After attending the very informative machinery rings and skills sharing meeting organised by the North Pennines AONB last month, the idea of doing something similar within the North Pennines Smallholders has been on my mind.

During the course of that meeting, the presentations from both the Ridings Machinery Ring and  The Farmer Network gave an indication of what could be achieved over time. Both these organisations are very well established but they still stand as good examples of what could be achieved over time.

It’s interesting to note that there has been a post on the forum asking about hay so perhaps this is a good time to think about buying groups as well. This could help to bring down the cost of some common purchases like feed and other supplies while being a good way to start promoting the idea of working together.

For example there is already an Allen Valleys Oil Buying co-op  and presumably other similar oil buying groups in other parts of the North Pennines. However this is not specifically aimed at the needs of smallholders so maybe that angle is a good starting point?

The Next Step?

In order to get things moving we need an idea of the level of interest (if any) in the various topics being suggested. It should then be possible to bring people together to organise the necessary structure so these initial ideas can be developed further.

The initial list of ideas are shown below but other suggestions are always welcome:

• Build up a list of member skills for sharing or passing on knowledge
• Establish a list of members and the machinery they are willing to share
• Set up a buying group for smallholding supplies

If anyone is interested in any of these then please add a comment to this post with more details.