(Picture: Roger handling the new animals)
When we established the farm on 2 hectares in Colney in 1974/5, I was a mature student in Environmental Sciences and I volunteered to help. After I completed my degree in June1976 I was employed to help run the farm full time.
I was an experienced welder, having served time in the North Sea oil industry and we organised and ran welding classes in the workshop in the Village. These included the training of David Barton and several others.
I helped train and worked (together with Adrian Friggins and Martin Wallis), pairs of bullocks as part of our work on animal traction, made the three-pad collar harnesses, (together with Jo Fredenburgh) designed from Botswana experience, and built the tool bar designed from the drawings of Colin Heslop, from experience in Western Sudan in 1975/6. The bullocks were used to cultivate the land with the tool bar and its attachments. The land was contour planted in a Norfolk 4 course rotation and we had an old railway carriage and a wooden shed for buildings. We also set up a weather station and kept small stock (chickens, goats and geese)
Towards the end of his time running the farm , I built a large bio digester and methane storage tank which was intended to be used to heat a poly tunnel, using bio-waste from the farm. This was on the new site of Dev Farm/RTU 2.
In the summer months, we grew a large variety of organic vegetables on the farm which were sold at UEA once a week with great help from Jo Fredenburgh. It was a very popular move and we were always sold out. My objective was to help students, who may initially have had very limited practical skills and experience, gain the knowledge and skills that would help them in future work overseas or in the UK.
I went to Syria with ODG in Autumn 1977, which was when Don Saunders took over the running of the farm.
Roger Fredenburgh
Alby, Norfolk. Feb 2023
