A day spent talking about coppicing, ancient woodland and the stuff we do? Hardly a tough assignment really! Given that this is stuff I should be able to do in my sleep, I did spend a whole load of time preparing for it. This was a trial run for the Clophill Heritage Trust , a […]
We’re leading a day in the as yet undiscovered craft of making a ball from nothing but willow, on Sunday 22 March, here in Gravenhurst, Bedfordshire. We will be using willow grown on the farm to create something that’s eye catching, beautiful and unusual, but otherwise has no practical value at all. These are purely […]
I know you are all gripped by this stuff and wait with bated breath for the next installment. Well ok, perhaps not, but I thought it worth providing an update on something I wrote a few weeks ago. In early December 2014, we contracted a neighbour, Gordon, to bring a small digger in and clear […]
When we sold three Red Poll heifers to the Wildlife Trut last summer, they went to Flitwick Moor to help keep their vegetation under control. We were told then that they would be spending the winter at Pegsdon Hills Nature reserve, but we haven’t had a chance to visit them since. We heard (through some WT […]
On Thursday Jane and I took a trip to Suffolk to visit a chap called Graham who I had found posting on a forum populated by all sorts of interesting woody types, but mainly arborists comparing notes on chainsaws, forwarders and other exciting machinery. These of course are of great interest to me, but it […]
It was great to be back at Great Fen, near Ramsey in Cambridgeshire, last weekend. We’ve done a series of training days for the wildlife Trust there and they’ve all been very enjoyable. This time, we were teaching a group of lovely people to make willow balls. The first time we had run this particular […]
We are now into the second of a ten year agreement, in the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme (HLS) and as well as what seems like miles of hedge laying, we are committed to clearing an old pond on the farm, which has become very silted and overgrown. According to a neighbour who has farmed here since […]
We’ve just delivered sixty, metre-long staves and sixty pairs of claves – all from hazel – to a very well known environmental charity. They are apparently destined to be given to children at a school in North London. A lovely present I thought – I can’t recall anything even vaguely similar happening to us when I […]
We are pleased to offer more of our grass-fed, Red Poll beef for sale, fresh from the lush pastures of Gravenhurst. If you’d like to give our beef a try (or order more if you are one of our many loyal customers), please get an order to us by Monday 13 October. Beef will be […]
Last week, we sold three, year old heifers to the Wildlife Trust in Bedfordshire and they are now enjoying life on Flitwick Moor, an intriguing wet woodland nature reserve to the north-east of Flitwick. This is a place where, in the past, peat was cut and iron-rich spring water sold as a blood tonic. The cattle will help to keep […]