Conservation & Educational Access
Over the years we have carried out many conservation benefits on the farm.  For instance, we know we have dormice in our small pieces of isolated woodlands and have now joined up all our woodlands with species rich hedges, many of which we have laid.  These provide corridors for small mammals, safe hunting ground for bats and nesting sites for birds.

We have now moved into a higher tier of management supported by Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) grants which are payments made to farmers to carry out specific targeted conservation measures.  These restrict what we can do on many of our fields but should bring significant gains for wildlife.  

Some of our meadows are managed to increase the variety of wildflowers and grasses   bringing benefit to so many insects, butterflies and moths.  By providing for the species further down the foodchain we are supporting the iconic species such as barn owls, farmland birds and bats.
We have a particularly wet field which we are hoping will become an important habitat to ground nesting farmland birds such as the lapwing:
We have reintroduced cereal crops onto the farm which we will feed to the livestock.  On the small scale in which we do this, it is only viable because of the HLS grants.  These grants are given to us for cereals that are planted in the spring and not the autumn, which is the usual time for planting most crops.  This is so the stubble over the winter provides a source of shelter and feed for farmland birds which have become so much scarcer in recent years.  We are also getting payments for low input cereals which mean that we do not get a very big crop from our cereals but means there is more space for rare arable plants and shelter for birds.  We maintain wide grass headlands for mammals to forage and provide bird seed areas.



Farming for both conservation and being organic is not always that easy.  Docks are particularly difficult and we spend a lot of time hand clearing docks.
We are now also offering educational access which means we welcome schools and groups to visit the farm and learn more about farming, organic and non organic methods and conservation.  Please contact us if you would like to know more about this.



We are part of a Kent Wildlife Trust Living Landscape project and with its expertise are able regularly to monitor the wildlife on the farm.  Here are our regular moth trappers showing a group of people at one of our Farm Open Days what they have found.