[Pottymouthbuddhist]

Hi Everyone,

I hope I’ve picked the most appropriate forum for this post - apologies if not.

I’m in the process of buying an acre of grazing pasture. I’d like to change the use of at least a part of the land to a land share type setup, with a view to vegetable growing, and probably keeping some poultry as well. Whatever space is left over will remain grass, although I’d like to plant a few deciduous trees as well. I’ll be entirely honest and say that whilst I really enjoy growing myself, I don’t have enough time to put in a huge amount of labour, so really I’m looking for someone to benefit from the space I can provide them, and to provide me with some produce in return - as yet I have no idea what sort of split would be reasonable. I haven’t really got much further than that so I’d be very interested in people’s advice and opinions on all sorts of subjects. including, but not limited to:

1. Change of use permission required or not
2. Insurance and disclaimers (realistically more like disclaimers)
3. How much of the area to dedicate to vegetables in order to provide plenty for say 6 people in total
4. What sort of produce split is typical in land share type agreements?
5. Whether I’d need to connect to the water supply, or just harvest rainwater?
6. Options for keeping the remaining grassed area under control (I don’t imagine there will be much grassed area left over but if there’s any low impact way to control it that would be great)
7. Poly tunnels and required permissions
8. Grants for tree planting?
9. How to go about finding appropriate people to share with, in terms of being countryside aware, knowledgeable etc etc.

My feeling at the moment is that the best approach would be to spend most of this year working out what’s going to go where and dealing with preparation, rather than rushing into things and getting it all wrong. So this is very much just a starter, because there are so many things going around my head at the moment that it would be good to have a bit of direction.

There are probably loads more things that I haven’t thought about, but any input on these or other queries would be good to get me on the right track. I’m quite experienced with chicken keeping, so don’t need too much help there, but any input on the other areas or anything I’ve missed would really be appreciated.

I don’t know how long we will want to hang on to the land - maybe 5 years, maybe forever, but I really don’t want to simply have some sheep on it when it could be used for something so much more special and hopefully provide a great resource for some other people as well.

Apologies for the long first post, but thanks in advance for any input!

[bazzais]

It sounds like a pipe dream - however I am not saying that your dream is unobtainable.

Have you thought about renting an allotment thats chicken friendly and getting in with the veg growers around?

[bazzais]

love the username by the way - I am a pottymouthathiest

[Fleecewife]

Hi, I can't help with most of your questions, but we have tried the plot sharing.  We did it on a very informal basis and it was not successful.  What happened was that we bought all the seeds, seed potatoes etc and we already owned the gardening equipment.  In theory, they shared the work and took a proportionate share of the produce.  In fact they turned up rarely, did very little work, but helped themselves to a large proportion of the crops, and ended up breaking three garden forks.
So I would suggest that you establish a very formal arrangement with your land sharers, so they know the amount of work you expect from them, and the amount, or proportion of the crops they have helped to produce. Sounds harsh but my experience tells me other people will readily take advantage of naivety.


For the tree planting grants, you have to be planting rather more than 'a few' trees before grants become available.  Even then it's not worth the paperwork.  We planted about 1,000 hedge and tree saplings, without grants, in our own time, sourced from where we wanted, putting in our own fences and doing the planting ourselves, without having to use contractors as can be the case if you're looking for a grant.  Saplings are cheap, and can be bought in bundles of as few as 10 mixed trees.  They do need to be staked and the trunk wrapped in a protector, and if you have animals anywhere near they need a four stob and mesh cage too 

[Ghdp]

For what it is worth Fleecewife  just described our experience of 'allotment sharing'!!!! -0nly in some cases they took all the produce. It was better we discovered to physically subdivide the area and be solely responsibly for planting and harvesting of each bit.

[Pottymouthbuddhist]

It sounds like a pipe dream - however I am not saying that your dream is unobtainable.

Have you thought about renting an allotment thats chicken friendly and getting in with the veg growers around?

I think that's quite fair - it pretty much is a pipe dream - I'm buying the land for a different reason, so it's no problem if we end up just grazing it, but I thought I'd look at all possibilities anyway.

Regarding the username - atheist, buddhist, we're all brothers of the Pottymouth

[Pottymouthbuddhist]

Thanks for the info Fleecewife and Ghdp - that's really helpful to know. I'd already figured there was a high chance of people losing interest or taking advantage. Actually one of my bigger worries was people with no idea what they were doing coming in and doing more harm than good, so your experience doesn't entirely surprise me although it would be quite nice to think that it could work if you're able to find the right people.

And for the amount of trees we're looking at, it's no problem to put them in myself - probably better to do that than have to keep bundles of paperwork anyway.

As it stands I think we'll probably look to graze it for the first year or so and just start a few conversations going. I certainly don't want to rush into anything, not least as I can see it getting very expensive very quickly.