“I’m David Hoyles, AF Member and Director. This is land in Lincolnshire a mile from the Wash, and two metres below sea level on reclaimed silt. It’s a soil type that allows us to grow a vast number of crops. That gives us opportunities and new markets and I’m investing in olives.”
“I really wanted a vineyard. But when in Italy, looking at vegetable varieties, I saw on best land – similar to mine - right next door to broccoli and spinach, there were olives. That got my mind working. I visited Spain, Portugal and France too.
“We farm right on the limit of where olives could grow. I looked into the investment needed, and how changes after Brexit would affect import rules and costs and decided instead of driving over to get a few trees I needed economies of scale, a lorry full. I changed my ideas from a hobby to being a full-scale business venture.
“In Spring ’24, after a lot of research, we chose ten varieties and planted 18,000 olive trees on ten hectares and became the first commercial olive grove in the UK.”
The soil type David farms lends itself to various crops, including olives
“I’ve really enjoyed all the learning so far. Overseas growers have been very kind and generous with their advice. Guys from universities and the viticulture people, they are teaching me too. But we are all learning as this has never been done before. My wife, Sally and I have spent hundreds of hours on these plants.
“One variety hasn’t enjoyed the autumn much. The other nine varieties are doing pretty well. It’s fascinating to see differences in resilience to conditions here so far. But it’s early days. One variety might do well but the next year a late or early frost, different weather, and another fares better.
“We’d planned and established between rows the grasses and flowers to encourage beneficial insects as we will not be using insecticides, or fungicides for that matter. As this is a perennial crop I had to make long-term decisions, get it right from the start, as I can’t just rip it out and start again.
“I used imported tree stakes, just the right height for where I must prune out the lead shoot to get them to branch out. We must trim off lower leaves to create the trunk.
“We put in a drip fertigation system to irrigate in four blocks or the whole site. We have a sensor system which is measuring everything above ground and 50 cm deep to monitor soil moisture.
“I really enjoy using all the values we have from our other farming on these olives: attention to detail, get the brilliant basics right – nutrition, timing – and being good as a team.”
"For the olives we have gone through AF to get herbicide and nutritional products – man-made and natural – plus we are using micronutrition with seaweed extracts, bio stimulants to feed and encourage the trees to grow.
“We’ll use AF for building materials for the processing plant to press the olives and spin out the oil and then an education centre and shop to encourage people to look around the olives and learn about them.”
“For the rest of the G H Hoyles business, we buy all farm inputs through AF."
“With everything with the olives, I keep my mind on the future. Shall we plant phase 2 this summer or next? What will consumers want 5, 10, 15 years down the line? What if my children want to get involved? How to set this business structure up for expanding or exiting?
“We’re The English Olive Company. There may be others in the future, but we should have a marketing advantage. I want direct sales. The crop is slow growing. That’s giving me time to get the website, social media and online shop up and running with merchandise. In a few years, when we’ve 5, 10, 15,000 litres of olive oil - plus non-oil products we’ve developed – we’ll be ready to drive sales.”
https://www.englisholive.co.uk/
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