Our Farm
Farming for wildlife
When you want to make small changes, do things differently. When you want to make big changes, see things differently. Or so an esoteric old-timer told his young farming neighbour. As we began to think about long term plans for our farm, our understanding of sustainable agriculture made us see the countryside around us in a new light.
British wildlife is vanishing, not because we paved paradise, as only 6% of the UK is built on (but complete respect for Joni Mitchell). Our wildlife is disappearing, because it is barely able to cling on to the scraps left behind by modern farming practises. By maintaining grassland for one or two species like the dairy cow and woolly ewe, by ploughing in monocultures for animal feed, by spraying the land with an ever increasing cocktail of chemicals, there is little life left in our fields. Viewed through the prism of biodiveristy, modern British farms are effectively rural deserts with a couple of species growing where there use to be hundreds flourishing. We are determined to ensure that our farm is full of life.
Thirty years of organic stewardship has gifted our farm with maturing woodland and wildflower rich meadows, but we can do even more to encourage and protect biodiversity. We still adhere to organic practices, high animal welfare, no routine antibiotics and no chemicals applied to the land or animal, but we have also changed the way our farm is grazed in order to create more opportunities for different plants and animals to thrive.
Biodiversity needs change, a dynamic environment that gives new species opportunities to thrive, a push and pull between creation and destruction. We don't simply want to conserve, we want to regenerate our landscape. Rewilding, regenerative farming, agroecology, we can get bogged down in the terminology, but the overarching principle is not about giving up our rural spaces, moving out and letting nature take over. We haven't left enough room for this to be successful. Instead, it's about allowing natural processes to take place and mimicking those which are no longer possible.
If we removed ourselves and our livestock from farms, woodland would quickly cover the pastures and biodiversity would actually decrease. The greatest biodiversity exists not in woodland with its light-stealing canopy, but in wooded pastures, where trees and grass meet, where insects can pillage the early woodland spring flowers then move into wildflower rich summer meadows. Biodiversity is greatest where water meets the land, in wetlands teeming with insects, where the water is warmed by the earth and slowed down into lazy pools. The greatest diversity exists in the habitats considered marginal by modern farming methods, and so it is these marginal habitats we want to bring to the heart of our farm.
To create and maintain biodiversity, to farm for wildlife, help comes from an unlikely source - cattle. Plants have always been nibbled, crushed, torn, decimated and distributed by animals. Lightly grazing the farm with cattle,and resting areas for long periods, creates this flux between plant growth and animal disturbance. A small herd of native breed cattle ensure that our species-rich grasslands are not entirely swallowed up by advancing woodland, but their relatively low grazing numbers also allows for the woodlands to billow out into the pastures.
Even in winter you'll find our cattle still outside, feeding on hay from our own pasture and nothing else. This keeps our carbon footprint so low that our farm sequesters more carbon than it uses, even to produce beef, making us carbon negative.
So to make big changes to the way we farm, we've started to see things differently.
​
Take this mole hill. To most farmers (and gardeners), moles are pests and a problem that needs solving. But when looking through a different lens, molehills are a sign of healthy soils and an abundance of worms. Moreover this little hill of bare earth is a potential foothold for new plant life. One that might start small with wildflowers or humble grasses, but might one day lead to a mighty oak, alive with insects tucked into every nook and cranny, a vital food source for multitudes of birds and other wildlife, and a safe haven for the next generations.
​
For more information on regenerative agriculture, the importance of grassland in the UK, and for general hope in finding solutions for the global agricultural industry, here a few suggestions.
The Carbon Fields by Graham Harvey
Growing a Revolution by David R. Montgomery
Rebirding by Benedict MacDonald