added, and I once got a triple yolker. Also, their freshness makes them so much easier to poach! This daily feeding, care and collecting routine as a farmer gives a great deal of content especially when you see the chickens running to you when you come to feed, and when you eat the eggs.
Golden manure
I also support my colleagues in managing the housing for the chickens; where we together move their fences to fresh patches of grass, muck out the permanent chicken houses, and move the polytunnel houses to fresh pasture. This fills up plenty of hours and requires diligence because if chickens are disturbed too much, or their food quality declines, their egg laying drops dramatically. Not to mention their vulnerability to parasitic worms, weather extremes and foxes. Food production remains simple, however at the expense of taking too much away from the welfare of the hens and the balance of the biosphere I sometimes catch myself, on my daily rounds, and wonder if I am making the best use of my time as an apprentice. The new polytunnel chicken house requires me to scrape chicken poo off the nest boxes which takes about 3 minutes per tunnel, to keep it clean(ish) and preventing it getting on the eggs. If my mates saw my daily tasks would they think I was wasting my time, skills and ambition? The skill of scraping poo I guess, progresses by how much poo I don’t get on my overalls, and if I can get it in minimal swooping action…but that’s about it. The other element to poo scraping though, and what the urban neoliberal gaze wouldn’t see/notice, is that animal poo is an organic farmer’s gold.
It is a sign of the health and vitality of the animal (just like us humans). If there is something wrong with the feed, water, grass, parasites, from the environment we curated for the hens, then one of the first places they will let you know is in their poo. Everyday someone on the farm takes 3 minutes scraping chicken poo. Making this observation of the poo is therefore part of the daily rounds. Forcing us farmers to look at the quality of the environment we have given the animals that provide us with food, when on the outside all it seems we are doing is scraping poo.
Chicken manure is highly fertile, and a great way to holistically fertilise the farm fields to eventually improve soil quality and grass growth. In the chicken polytunnels, the poo drops down a plastic mesh onto the ground, leaving it easy to dry and collect or harrow into the field to ultimately improve soil quality.
Undervalued farmers
This video of Colin Tudge talking about the food system touches upon this farmer’s skill which is often overlooked or not seen through the neoliberal gaze.
Halfway into the video, he questions why white-collar workers like bankers are more valued over farmers. He links this to society deeming success through making the most money, in the shortest amount of time. He then swiftly goes to say that in the current environmental crisis, future farming requires more complex intensive skills like dexterity and lateral thinking than ever.
Farming is intellectually challenging, and it requires perspective to really see what the farmers are doing in their manual, daily routines. What you don’t often see are the observations a farmer is making whilst herding the sheep, checking the cattle, milking the cows or scraping the poo. These observations draw the farmer back to the biosphere and the condition of their land, to the quality of the animals and, consequentially, to food production.
Keep the simple in the daily
The ability to bring these daily routines into the bigger picture of the farm is the skill of farming and the key to being a good farmer. As Tudge states, the UK alone needs eight times more farmers than it has for a better food system. This isn’t simply training people to push buttons or drive a tractor; it’s instead allowing for curious minds to bring an agrarian renaissance back into farming.
Under the neoliberal gaze, farming isn’t going to make me rich or ‘successful’. I will not be coming up with ways to take the labour out of farming and food production. Instead, I aspire to be doing it with my own hands with a group of like-minded people, and in order to put back into the biosphere what we have taken out of it for our food production. The best way to do this is to be an observational farmer in your daily routines.