Deben Farm Club held its annual farm walk on 9th May, kindly hosted by Boxford Farms.
The walk was well attended and our host Robert England gave a fascinating tour of the orchards and integrated enterprises on the farm. Starting with the cherry orchards we learnt how labour intensive keeping various pests and hail off the cherry trees – coupled with how innovation and technical solutions were being implemented to allow for increased production. Destinations for the cherries included the M&S amongst others and also all the way to Dubai for the best cherries (UK buyers aren’t prepared to pay enough to get those ones!).
Gala apples are the mainstay variety in the apple orchards with a few others in small areas, although various supermarkets had reneged on agreements for special varieties resulting in extra work to convert them to something marketable.
Our walk then took in the AD plant which has been expanded from its original size under various incentive schemes. The feed stuff for the plant spends over 120 days in the chambers to produce the most gas and allow the digestate to be dried using the heat from the generator engines to produce spreadable organic fertiliser.
With the Copella fruit juice factory on site (although not owned by the Peake family anymore) a working relationship sees all of the fruit pulp fed into the AD plant and energy sold to the factory. Similarly the hotel and spa at the family owned Stoke by Nayland Resort is entirely heated and run on electricity generated from gas supplied by the AD plant.
A large poly tunnel which had been used to grow exotic fruit and veg for the resort until the pandemic is now used to breed beneficial insects to protect the soft fruit. High tech solutions – plastic bottles and baler twine!! – are used to harvest them.
The evening finished with a buffet meal from our usual farm walk caterers.
