26th January

On Tuesday we had our yearly soil association inspection.

This usually takes around six to seven hrs.

Everything gets checked.

The inspector always comes to me first as the field side is where it all starts.

Then the inspector goes to the pack shed where everything gets checked, this part takes much longer.

The field side for me starts of with all the seeds I have bought in for that year, the seeds must be organic, and if for any reason I couldn’t get organic seed, I need to have a derogation from soil association for any seed I have that are non-organic, with amount variety and reason why.

Next it is onto my harvest book, we need to record every day what we harvest, the totals then go into our seed folder against the number of seeds we have bought.

This gives us a harvesting percentage for each crop, good for me to know, but also the inspector our harvesting against what we put out in the deliveries through the year.

For example: I usually grow three thousand spring cabbage at the start of the year.

Last year we harvested two thousand four hundred and forty.

The inspector then takes that figure with him to the shed; this must then correspond with the spring cabbages we put out for deliveries on these dates.

If there has been more gone out, he then needs to know where the extra spring cabbage came from, and where is the organic certificate for them.

Every single item of produce grow or buy needs to be traceable and have an organic certificate.

The field and tunnels get inspected which is the easy part, crop rotation is checked this is very important and it is obvious we do not use chemicals there is weeds everywhere.

So, we need to have all our paperwork up to date and at hand.

It is an expensive certificate to have, and a full day is needed on inspection day.

But it is an important day in our year, as it proves that we are complying to organic standards.

And you are all guaranteed what you buy is 100% organically grown.

It does frustrate us when we see other companies similar to what we do selling organic produce but with no licence but saying it is organically grown plus adding non-organic produce to their list.

We would lose our licence if we sold non organic produce alongside organic produce.

So that is our inspection done for the year, with a stamp of approval and certificate up to date again.