We had a great little farm walk around Culmore Farm, Kilrea today with David Laughlin describing the ins and outs of his organic dairy farming journey over the past 25 years and Jerry and Beth from the Soil Association sharing the current opportunities in the organic market place.
Whether you want to work towards organic certification or not it was hard not to come away enthused from the mornings discussions. Whether in soil health, weed control, grass production, crop rotations, animal husbandry, direct selling or farm diversification there is an awful lot to be learnt from the creativity and innovation you get in an organic farming system.
If you've not come across it before certainly worth checking out the Innovative Farmers website (www.innovativefarmers.org) for their field labs and the farmer led research trials they are running on areas including silvpasture, cover crops, living mulches, mastitis control and many other subjects. And it would be very interesting to hear from people on any subjects we could focus on for an Innovative Farmers Field Lab in Northern Ireland. Perhaps something on establishment methods for multispecies swards or assessing variations in grassland fertilisation on yield, carbon and biodiversity. Let us know your thoughts...
A great organic farm walk as we enjoyed hearing & seeing how David's inquiring mind enabled him to question conventional farming wisdom. By integrating cows and grassland management & renewable energy he has gone most of the way to having a self sufficent farm. Added value dairy products complete the picture of a farm where workers & cattle enjoy a relaxed lifestyle.The post walk hospitality was also excellent, thank you.