The Orchard Tea Room

I know you won’t all agree, and that’s fine, but after nearly 20 years of farming the role of our farm has become clearer to me recently 1. To produce a healthy ecosystem providing clean water, thriving plants and wildlife, great soil health and microbial cycle including fungi, carbon sequestration, beauty, heritage and engagement with the public. 2. Producing quality breeding livestock. 3. Providing a home for 3 generations of my family. We also produce ‘store’ animals that we can sell to others to fatten and produce food, and a small amount of food ourselves sold directly from the farm. It’s not all about producing food, and whatever we do will be without artificial inputs. I hope long term it will be profitable, and all the work we have done to subdivide the farm for rotational grazing and habitats should make it so. But it’s not just as simple as producing food in exchange for money. It’s much bigger than that, some would say landscape scale ecological restoration. And I’m proud to be a part of that, even if it’s not making us rich. 💰

Just leaving this here after 10 hours outside while having a tea break….average hill farm business income 2023/24 was £23,608. That’s for the business, usually a family, not per person.(source gov.uk). We didn’t make that much last year.

I still have lots of my Grandads old pots, I have used them Hundreds of times and they are a non matching hodgepodge of things, but I do love them. I always think of him at this time of year when I am growing things in them.

Wren belting out its song at Apex Park in Somerset this weekend! 😍 (Wren's are actually smaller in real life than this one appears in this photo!) 😮🐦😊

The promise was absolutely clear We as a country would dismantle the old production subsidies and would be offered this green transition The promise has been trashed 76% of the old payments have been taken away and now no alternative support exists for many farmers

If you want the context it’s explained here unherd.com/2024/11/a-farm…

This is actually as dumb, as regressive and frankly irresponsible as anything happening across the Atlantic in Trump’s America I knew they’d do it and wrote about it - but still breathtakingly bad news for the British farming, food and nature

This evening the goverment shut the door for new applications on the new environmental scheme (SFI) that was supposed to be the replacement (if the farmer was environmentally progressive) of the old subsidies Farmers can NOT now apply for new environmental support

@CarlBovisNature How could anyone get bored of owls

Hovering Barn Owl! 😍 Taken last week on the Somerset Levels. 🦉 (Let me know if you're getting bored of Owls!) 😁

And we ignored him and are still ignoring the science hoping it will go away - which it won't.

On #InternationalWomensDay I wanted to once again pay tribute to Tirzah Garwood, Eric Ravilious’ wife. They met when she was a student at Eastbourne College, married Eric in 1930 & a dozen years later was a war widow. Her work continued, and she deserves to be much better known.

@BenGoldsmith The amount of ignorance of what is good for nature is so frustrating. Similarly we are happy to throw up ugly architecture while making it nature proof. It’s a madness!

This ivy growing up a big sycamore tree used to provide vital urban nesting habitat for birds, heaving flowers for pollinating insects, and clumps of winter berries for food. Now it’s dead because someone thought it looked ‘untidy’. Tidiness really is the enemy of nature.

Eggsy Pony and Friends posted their Valentine's Day card to you on Ko-fi where you'll find lots of "Love is" pics ko-fi.com/post/Valentine… Happy Valentine's Day xxx

Shame on you @Keir_Starmer The choice wasn’t between funding the NHS and a tax break - a staggeringly ill-judged explanation You just killed the last vestiges of any social contract with British farmers Well done to the farmers who blocked him in today - escalate it

Turning a very bleak hillside into basically wood pasture and wet rush pasture With shelter belts, ponds and thousands of trees in wetlands or scrub corridors - with a 100 year vision

I started working in Ecology at a County Wildlife Trust. I saw then the scramble for BNG as far back as 2005/6 mad support for this from Wildlife NGOs. It boggled my mind and still does that they helped build a system that requires the destruction of habitat in order to fund the conservation of that habitat. Well meaning people who have no practical experience in almost anything making terrible decisions that will have huge negative impacts on our Wildlife for generations. Thank goodness we have sole farmers who care and will holt the fort as much as they can.

I watched a discussion last year between @RoryStewartUK and @KateRaworth that has stayed with me He pointed out that growth is basically the get out of jail free card for every goverment - and that he couldn’t see them giving up on it - and that’s what’s basically happening

Our greening actions are being undone faster than we can do them It makes a mockery of it all