Heat! Camera! Action!
The planet’s losing.
We’re in a hole. Climate, nature and social inequality crises. Story with a swerve gets us out. It’s the shape of all our lives. Up-down, down-up. And this shape of slantwise story, it creates hope and agency.
In this podcast, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers. They share their ideas on how we get out of holes. Good story is not just a hiding place. It’s a finding place.
The podcast vibe is the warm-dark daguerreotype photograph, invented at the start of the industrialised era, before human-induced carbon pollution of the atmosphere.
My guests are writers and poets, artists and scientists, environmental and business leaders, farmers and landowners, local and national activists, festival directors, therapists, religious leaders. All are storytellers too.
The music clips at the start and end of episodes were recorded at public dances in Punakha and Thimphu (Bhutan).
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027. It is called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."
Heat! Camera! Action!
21 Charlotte Hollins on community-owned Fordhall Farm: being courageous with 8000 member-landlords
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I’m talking online with Charlotte Hollins who with brother Ben are the farmers and business leaders of the Fordhall Community Land Initiative in Shropshire. Their father Arthur was an early adopter of organic methods in the 1940s, also of inviting the community in. over the years, natural and social assets accumulated. But their landlord sought to evict them after he died. They were in a deep hole. For a change, the small people win, and Charlotte and Ben come up with a model to sell non-profit shares in the farm: 8000 people invest in the idea. They can see that something magic lies ahead. Twenty years on, and the 130 acre (50 hectare) farm and businesses employ over 150 local people in summer. There’s the livestock and crops, also farm shop, glamping yurts, café onsite, social prescribing, care farm, residential groups, alternative education projects, mobile catering – and abundant nature.
Charlotte says, “It’s a happy farm, full of energy, with so many people involved.” There are 1000 worms per square metres, otters in the river.
“We’ve been very good at linking to people,” she says. It’s made them all more creative.
Charlotte adds, “We’re still here, Fordhall’s thriving.”
Charlotte’s heroes and heroines: her father, and all their shareholders, who took a punt on them, a risk.
Charlotte recommends we make small sifts in what we do and say, especially the everyday stuff, and talk to people. Start a social movement.
She also says: buy a share in Fordhall, for in 2026 they’re going to ask the community again.
Fordhall Farm: https://www.fordhallfarm.com/
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."
It's a real pleasure to be talking to Charlotte Collins today. She and her brother Ben are the tenant farmers of the Ford Hall Community Land Initiative, which is a farm, as you can see from the background of Charlotte, a farm with a lot of landlords because of the model of ownership that you came up with, a really novel way of getting people involved in your farm, which does about actually about a thousand things altogether, if you look at the list of activities. So over the last 20 years now, isn't it, Charlotte? 20 years this year, indeed.
SPEAKER_00It is, yes.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. So would you like to start by telling listeners and viewers a bit about Ford Hall and how it came to be this kind of bright shining model that you've got?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so as you said, Jules, um Ford Hall Organic Farm in Northropshire is now in community ownership. And um, but it wasn't always the case. We are celebrating our 20 years in community ownership this year. And prior to that, um it was a private tenanted farm. And I grew up here, my dad grew up here, my grandfather, great-grandfather before them, all grew up at Fordhall Farm. So for a number of generations as a family, we've been tenant farmers here. And it was my late father, Arthur Hollins, that turned the farm organic just after the Second World War. So very early in the organic movement, um, when he saw the detrimental impact that chemical fertilisers and pesticides were having on our sandy soils here. And um, he turned the farm organic, he was one of England's first commercial yogurt producers in the 1960s and 70s, and he also developed a system of foggage farming where the livestock are 100% pasture fed. And Ben and I grew up here at Fordal during those latter years. Um, and in the early 1990s, Muller Demery became our next door neighbour, and our landlord at that point saw the potential to sell all of our top fields across the top of the valley here at Fordall Farm to Mullers for them to expand and develop their yogurt factory. So the irony wasn't lost in dad being one of England's first commercial yogurt producers, and then this great big German yogurt manufacturer, yeah, moving next door. Um, and the David and Goliath battle that kind of ensued after that um picked up some press interest. It was about 10 or 15 years nearly of the family fighting to stay here, fighting for eviction notices. The route more and more money went into legal cases and arbitration cases, less money went into the management of the farm, the farm deteriorated. A generation gap also existed between men and myself, who were both still quite young and at school. We were born in the 80s, um, and so and throughout the 1990s, dad was getting towards his 80s, so he wasn't able to do quite so much on the farm. So that generation gap meant there was also a lack of labour force on the farm, a lack of money because it was being directed into legal fees, the deterioration of the farm then gave the landlord the ammunition to evict us, and we were finally due to be evicted in the March of 2003. And to cut a very long story short, Ben and I managed to secure a new short-term tenancy in that in 2003, for 18 months while the landlord reassessed what he was going to do with the land because Mullers had waited so long to get hold of it, they were suddenly looking at other options. Um, and I was 21, my brother was 19, we had 11 cows, six pigs, six sheep, no idea what we were doing, not really a penny to our name, but young and enthusiastic and kind of just think you can take on the world. And we're like, yeah, we can take on a tenancy, we can build a business, we can do this, that, and the other. So we were granted an 18-month tenancy on this very run-down farm and began selling what we had direct to the public from the very beginning, as well as working off the farm ourselves. And it was through those 18 months we did huge amounts of community consultation and invited the community back onto the farm, as dad had always done, you know, for decades before us, to be honest. And it was through that community consultation and sharing of ideas and sharing of the problems that community ownership came through as a potential solution. And we were eventually able to negotiate an option to buy the farm. We were um given um 12 months to raise £800,000, took us six months to get our legal structure incorporated, left us six months to raise £800,000. And it was through this community ownership model, so community benefit society, where we were able to sell £50 non-profit making shares, two members of the community, of which we now have a nationwide, no, an international even community of shareholders that collectively own Ford Hall Farm right across the world, who all purchased £50 non-profit making shares on a one-member, one vote system, not a one-share, one vote system. So it stays completely democratic. They are all lifelong members. Um, should they wish to be lifelong members, they collectively own Ford Hall Farm for perpetuity, and that membership is open, so it's evolving and growing all of the time. And um, me and Ben, or Ben and I are now tenants to the community that want us to be here rather than one landlord that doesn't want us to be here, which is a much better place to be. Um, Ben, really, my brother is the tenant farmer, he manages the livestock, the farm shop and butchery, normal limited company, lives in the farmhouse with his family, they pay rent, but there's also this community landlord sitting around the farm. So as the Ford Hall Community Land Initiative and its membership is the custodian of Ford Hall, but we're not just taking rent money from the tenant farmer, but it's also here utilising the farm as a community resource. So my day job is then managing the Ford Hall Community Land Initiative. So I'm employed by the community to manage that organisation. We have a staff team of about 30 people, mostly part-time, and we use the farm as a community resource through so many different activities, as you kind of alluded to um at the beginning there. And it's really anything you see going on at Ford Hall, which is not directly farming, is um or the kind of butchering farm shop side, is run by the charitable community benefit society that owns the farm. So whether that be keeping public access to the farm through our farm trails, you know, having yurts which we rent out for clamping, running our cafe on site, running weddings and birthday parties, but also things like social prescribing. So we support people with a cancer diagnosis, we have an alternative curriculum project that supports vulnerable young people, we have a care farm that supports adults with learning disabilities, do lots of school visits, we have residential groups, brownies, cubs, scouts and the like, you know, and really it's a hive of activity as it was in dad's heyday, in a different way, but responding to the needs of our local community. And at the heart of that, it remains a working organic farm, you know, with a tenant farmer who has um a livelihood on the land that's supported by this amazing collection of people across you know the world, including amazing people like yourself, um Jules, who support and encourage us um on that journey. And it's an ever-evolving site according to the needs of our natural environment and the landscape and the climate and the needs of our local MIDI community.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. This is just quite inspiring, really, Charlotte. I mean, it is a brilliant thing that you manage to do. Um, one of the one of the themes of the pod is is um we're in a big hole globally when it comes to climate and nature recovery, and we kind of don't know how to get out of it, but we're looking for sort of inspiration and the courage to believe we can get out of this really big hole. But what you described there was being in a big hole, um, you know, set multiple generations of your family on the same farm, um, and uh Goliath comes along to take over, um and the small people actually in the end win, which they don't often do. Um and uh that took a lot of courage and and an amazing kind of resilience to be able to do that. And you you also it strikes me as we'll come to the this this amazing diversity of of um activities, business units, whatever kind of language we want to use for them, as you just described, that are tied into the farm. Um just remind us how many hectares the whole far the whole farm is.
SPEAKER_00I I'm old school, so I still have three acres. So that's okay. It's so 128 acres of Ford Hall farmers in community ownership. There's 12 acres which we didn't purchase, which we're still trying to purchase, and the landlord is still trying to get development on. So there is cottage field, which is kind of like a bit of a thorn in our side 20 years later. We're still on that battle. Um and Ben, as our tenant farmer, actually rents another 150 acres locally, which he's added to the farm and turned that landscape organic, but that's all on short-term tenancies. But there's 128 acres of Ford Hall farm in community ownership for perpetuity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's just over 50 hectares, and you're employing 30 people on that. I mean, perhaps more when it comes to the farming operation part.
SPEAKER_00Um a lot more, yeah. So um for the Ford Hall Community Land Initiative and all of our activities, we employ 30, of which is about 11 and a half full-time equivalent. Um, there's another six working um on the farm and in the farm shop full-time. And then in the summer months, our tenant farmer Ben, or my brother, has diversified and does event catering. So he makes his own burgers and sausages and goes out to some of the big events. And during the summer months, he's employing over 100 people. So on 128 acres, we're employing in the summer collectively over 150 local people on a very extensive, you know, farming system, which you'd be lucky to employ one person. And it does that because of the farming system, because everything's growing slow, because we're working with nature, because that at the heart of it is what allowed all of the community engagement and everything else around it to flourish. And every activity that we do, you know, whether it be some of the community activities or whether it be the trading activities, you know, like the cafe or or Ben's Farm Shop, we're working direct with our customers, with our local community. We have that relationship. So you have a trusted and resilient model as well. You're not at the beck and call of the big supermarkets or the big contracts, and we're not isolated, which is a really big thing in farming. Um, and because you haven't got that isolation, because it's feels like a very much a shared experience, whichever, you know, whether it's working for the Ford or Community Land Initiative or whether it's Ben as the tenant farmer, you feel that you can try new things, you feel that you can take a bit of risk, you can feel that you can go, actually, does that sound like a good idea? Well, I've chat to some local people. So if they think it's a good idea, oh they do. Oh, let's try it then. Oh, yes, people want to buy that. And as a result of that, the feedback mechanisms are so dynamic and efficient and quick, you can respond easy to changes, but you're constantly evolving and in a positive way. And I find it really um sad to hear how so many farms aren't able to do that because of the systems that they're trapped within. And we're just very lucky that we've been able to set ourselves up in a way which sits independently a lot of in a lot of those traditional um agricultural systems.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the a lot of the the key factor there must be down to you and Ben and your father, Arthur, um uh, and how you've approached this kind of creativity. I mean what you've what you've described is a sort of uh, you know, it's as creative as somebody who makes things, who paints, or writes music, or writes books, or other kinds of things that one would sometimes kind of just put in a sort of, oh, that's kind of creative cultural stuff. Um and what you're doing is is farming, but it's more than that. But actually, to make it successful in the way you've described, you have to be creative, which means taking risks and also taking a deep breath when things go wrong, because that's what happens in life. Things you do something and it doesn't work, and you go fine, all right. It was worth trying, you know, and and and and that's actually part of the sort of energy that you get into something is being comfortable with experimentation in the way you've described. I mean, is that fair?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's interesting. I've never heard um myself described as creative. I always thought when I was go going through school, I always wanted to be one of those creative people. I never felt that I ever was. Um, and I guess the difference is the fact that our creativity is not coming from ourselves as individuals, right? Where an artist might sit there and go, what do I want to put on that page? How do I want to express myself? And for us, it's very much a relational development with the people around us. So actually, we're kind of going, give us your ideas, what do you think about this? And actually, you get the input of tens, hundreds, thousands of people into that creative mix, and then you go, right, out of all these ideas, how do we shape this in a way that is going to work the best? And then let's try that out. Oh no, that doesn't work, let's try something else out. So I think we've been very good from the offset around adapting and shaping ourselves and listening and sharing the challenges as well as sharing the successes and just being very open and transparent about the and I think that open being open, the openness and the transparency allows creativity to then flow with maybe as a result, yeah, because you've got it's not a closed system, it's kind of going, come on, everyone, come with your ideas, some will work, some won't work, some we can do, some we can't do. But actually, if we don't have the ideas, we don't have anything. But I definitely don't see me as creative as in me having those ideas. I bounce off everyone else like everyone else does.
SPEAKER_01But actually, I think what you've described is the power of story, because story is relational. Um, story does not exist until it relates to someone else and with someone else. I mean, it needs audience, and and story is created through exactly those same sorts of interactions with other people, with feedback, uh, by talking to people, um, and hearing what works and what doesn't work. And so you you get these concepts by putting on a play and sitting in the audience and seeing what people make of it, you know, or that it's entirely irrelational in the way that you've described them. It's just that you happen to have developed a model that has your audience, your supporters, on the doorstep and and closely involved. They're not not far away. Um, and maybe that's the trap of other sorts of farming that you described is that when people are uh farming in a way for commodities and markets, you really are a long way away from people who could give you feedback and an arm around your shoulder when it doesn't work, or an encouragement, or a suggestion or two. You have to create a whole new system to help do that, and people actually kind of don't know how to do it. And maybe that's the trend that conventional farming falls into. It's it's moved away from relational collective action, which is what you've got.
SPEAKER_00I I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Jules, that actually if you look back, and you will have done this yourself in your own research, you look back in farming's history, actually, farming was so connected to its local community in so many different ways. You know, whether it be people coming to help at harvest time, whether it's a factory employed lots of local people to help with the manual labour on the site, everything naturally was sold locally. And because the way agriculture has become mechanized, you have less people working on the land. The way our food system has become centralized, you have less connection with who your food is landing with. And the narrative as a result of that that comes through to farmers is only what they're seeing in contracts from those big suppliers. We want it cheaper, we only want straight carrots, we only want this. It they're not seeing what the consumer really cares about. They're seeing what the um what the end salesperson, mostly the supermarkets, those that are making the most money on food, what they want to make their profit margins. And and as a result of that, you there aren't the people on the farms anymore. And actually, farmers are scared to have people on them as a result of that, because you know, are they just going to come and cause trouble for their livestock with their dogs, or are they going to leave litter? And it you just see all the problems rather than actually all the benefits. And it can be quite scary when you've lived in that world of I'm distant to the consumer and and to um those members of my community that are eating my produce, to then coming face to face with them and you selling them a pack of your sausages and then tasting them and then coming back and going, Oh my gosh, did you like this? That's actually also really scary. And and a lot of farmers, um, it that's quite a big shift, but also a lot of farmers aren't used to having those conversations and making those relationships with anyone that's not another farmer because they're not seeing them, they're not practicing it. So it's it's become such a massive shift to jump into that space. And I guess for us it was easier in a way because dad had diversified the farm and kept it diversified throughout his life. That even when Ben and I were growing up here, whilst the yogurt factory didn't exist anymore, dad did have a farmhouse restaurant, he did give farm tours, he had school visits coming. And even Ben and I could see when we were growing up at Ford Or that it was when people stopped being involved in whatever shape or form that was, that's when the farm really lost its heart and its life, as it were. And it it just felt like a place that was happy when there was people here. When there was people here, the energy of the farm just completely changed. It didn't matter why the people were coming or what they were coming to do, the energy just felt like, yeah, this is what this place thrives on that. It feels happy. And when there's no one here, it feels empty and desolate, even though you've got all this wildlife and livestock around you. And I really I think what we've done at the Ford at Ford Organic Farm is we've kind of created a new structure to do something that used to happen very organically a hundred years ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or even longer. I mean, if we want to talk about the kind of um uh more ancient antecedents, the the um uh your area of the kind of central part of England going up north and south, but not so much over to the east where I am, was where the common field system, open field farming, as it was called, was developed and was by Anglo-Saxon uh uh in that era, where there were lots of people with small patches on the land farming in collective fashion with collective rules and so forth. And those were the lands that were enclosed from the 1200s onwards, 1200s to 1400s, then again in the 160s, 1700s, 1800s, um, uh to private closed-off ownership away from a collective model. So it strikes me that you've you've kind of bent the arc of history a little bit, as Martin Luther King um said, by taking back to a more collective, more people-oriented model. Um and um it's kind of amazing that it feels unusual because uh it ought to be much more common, really. I mean, it's just a great thing. Um tell me a little bit about uh the the your dad as being an an earlier adopter of the thing called organic farming, as you've described. You've you've got a kind of a patch of land that has been farmed organically for uh 80 years-ish. Um and so it's had the chance to build up assets, soil quality, nature, um, a whole range of other things that are helpful to the farming. Uh, does it look and feel different to other farms in the region that are on similar soils, for example? Um do you feel as though you can say there's 80 years worth of this accumulation of of various forms of what we might call natural capital, but natural assets on the farm have come about because he was an early adopter?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um 100%. I mean, a a couple of kind of very key differences um that resulted from dad's research and what he did here was the plants that we have in the pasture, not including our trees, but we've got over 70 different plants recorded across our pastures at the farm. And they are permanent pastures that have not been ploughed up for decades and decades and decades. And if you just think farmers now, when they buy, if you buy, look at grass seed, it tells you, oh, this one lasts two years, this one lasts five years. So the farmers are then plowing those fields up and reseeding on in some areas, but when they're buying seed mixes, a diverse pasture or herbal lay might have 20 species in it and that's That's considered like that's a lot, you know, and a standard conventional field as of a few years ago was kind of like five or six, it'd be very fast growing ryegrasses and so forth. So the fact we've got over 70 different plants in the farm, and that's grasses, that's herbs, there's wildflowers, that's giving a diversity that keeps our soil healthy, keeps all the microbes healthy, helps means that we've got a growing season in almost all of the different climatic conditions because some of those plants will grow better in wet conditions, some are in drier conditions, some when it's hotter, cooler. But together they've got a really tight root structure which helps protect the soil surface. And they're all giving different vitamins, minerals, sugars and fibres and protein, which help keep our livestock healthy. So the veterinary intervention is lower. And then on top of that, we've got over 30 different or more different tree species on the farm, which they can also self-medicate from and bring different things in for the birds and the bees. And then last year we did um a worm survey from another one of you're one of my heroes, Jules, from my university days when I was doing environmental management, and another one is Dr. Kevin Bott, who's um a European worm expert. And I managed to um pull him down last year and we did some worm surveys at the farm. Um, and one of the best fields that we recorded had 925 worms per square metre. And an average for a good farm in Britain would be 390 to about 520 worms. A very bad farm you might find less than 10, you know. So to have just close to a thousand worms per square metre soil is down to that diversity within the pastures. It's down to the fact it's been permanent pasture and that soil's been left undisturbed to be able to kind of create its own natural ecosystem there to build the soil back within it. And then, of course, you've got like seeing lots of insects as you're walking through, seeing lots of different types of bees and butterflies and birds, otters on the river, you know, all these things are indicative of the fact of you having a healthy ecosystem. But we are only actually quite a small farm. We're surrounded mostly by water, which is quite nice because that makes us a bit of an island. We've got the river turn around about 75% of the farm, we've got a big main road across the rest of it, but it doesn't stop us from being impacted from other farming practices around, you know, even just the water that's coming through is being polluted further upstream. So we're all we're consciously conscious of what we can do as water passes through our landscape and then moves on. How do we leave it in a better place from when it's entered us? The integration worked both ways between us and our members, and I think what we learned most from it was the power of collective action and the power of connectedness, you know, because you see it in nature, but we were seeing it also in the communities that we were doing with in the conversations that we were having with people, how one conversation leads on to another. How one person makes one small action, another person makes a small action, and that's what happened with the 50 pound shares, and we raised 800,000 pounds. In fact, in the end, we raised, you know, just over a million through lots of people putting in small amounts of money and believing it was possible and go, I'm gonna have a go. And some people didn't believe it was possible and just watched from the sidelines. Some people went, I don't think they'll do it, but I'll still put my 50 pounds in, or I'll still go and volunteer because I still think it's a good idea. And actually, that hope that people had, that belief that people had that it was a good idea and it might be possible, that's what made it possible. And so when I'm kind of I get excited by seeing all these little interactions in nature as well, because I know they're not just little interactions, they are all combining to make the whole ecosystem thrive, but also to give it resilience, you know, resilience around what might be happening on the farm, but what's happening with the climate. And you know, all of these messages are so connected, aren't they, to each other and so relevant to each other. And it it gives me hope every single day because I do believe that every single action we all do that is positive and towards a common goal can make a difference.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, I'd have you as the Minister of Agriculture right away, Charlotte. You think you've described us a system that is providing all sorts of benefits to people and nature and the connectedness of it. Um but also the the there's a kind of vision there, which is also uh you know, how are we going to make the world a better place if we don't have hope? We have to have hope. We have to kind of believe that these things are possible. Um, I've I've I've seen systems like yours in other parts of the world, and sometimes farmers have described the kind of over-the-fence conversation, which you might not quite have because you've got a river in in the way and you've got a road in the way, but you know what I mean, like that of the neighbors of the others who are looking on farmers in the region, and often a kind of degree of of more than sniffiness, a kind of um uh of suspicion at innovation of just just being skeptical, I suppose, and saying silly things. I remember I was on a on a organic um uh Amish farm in Ohio where they've done just brilliant stuff with rotational grazing and diversity that you've described, and all sorts of kind of innovative things, even though the culture is often viewed as being kind of uninnovative. Um and the neighboring farmers said uh you'd have to give me brain surgery to make me copy what they're doing. And his fields were in a shocking state, they were just terrible. So people kind of create these these sort of barriers to change. But I was wondering what do what do you pick up from other farmers in the region? Do they do they kind of are they a bit patronizing? Are they supportive? Are they interested that you can make a productive farm out of a different kind of model? I mean, they're not necessarily going to go to 8,000 landlords, but they might do something about rotational grazing and combining nature into the system and thinking about um organics for nutrients as a start or integrated pest management to get rid of the neonics or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, well, um it's it's our relationship with farmers over the years is is changed and shifted. I think you've nailed, and and I and I can agree with you because I'm a farmer too, the culture of farming, the farming community. And and I think part of it has been pushed that way because it's become so isolated, and farmers have had to fight so much for their survival, and they've become very suspicious because of the in how the industry now works and how things become imposed on them so much, and the control is being taken away from them. Um, and it has become a very negative industry in some respects as a result of that. And I do think over the last 10 years this is shifting quite a lot differently. But um, certainly when dad went organic, everyone thought he was crackpot, and all the local farmers used to think he was very eccentric, crazy Arthur. When dad's, I remember as a kid when dad would send livestock to the cattle market to sell for beef or a store cattle, you know, the auctioneer would make a joke, Arthur Holland's is the orgasmic cows coming through, you know, because organic wasn't seen as a serious thing. So he it was, and dad was fine with it, and dad was never derogatory to conventional farming. And he was just like, I believe this is the right way for me to do things, I believe this makes sense. And um he said it he said it would be crackpot, it was the words he would use, for me to put chemicals on this land, because why am I paying to produce food when nature does it for free? Yeah, and and and really that dad was motivated to create towards creating a farming system here which wasn't reliant upon external inputs to be able to produce food. He wanted to know every year he could produce food on the farm and he could manage that um as as more of a closed system, which is why he went into foggage farming, which is the pasture-based system, which is why he went to the system which was focused on quality rather than quantity. Um, and it and it works because we sell direct to the public. And then when Ben and I were doing the community shares campaign in 2005, six, and we were fighting for our survival then, it was kind of like oh Ford's doing something weird and wacky again, yeah. Oh, the Holland's again, yeah. Yeah, and it was just yeah, and we've so as a farm and as a family, we've always sat on the periphery, I think, of the rest of the farming community to a degree. And certainly when Ben and I were fundraising, the farming community were our biggest cynics and quite negative, and some of them quite rude and and upsetting about what we were doing, and um, and it and part of that was just a rally around a misunderstanding of what it actually was, you know, because Ben and I were fronting the public campaign of it, and so it there was a bit of a narrative of everyone sending Charlotte and Ben money to buy them their farm. No one sends me money to buy me my farm. Why should people do that? And the understanding that we are still not going to own any farm here, we are just changing landlords. The community owned this farm. We are tenants and we are still tenants, and we only have security as long as we are good tenants. Um, and it took a long time for the farming community, which they now understand it more, but still of them, probably some don't, kind of go, ah, okay. And I think that's been particularly hard for Ben as the tenant farmer to pave his own way. You know, he set up the farm shop, he's the cage event catering business, he's done that all of his own back, starting with the griddle at farmers markets, then going getting a hog roast machine, and he's built it up now. So he's got about 14 catering trailers that he goes around to um, he does Ascot and the um Edge Baston Cricket Ground and the races and have done some of the royal flower shows, and he's built it up off his own back. That is nothing to do with the community ownership structure, that is completely separate. And so I think that's been harder for him to kind of go, actually, I'm putting loads of work into this myself. I'm I'm kind of making this business work.
SPEAKER_01It would be nice if you just gave us a little bit of dudos, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00And it's probably been in the last more so I'd say in the last five to seven years, the farming community has has started to shift more and kind of you know the movement for regenerative agriculture has been an easier one for people to take than moving to organic. And I think that has been a bit of a magical moment actually because it has encouraged that transition to and when most of the time farmers want to be farming in that way, you know. Farmers want to be doing things that work in partnership with nature, they want to be connecting with the natural ecosystems around them. You know, they do, they're not in farming to make money. You'd go and do a different job if you were doing it to make money, you do it because you love doing it, you love um the whole, everything the role entails, and that work that means working with you know the hydrology of your site, the trees in your site, you know, the soil in your site, the plants, every part of it a farmer needs to work with. But they have been taught through colleges and other things that it's all about calculations, it's all about paying someone to come in to test things, to tell you what you need to do. And as a result of that, farmers become less detached, less attached to their own land. And our own indigenous knowledge of our own land and our own farms is being lost as we make things too scientific. And I think the regenerative movement has actually encouraged going back to a bit more of that balance of kind of encouraging farmers just smell your soil, get your hands dirty, look for worms, put the stade in. It doesn't all have to go off to a lab to be able to understand your own soil and pharmacy system and the practices you need to take. And as a result of that, you know, we've had more visitors here and farmers here, and more farmers come on as shareholders to follow and want to understand what we're doing and how it works and kind of go, I don't get it quite. Can I ask you some more questions? So I definitely think it's been a journey and it's been a journey in a very it's moving in the right direction, and I think that's really encouraging. But I I do think it's it's sad where farming has, I think it's been pushed in that way where farmers have felt trapped, they've felt like they've had to fight for their own survival. So they feel like they're then fighting everyone and they're fighting every change. Um, and then as a result of that, they don't want to change because there's too much change imposed in them that they then go, I don't want to change anything, I just need to keep doing what I'm doing. Um, and this is where when a farmer does feel able to open the gates and start those conversations with people locally, it can be scary to start with, but actually it can be such an empowering and liberating process for a farmer that suddenly means that they're not in isolation anymore. And I think as we've shown resilience over the last 20 years, we're not only we're still here, but Ford's thriving. We've done everything we said we would do at the beginning. You know, we've invested a few million pounds into the farm over the last 20 years with renovating the buildings and the infrastructure and the ecology and the wildlife on site that it's and we're still going strong. And it we've shown it's a model that works, that we are now getting other farmers come to us saying, I want my farm to be passed on to the next generation. I haven't got anyone to take on that land. How do I make sure that it's safe? Is community ownership a way that will facilitate for me? And those conversations then really start to get exciting.
SPEAKER_01That's really interesting. I gave a talk at the one-day Norfolk Agricultural Association meeting conference um in January of this year. 400 or so farmers and associated kind of businesses at the meeting, and every talk was on regenerative act. And it was just and people were just were just kind of lapping it up. And I was I was really pleased. Having written a book on it in 1995 when it seemed odd to many people, um, to see that kind of come round as and to be uh not treated in the way that you described organic for years being treated in a kind of sniffy way. And sometimes terms just arrive, I mean, the the thing that they're doing is not actually that different to whether you call it sustainable or organic or or permaculture, or you know, we've got a hundred different names for this, but regenerative seems to seems to be um you know, people are kind of content to use that at the moment. Um, and I think that's that's a very interesting uh encouragement and hopeful sign that that that sort of farming is more creative. You've got to do more stuff, you've got to put knowledge into it, you've got to put social connections into it so that you can learn from other people to do it.
SPEAKER_00100%. And I think the nice thing about the regenerative movement is it pulls those in the organic movement and those in the conventional movement into the same space. And you suddenly have a lot more cross-pollination of knowledge and and relationship building and sharing in a way that doesn't feel competitive or I'm right, you're wrong, you know, and and gatherings like groundswell, you know, um are amazing for that. And then and there's not just farmers that go there either, which I think is really important because you're creating these spaces where lots of farmers are encouraged to go to learn about regenerative agriculture, share their journey, but they suddenly start sharing it with just members of the public who care about it as well. And they might be students, they might be journalists, they might be people that work in food systems, but they suddenly start to see other people not in farming that care about what they do and care that they're doing it in a positive, proactive, regenerative way, and that's what farmers need to see to encourage the change, you know, not just a government subsidy, they need to see people care because farmers care and they are downtrodden because they think no one else does, and that's the sad thing because so many people do, actually, we do, yeah, and that is one of the magic things of community ownership.
SPEAKER_01You've got an object, uh, Charlotte, that um you were going to kind of show us. Is it your it is?
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's this is I don't know if you can see this is my dad, Arthur Arthur Hollins. Um, that's in cooking a roast dinner for the family. Um, and uh, you know, dad is at the heart of everything we do from his love of the soil life, the microbes, and billions of microorganisms that live in the soil, which he called his secret factory workers that were there doing their job. And he said, All I need to do is create the conditions for them to do all the work for me. You know, for free, yeah, exactly. And he's our inspiration of Ford Hall. He was always so inclusive at Ford Hall, he welcomed everybody in and he adapted and evolved, and he wasn't worried about what people thought about him as long as he responded to those that he respected the most and that he knew that he was doing the right thing. And he just had this um great vision um uh for um of the future where things work collaboratively and collectively, and where nature thrives, and it's something that we hold very dear to our hearts at Ford Hall. And we're really excited that this year, with us um in talking about creativity, Jules, is we're doing a musical.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really goodness.
SPEAKER_00So uh this musical actually was first done in the early 1990s um by a BBC producer um Chris Eldon Lee, and it toured locally when Dad was first fighting um to keep hold of the land at the very, very beginning. Um, and we redid it in 2008 when the farm was safe from development. And for our 20 year anniversary, we're redoing it for the third and final time. Chris Eldon Lee's bringing it back to the stage. It's called Arthur's Plough, and it's a story of um, you know, and dad's at the heart of this, you know, it's his story of taking over the tenancy when he was only 14 years old, you know, with his mum when his dad died, and taking on this rundown farm and his journey to understanding about organics and and his factory workers and that and the life in the soil, um, to then him diversifying the farm into yogurt. And again, when he made live yogurt, that was all around the gut bacteria that come, you know, the good bacteria in the yogurt that feed your good, your gut bacteria in our bodies. And it was very much around a health food, health product and a whole food product because dad had a poorly stomach, as much as it was a way of diversifying the farm business that allowed him to put his research into organics, um, up to the fight, present-day fight to save it from development and community ownership and everything that that brings. So there's um there's dancing microbes and there's singing pigs, um, and there's all characters in it, and that's touring in the theatre in in Shrewsbury this October, um, and it'll be at Festival Drayton Centre at Market Drayton. Um, so if anybody wants to come and hear more of the Ford Hall story, get yourself up to Shropshire um 17th and 23rd to 24th of October, either in Shrewsbury or in Market Drayton, and you can enjoy the whole cultural experience. Um, if dad was alive today, he'd be 111.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Um, so he he's um he's very well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, lovely. Uh fantastic. Um uh we had we often ask in the pod uh uh for a hero or a heroine, but I wonder whether that would be would would be your dad, probably.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 100%. 100%. Um, but you know, I think all all of our shareholders are heroes and heroines.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, because I don't think you have to do something big to be a hero or heroine. You have to have a belief in something and you take a punt and you take a risk and you take a risk towards something magical. And that's what all of our shareholders did and continue to do with their support to the present day. You know, I would not be sitting here now if it wasn't for them and people like yourself, Jules. Ben would not be out there on the farm right now. You know, potentially Ford Hall Farm would have it would have been bulldozed over. Probably half of it will be concrete and developed by now. So this whole site, the thousands of people that we support, thousands of worms on all of those square meters, the trees, the birds, the bees, you know, the people that we employ, our families. Ben and I've both got children, you know, and our spouses we've met when they were volunteering here, you know, farmers don't get out, you have to bring people to you. You know, none of it would exist if it wasn't. For all those thousands of people making that small action. So I would like to honour all of our members, past, present, and future.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love the idea of there being something magical ahead because when we talk of the big challenges, the crises of climate and nature and other crises, political and all sorts, it's difficult to imagine a magical future. But that is the that's what we need to be able to get across and say this isn't about making the world less bad. This is about something really big and interesting and shining and uh a burning sun at the heart of the of the thing that we're creating. That's what we're trying to do. Something really like that.
SPEAKER_00100%. And I think sometimes these things can feel scary and big. You know, we're talking about a whole planet changing here, and I am a tiny speck on that planet. What can I do? But we make decisions every day about how we cook, what we buy, what we eat, that has a massive impact on nature, climate, energy use right across the world. We make decisions on what we're going to do in our gardens. You know, there were we make decisions on what clothes we're going to buy. There are so many decisions within our power that actually, if we were to shift some of those little bits at little times, what feels manageable and make a positive step. That makes us feel better, that makes us feel more positive, that empowers us. And we get excited about those things and we get empowered by those things, we talk about it. And then other people go, that sounds like a good idea. I could do that as well. And then and you start a movement. That's how movements start. And actually, yes, we do need politicians to do things, absolutely. We need certain areas of legislative change, absolutely, but actually, politicians will respond to what they think the public want because they're all clambering for votes. And if we start to make some of those changes ourselves, policy will be running to catch up with it because they want to take the credit for it, not us. Right. Um, and so every step counts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well put. I mean, I we usually finish with asking a question. What do you what should what do you recommend that people do? And you answered the question before I even asked it. So that's exactly what we should do.
SPEAKER_00Is and buy a share in the Ford Hall Community Landscape. I was going to come to that.
SPEAKER_01There'll be in the show notes the the website that they'll be able to check on and follow up stuff so they can buy a share in in Ford Hall and help this wonderful magical thing happen. So Charlotte, fantastic. Thank you so much uh for coming on. It's been brilliant, it's been lovely to hear about this. And uh uh, you know, good speed, godspeed in the next next stage of the of the great experiment. And um uh we're we're all with you.
SPEAKER_00Um thank you, Jules. And it is an experiment, every every bit of it is an experiment, which is amazing. And and thank you so much for being part of the journey with us. And you know, you inspired me with your books at when I was at university, and you continue to inspire me today. So thank you for this podcast and being one of those people, again, all these positive stories and messages out there, um, because the press is swamped too much by the bad stuff sometimes, and so it's great to have things like this shared. So really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant, thank you very much indeed, Charlotte. Charlotte Hollands of Ford Hall Organic Farm. One Farmer, 8,000 landlords. What a brilliant model! Uh, thanks so much.