FEBRUARY UPDATE
Winter seems to be almost a distant memory, as already we’ve seen primroses and cherry blossom flowering, which surely is a sign of spring! The birds are also getting going – now is such a good time to learn individual bird song, if you wanted to learn, because there aren’t too many to confuse you. The merlin bird app is a good place to start, download it and walk around with it recording and you’ll soon learn what you have in your area. We have completed the Big Farmland Bird Survey for the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, and were delighted to record long eared owls for the first time on our farm, among plenty of other different birds.
Screenshot of Merlin app recording of a long-eared Owl heard on the farm
Nature Friendly Farming
We’ve been advocating nature friendly farming for a while now, and it’s been great to work alongside the Nature Friendly Farming Network, who recently published this article on us.
James takes Kent Cluster group participants on a farm tour
Whilst on the subject of nature, February does not pass on the farm without mention of hedges, and this year’s month was no different. Our second hedgelaying workshop continued the good work of last years, with a different stretch of the same hedge being expertly laid by the participants under the masterful guidance of Michael White. He also taught about how to cleave wood – have a look at this video if you don’t already know how to turn thicker stakes in to more flexible binders here.
Thanks to a FiPL (farming in the protected landscape) grant, we were able to offer two fully funded places to young enthusiasts eager to learn the rural skills that so few young people today are able to learn effectively. It was a real delight to see young and old alike learning a new craft, and we hope that next year we are able to seek similar funding for young new entrants to the course.
Course participants enjoying learning how to lay a hedge
Nature is not much good as an island, and doing all of these things to improve the environment on our own farm is all well and good but not much use if it doesn’t get shared, either through discussions, or through membership of a larger, landscape scale group of like-minded clusters. We are very lucky to have been founder members of the East Kent Barham Downs cluster since it’s inception many years ago (at least 20, but could be more) under the expertise of Natural England advisor Dan Tuson. Since then, clusters have become far more common, with new clusters opening up and being created in order to effect landscape scale positive impacts.
Kent Wildlife Trust hosted a farm visit for everyone involved in Kent Cluster groups
So it was particularly good to welcome all the Kent Clusters to the farm in February, and have some great discussions on how to work collaboratively on a county wide scale. After an excellent lunch provided by Wasted Kitchen, we went on a trailer ride to see hedgelaying in action as you can watch here.
https://youtu.be/iqPaifV-0d0
Tree planting
Strip of agroforestry trees being planted into pasture
Along with hedge planting and laying we have also been busy planting trees. This year we have gone further than before with our agroforestry project, creating additional habitat around the farm. In years to come we hope to be able to pick the fruits of our labours!
Sheep
Alongside arboreal matters, February has also been a lot about sheep. We welcomed Marie Prebble’s sheep on to the farm in January and they have been steadily moving every few days grazing cover crops to good effect. The sheep have done a really good job of grazing the cover crops, leaving enough so that the soil wasn’t damaged in the process, and adding in fertiliser for us too. Next up will be spring drilling in those fields, and when the crops are harvested we will be able to see the effect the sheep have had.
We even managed to fit in scanning around these moves, with a little help from Farm School participants who learnt first hand the joy of moving sheep!
Droving sheep along the bridleway
Video of droving sheep by Farm School
Reading University
Emma was thrilled to be asked to address the Reading University Agricultural Society at their annual conference, and discuss with others the subject of Land Fertility: the dos and don’ts of preserving land. It was a great evening, full of discussion both before, during and after the event!
We’ve also been helping out other university students as part of the University of Greenwich’s soil assessment survey. Despite the rain we have managed to complete our work for them and look forward to seeing the results, which will be analysed alongside them by A level biology students.
Students on the farm carrying out soil analysis to help students elsewhere
Adieu
Sadly our Education Officer, Laure, has now completed her Herculean task through our FiPL funded place of delivering 100 visits for children over the past year, more than double what we usually do, meaning that she has now moved on to a new role with Chartham Primary School as a class teacher. We will really miss her, although we are quite sure that this is not the end of our work together, and we look forward to welcoming her class on the farm next term! Thank you Laure for all your work, dedication, good humour and above all injecting a sense of je ne sai quoi in to everything you do!
And finally…
Thank you for all your support and kind words over our decision to end our contract farming operations after harvest. We would like to reiterate that we are not ending our farming careers, we will still be farming, but will focus more on work on our own farm, promoting regenerative agriculture through our public speaking work and consultancy, mentoring and one or two other projects which are currently still in their infancy!