Projects

Our vegetable garden is fully organic and managed using a no-dig system. It supplies a significant portion of our vegetable needs and helps us to feed our visitors. Instead of digging and cultivating the ground, we smother weeds with cardboard/newspaper and well-rotted cow manure.

Using this method, we don’t disturb soil life such as worms and fungal threads which provide many benefits to plants. Every year, soil and plant health improve and the need to water and fertilise decreases. 

The no-dig garden is in its 3^rd year now and producing very tasty, nutritious, biologically active vegetables. We use polyculture – combining vegetables with beneficial plants and with other ‘companion’ vegetables to increase plant health. We are saving seeds and allowing vegetables to self-seed freely.

We have some trees and shrubs mixed into the vegetable garden and plan to transition it to an open canopy forest garden.

We have a small herd of about 10 angus beef suckler cattle who graze on 12 acres of diverse meadow. This is the third year that they’ve been managed using a mob grazing system.

Mob grazing aims to mimic grazing animals’ behaviour in the wild. The cattle are rotated to a fresh, small paddock each day. The grass and other plants in each paddock have a chance to grow long and put on a lot of root mass before the cattle graze and trample them.

The high density of cattle manuring the ground, the trampling effect of their hooves and the plants shedding roots stimulates and increases microbial activity and adds organic matter in the soil. Mob grazing sequesters carbon, increases soil fertility, increases biodiversity and produces healthier cattle.

In reality, this is happening more slowly than anticipated on our farm as the soil is very light and prone to drought and also we need to apply some organic fertilisers to build up the base fertility of the soil in order to optimise the benefits of the mob grazing.

We planted 6.5 acres of native woodland 6 years ago. It is made up of oak, scot’s pine, elder, birch, rowan and alder. We are starting to see early signs of native woodland ground cover plants creeping in.

2 years ago, we planted ¼ acre of coppice woodland, comprising of hazel, alder, oak, willow and rowan. This will provide some of our firewood needs. We will continue to plant more to become fully self-sufficient in firewood.

We plan to put most of the land into a mix of different agroforestry systems. Animals will be integrated into many of these systems. We are just getting started.

We have a small strip of 12 fruit trees (apple, pear and cherry) which we are underplanting with a mix of other edibles (including blackcurrants, raspberries, onions, carrots, spinach) and beneficial plants (including willow, hawthorn, wild cherry, elaeagnus, rose, comfrey and phacelia).

With help from our wider community/network of helpers and visitors, we are continuously salvaging pallets, building materials and anything else useful we come across. We use pallets as firewood as well as upcycling them into gates, furniture and other things. This summer, we plan to build a shed, a chicken coupe and an outdoor kitchen from mostly salvaged materials. We also salvage cardboard and newspaper for our no-dig gardens.

We are growing field scale oats and potatoes which we hope to sell this autumn.