Co-imagining the future of farming

What might the future of farming look like? On Irongate Farm in Hertfordshire we’re setting out on a new stage of our journey to understand the possibilities for a large, established regenerative farm like ours. We’ve made a start: we have been farming regeneratively for over a decade, and are proud co-hosts of the Groundswell Festival, which had its 10th anniversary in July 2026.

But we want to do much more.

To meet the challenges we’re facing we want to move further and faster towards creating a farm where people, ideas, and the ecosystem work together, in collaborative ways, to nourish our soil and our souls. We can’t do this alone, sharing our land and inviting people to join us is paramount.

A hundred years ago there were twenty families living and working across the farm so we know we have space.

Building a flourishing community

Our core farm business is a regenerative mixed farm with pasture raised rotationally grazed cattle as well as arable land. We want to care for our soil and are in the process of converting to organic, experimenting with a Treffler shallow cultivator to replace glyphosate termination of cover crops. Our rotationally grazed beef cows are the centre of our farm.

Last year we were joined by Fiona and Calf at Foot, a micro dairy. Fiona produces raw milk from her herd at Irongate.

We have also been delighted to welcome Granville Community Kitchen (GCK), a long established north London non-profit. GCK are creating a peri-urban farm hub, where their community can grow food: providing food security, food sovereignty and opportunities to connect to the land and learn.

Our practices across the farm are enhanced by working with Kelly Moss on our composting (vermicompost, Johnson-Su, bokashi, thermophilic) and with London Mycology Project, growing mycelium through wild mycology practices. The composting and the mycelium have both contributed to the establishment of our 2.5 acre no-dig market garden.

Searching for new collaborators

We are crafting a non-exploitative community with joy at its core and we realise that we don’t have the time, resources, or skills to do everything ourselves. We’re actively looking to find new collaborators and give them support and space to see their own vision of the future develop alongside and integrate with ours. We are currently looking for a number of people to come and run their own enterprises at the farm.

We don’t know what these relationships will look like as they will probably all be different. We will discuss together the values on which our work is based, how we nourish our community as well as the land. We start from a position of privilege in having this land and so we will seek to create ethical, equitable, arrangements for sharing what we have. These may include rent-free periods, bartering, proportionate profit share, formal joint ventures or more straightforward leasing of land.

At present we’re looking for some specific people: a market gardener to develop our two acre vegetable patch which we’ve designed on permaculture principles, someone to take over our aronia berries project, a miller to process our heritage grains, perhaps someone with chickens, sheep or goats that would follow our cows in the rotation. But of course, other ideas are welcome.

We invite everyone with varying degrees of knowledge and experience to join in; we know that people from some communities may not always feel welcome on the land, but we want to reach out especially to those with any intersectional disadvantage, to create a truly inclusive community.  

A new learning centre for the food and farming community

Also hosted at Irongate Farm is GroundSchool CIC, a new learning centre for the food and farming community. We know that the Groundswell Festival provides educational and inspirational moments but that ‘back at the ranch’, it’s not always easy to make change happen or to sustain it through the harder times. Our initial taster courses in autumn are available to book online.

You’ll hear more about GroundSchool in the months and years ahead. It will be nestled within this vibrant patchwork of agricultural enterprises, collaborating, just as mycelial networks do, for the good of us all.

If any of this sounds like your future too, we’d love to hear from you.

Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more. Email Belinda Bell at belindabell@thegroundschool.org.uk