Chapel Farm- Forward thinking, innovative and facing the challenges of head on!

In December 2022 Roger Baird, Jo Barron and Becky MacAngus of SOPA were fortunate enough to visit Chapel Farm in North Berwick. To say, that every day is a school day, turned out to be a huge understatement when they visited organic farmers Graham Elder and his son Angus.

The visit gave an amazing insight into the importance of thinking out of the (veg) box when developing your organic business. Graham was very forward thinking to take the plunge into organic vegetable production over 20 years ago.

This forward-thinking approach was very evident when visiting the farm and how the Elders handle labour shortages, technology, and constantly thinking about the health and organic matter of the soil.

Today Chapel Farm harvests crops for 9 months of the year. Organic cereals and organic Faba Beans for seed and commercial sale, organic potatoes and more than your 5-a-day organic vegetable requirements, onions, beetroot (red and yellow), leeks, parsnips,carrots, cabbage (red and green) and swedes.

Jo Barron, SOPA Policy Lead, said “It was a encouraging to see the organic system working so well. A visit that gave us lots to think about from utilising over or undersized veg& food waste (chutneys, pickles, animal feed, soil feed), to big labour inputs needed for harvesting certain types of veg and the water requirements for vegetables grown in the dry East Lothian region”

Renewables, water sources and nutrient testing of organic vs non-organic vegetables were all interesting topics discussed along with organic vs regenerative farming and the reliance on chemicals such as glyphosate in non-organic food production.

The Elders have a supply of renewable energy and also bank their own water in a farm reservoir(including gathering rainwater from the extensive farm buildings roofs).  The farm concentrates on  re-cycling everything they possibly can.

Angus and Graham approach organic farming with ease. It’s a way of life and doesn’t pose problems, only different solutions. Their yields are comparable with non-organic vegetable production and crucially they have built up a large and loyal veg-box customer base to keep supply and demand in tandem.

Roger said “It’s a lot of hard work, but they can be proud of their 100% chemical free production,their increased soil health, biodiversity and reduction of carbon footprint”.