2018 becoming a practical reality

After two mild winters it is refreshing to have frosts appearing nightly. It is also good news to finally see some signs of movement in the Brexit negotiations. As a strong advocate of remaining in Europe I have to accept the outcome. In agriculture it poses threats to how we trade and the need for…

Networking and whole crop potential in natural health benefits

Our sea buckthorn harvest this year seems to have generated a whirlwind of travelling. Maybe it was naive to consider that flying plants several thousand miles to a new growing environment was not going to create some ticklish problems, but all new enterprise is about challenge. Harvestability is key to developing any crop. This has…

Back to Siberia and Lisavenko

The primary objective of growing sea buckthorn here at Devereux farm has always been to produce a commercial crop of consistent quality berries. This crop then has to be acceptable to the UK market. With sea buckthorn growing wild in the UK this might not seem like much of a challenge. All crops at some…

Reality and unpredictability

Plans and budgets are all very well, but reality is unpredictable. I had anticipated that our harvest would have been spread over at least 50 days. Generic information about each variety indicated large berry size. The order in which varieties were likely to ripen was formed from actual Brix measurement trends. In reality all this…

A first crop and a taster for the future.

In farming the environment contributes probably more than 80% towards results of growing sea buckthorn here in the UK. By environment I mean, soil, weather, pests and diseases. The other 20% represents the amount of impact one's management has on the end result. Over the past five years, the 20% includes the compost spread, weed…

Ripe berries at last.

The anticipation for picking berries grows daily. As this is our first crop of a fruit that I last tasted in 2009 the issue of deciding precisely when our sea buckthorn berries will be ripe is teasing. We now have a whole month of Brix and berry dimension measurements. As with all crops, breeders declare…

Real UK Siberian Sea buckthorn berries ripening on the bush –

As this week saw the coming of mid summer day it is odd how we perceive the seasons. August maybe the time of school holidays and when many people take their annual leave, but it is the end of summer and also its weather is often unpredictable. June however feels more as if it is…

The excitment builds – our sea buckthorn is ripening.

Embarking on a new idea, a novel or innovative concept means going on an unpredictable journey. There have been many plans for the sea buckthorn at Devereux farm. The first plants from Germany and Finland arrived back in 2009. There were seminars and consultant meetings. Business plans written, meetings with marketing companies; and visits to…

Harvest is coming – after 11 years.

It has been a historic month and no escaping the election. Those who will look back on this period of our history will have the benefit of knowing how the actions that we have taken will have impacted on our country.  Voting is a valuable right. The choices we make as individuals may not end…

Everything changes and always has.

Our family has farmed here in North East Essex since the 1880s. In those early days the focus was on sheep, with my great grandfather developing a flock of pedigree Suffolks to graze the extensive marshes that made up most of the farm. The flock was dispersed in 1926 as part of farm re-organisation. A…