Nothing renews itself. That is deliberate.
A patch is one season. At the end of it, it stops, and if you do nothing at all then nothing at all happens. There is no rolling charge, no automatic re-drilling and no email in February telling you that your subscription has already been taken.
How the reopening actually works.
The season ends when your parcel arrives
Not when the calendar year does. The contract is complete at delivery.
The drilling plan for next year is set
In the first week of October, by the agronomist, against the rotation.
Existing holders get first refusal
A fortnight to take the same patch, or a different one, at the pre-drilling price.
Then the grid opens to everybody
First come. No auction, no queue-jumping, and no priority attached to how much you spent.
If you do nothing
Nothing happens. No charge, no reminder loop, and one email at the end of the fortnight saying the window has closed.
Why auto-renewal would work, and why it is not here.
Auto-renewal would increase retention. It always does. It is also the single most reliable way to convert somebody who liked what you sold them into somebody who resents you.
The specific problem with a patch is that the rotation moves. A member who auto-renewed into wheat and received rapeseed oil has been charged two hundred pounds for something they did not choose, and they would be entirely right to be annoyed about it.
So the renewal is a decision, taken once a year, with the plan in front of you. It costs us retention. It saves us the sort of complaint that ends up somewhere public.
What carries over, and what does not.
| Carries over | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| Your patch reference | Yes, for a fortnight | First refusal on the same ground |
| The price you paid | No | Input costs move, sometimes by more than half in a year |
| Your notification settings | Yes | You set them once and we are not resetting them |
| The provenance record | Yes, permanently | Last season’s record does not expire or get archived away |
| Any unclaimed produce | Yes | It is yours. It waits, or it becomes credit if you ask |
| A split arrangement | No | Both people confirm again, because circumstances change |
What a few seasons actually earns you.
Marks rather than points. None of them is worth anything, none of them can be bought, and the good one is for having been here in a bad year.
Badges confer no discount, no priority and no cash value. They exist because people like a record of having turned up.
Renewing, questioned.
Four questions about a product that deliberately does not renew itself.
The first week of October, once the drilling plan is signed off, and it runs for a fortnight. One email at the start and one at the end, and nothing in between.
No. First refusal is on the patch you held, and after that it is first come. There is no tier, no queue position and no way to buy one.
Yes, for as long as you keep taking the first refusal. Somebody has held D2 since 2023, which is why the species count on it is worth reading.
It stays, permanently. A provenance record that is deleted when somebody stops buying was never a record.
The grid for next season.
Set in the first week of October, and published before it sells.
