Are we ready for climate change? What do we need to think about?

Let’s stop for a minute and think about climate change and the fields. What sort of changes might we see? Well, the weather is going to be, in a word, unpredictable. We aren’t going to have the weather of the south of England on our northern soils. It isn’t going to settle down. It is going to be extremes and unpredictable.

Wetter winters. Drier summers. Heavy summer rains. Dry periods in winter. Winters not as cold perhaps. Possible wildfires. Storms, like Storm Arwen, that knocked off electricity for days.

What can we do?

Is it worth thinking about the crops we choose to grow, or even, can we think like that? We found in 2023 that some of the “traditional” veg seemed to do OK. We also had a lot of slugs and fewer pollinators. Is there anything we can do to help pollinators in the corners of our fields, or is that perhaps too much work?

Are we ready for hotter, drier summers? Is there anything more we can do to become more resilient in that way? Like, do we store as much rain water as we would like? Do we have some shade, or can we add more? Like, would our landlords allow any taller trees to grow up in the beech hedges?

Are we ready for wildfires? Can we imagine one tearing up the Tyne Valley, like they have done in recent summers in parts of the Mediterranean, in Hawaii, and (during the Australian summer) in parts of Australia? (Just to name a few.) We are not fire fighters. But are we insured properly? If we store more rain water, would it help protect our fields from a fire rushing through?

What about summer rains. Are there parts of the fields at the moment where rapid run-off leads to soil erosion? Soil is our Number One asset. Is there anything we can do to help those erosion-prone places become more resilient? Like plant a small break perhaps, or who else has any more ideas?

Our carbon footprint is already, presumably, very low. There might be more things we can do on that front, to play our part in keeping the ‘fuel’ for climate change as low as possible. Probably driving to collect veg is one of our biggest impacts (even electric cars are not exempt!). Can anybody collect for each other in turn again, like we were paired up during lockdown? Do some of those contacts need refreshing, for anybody willing?

We are thinking about solar panels and a battery to store energy for a cold store. If we had another Storm Arwen, how many days would our battery supply us for, if the electricity was cut off?

Action toolkit

The County Council have produced a toolkit that might help us. It is really aimed at town and parish councils, but it could be full of information we find useful and a way of framing thoughts.

https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Climate-Change/Climate-Change.aspx – page 12 onwards is where it starts getting relevant.

Anybody have any thoughts?