Field Lab: Plant Teams. Tools for small-scale grain processing

Join Soil Association Scotland for another special crofting meeting of their Plant Teams field lab, looking at growing multiple crops together for better outcomes.

• Visit outdoor learning centre The Shieling Project, where crofter Sam Harrison has been intercropping with a Uist seed mix, as well as a mixture of peas and oats.
• See practical demonstrations of tools for separating, threshing, milling, and bruising grain.  If you have any relevant tools please email Clem and bring them along!
• Discuss how to design, build and share any hard-to-get tools, with expertise from Fergus Walker (Common Good Food) who will demonstrate his bike-powered oat mill.
• Get practical advice and share knowledge about intercropping with other crofters, Ali Karley from The James Hutton Institute’s DIVERSify project and Robin Walker from the ReMIX project at SRUC
• Try your hand at making sourdough bannocks using different Scottish grains with Clem Sandison (Soil Association Scotland) and Adam Veitch (Doughies, micro-bakery). Stay later to cook them (see below)
• See the cows being milked at 5pm

Free lunch and hot refreshments provided.

Booking is required.

For more information call Clem on 0131 370 8150 or email csandison@soilassociation.org​. 

Why not stay over?

You’re invited to stay for the evening and help cook bannocks on the fire, share a delicious communal meal and watch a film.  Accommodation is available in the six-person bothies on site.  Total cost is £30 per person for evening meal, bunk bed and breakfast. To book for the night please contact: sam@theshielingproject.org​

Run by Soil Association Scotland with funding from the SRDP Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund (Scottish Government/European Union), with partner funding from Scottish Forestry, Innovative Farmers and The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. This event is also supported by the James Hutton Institute, SRUC and The Gaia Foundation.