Our farm covers approximately 450 acres with most of the land being used as arable or grassland. The average field is around 15 acres meaning that we have a lot of hedgerows and ditches offering important nesting and hunting habitats for wildlife but we see our role as farmers as more than just producers of food. There are some areas on the farm which are un-economic to crop so rather than invest time and energy in to trying to do so we have instead turned them in to a variety of different habitats.
In the Staying With Us section of our website you will see pictures of our nature reserve; it currently covers approximately 3 acres and consists of some ponds and mature vegetation however we are in the process of expanding it to cover 8 acres. When it is complete there will be 2 large ponds, 5 smaller amphibian pools and a wide variety of vegetation ranging from rough grass meadow up to areas of mature trees. It is a long term project but we are already seeing a wide variety of birds and insects living on the site and the enjoyment we get from these areas far outweighs the costs involved in creating them.
Elsewhere on the farm we have other rough areas in field corners and along brook banks along with some redundant farm buildings. Redundant barns are becoming rarer as many are converted in to houses or knocked down in order to replace them with modern farm buildings so the few that survive become more important to wildlife. We have several breeding pairs of barn owls and a number of pairs of little owls living in these buildings but they also offer homes to lots of smaller birds such as swallows and blackbirds. Modern farms are often portrayed as being vast mono-cultures showing little regard for nature but if you choose to stay in our holiday cottages we hope you leave with a completely different idea of how food is produced and how farmers are trying to work with nature rather than against it.