Watch Gaia’s latest film – Llafur Ni (Our Grains)– about a farmer’s 20-year quest to find and revive the Welsh black oats his grandfather once grew. Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles has been on an epic quest to rediscover the rare black oats his grandfather once grew in Pembrokeshire fields overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. For […]
Read Article
Reviving Rare Oats, Spreading Bere Barley and (Re)Developing the Machinery to Process Them At the start of February, as the snow fell and the sky brooded, the grain growers of our Welsh and Scottish networks grabbed a coffee, signed on to Zoom, and settled in for a long day of talking oats, bere barley […]
Read Article
Today we are delighted to announce that the Hwb Hadau Cymru/Wales Seed Hub has launched! The Hub is a cooperative of growers producing seed on Welsh farms using agroecological practices. They aim to grow open-pollinated (OP) varieties that are not widely available elsewhere and grow well in the Welsh climate. The Wales Seed Hub is […]
Read Article
The Organic Growers Alliance is a network of growers, farmers and horticulturalists. This article by Katie Hastings was originally published in their Organic Grower No 55 Summer 2021 Newsletter. https://organicgrowersalliance.co.uk/ The journey from producing your first seed crop to selling it is not so much a straight road as a labyrinth. While growing […]
Read Article
The Seed Sovereignty Programme has been supporting the formation of a fledgling seed cooperative in Wales. Wales Coordinator Katie Hastings describes their journey so far. Seed breeds cooperation. We have been training Welsh growers in seed production for four years now, and they come to class wanting to share stories of the varieties they are […]
Read Article
In this week’s instalment of ‘So You Want to Start a Seed Coop?’, our Wales Coordinator Katie Hastings talks us through the ins and outs of the Record-keeping and Legalities behind selling seed collectively… Selling seed can seem like a minefield of legislation, but this is not impenetrable. The first thing we did at […]
Read Article