Are we organic?

Are we organic?

Well, there’s an interesting question.

There are lots of reasons to buy organic food. We do a lot.

But we also buy locally-grown food from small producers that aren’t certified organic, but who grow more in harmony with nature than many large-scale, monoculture, organic farmers. After all, the world needs more small-scale growers, working sensitively with nature. And it needs far less monoculture.

At Tyn y Berllan, everything we do is about nature, community and resilience.

We approach our nursery, and the land around it, holistically. It is managed regeneratively, working closely with nature to bring in biodiversity, build a living soil and nurture wildness.

We never use synthetic chemicals and all of the fertilising we do of our trees is done using home-made fertilisers.

We produce our own biofertilisers for our trees using a mix of locally and sustainably-produced seaweed fertiliser from Car-y-Mor, waste manure from the farm next door, comfrey and nettle from our own land, and even urine captured from people that stay on our little campsite. Used within our irrigation and as foliar sprays, this does the feeding job for our trees to help them along, whilst also nurturing soil life.

Our irrigation system was created with the support of the fantastic, community resilience organisation Transition Bro Gwaun, who generate grant funding from a community owned-turbine. It means, in a way, our trees are even grown using wind power!

We control unwanted visitors like aphids or voles by encouraging their predators like ladybirds, lacewing and buzzards and kites. We produce much of our own compost, using waste from the smallholding alongside that campsite compost toilet again! And we support the trees to access what they need using mycorrhizal fungi.

All of our trees are produced using cuttings we source on site from our collection of over 100 “Mother trees” and from small-scale Welsh orchards and nurseries. Neil from Tyn y Berllan was also instrumental in creating Pembrokeshire's Ein Coed Mother Orchards network too, which opens fruit tree cuttings up to anyone that wants them.

To be able to say you’re organic officially, you need to be certified organic by the Soil Association. That means you are audited and checked that you mean certain standards. For a lot of smaller producers, it’s added complexity, a lot of paperwork and quite a bit of cost, when you are already doing the right thing.

So officially, no, we’re not organic. But you get the gist.