Valuing Nature…
I value the balance of nature that helps us in our farming and have tailored the government’s entry and higher level stewardship schemes to provide structure to our environmental approach.
Our efforts have been rewarded with several awards but more importantly scientific studies showing that our orchard called Banky has vast species diversity, even more than organic orchards in the same study.
Government policy has led us to have a confusing approach to environmental schemes. We have live mid tier and SFI schemes with another SFI and Higher level scheme in the application process
The main aspects of our scurrent and intended schemes are:
Retaining and regeneration of our traditional “standard” Herefordshire cider apple orchards
We aim to maintain our traditional Herefordshire standard orchards
Hedgerow preservation
Lapwing habitat creation
Permissive access
I have been less successful at establishing pollen & nectar plots, discovering clover to be more effective and have also found that red tape and our rural location have reduced demand for widespread educational access.
Not everything conveniently fits into an administrator’s tick box and we are continually striving to find easy solutions to create biodiversity on our farm.
To give you an idea, we try to:
Agroforestry = Diversity
A major Wetland - Primarily for filtering nutrients from water leaving the farm
Leave strips unmown around orchard margins to encourage wild flowers, pollinators & predatory insects
un mown strip: Insect & wild flower heaven
Provide housing for Solitary bees, which in turn pollinate our apple blossom, by strategically placing dumps of soil or drilling holes into gate posts
Unglamorous but effective, high rise holes house solitary bee
Creating mulch beneath trees from grass cuttings and paper waste.
mulch to retain moisture, encourage soil biology and smother weeds
Leave a few stacks of wood pruning’s / rotting wood as a wildlife refuge
Plant trees in North facing hedgerows
It is important that we boost our environmental credentials with the recycling of farm / packaging, waste materials, use of spray washings bio beds and continual review of our inputs.
