High Level Stewardship at Mary Arden’s Farm

For the last six years Mary Arden’s Farm has been involved in the government’s Environmental Higher Level Stewardship Farm Management scheme. This initiative was designed to promote green farming practice and encourages land owners to improve the environment by maintaining and increasing biodiversity, improving water quality and reducing soil erosion whilst protecting historic landscapes.

By signing up to the scheme we planned a body of work with Natural England to improve the environment at Mary Arden’s Farm, which includes the following aims:

• Creating wildlife corridors in arable areas, using uncropped margins in arable fields by maintaining hedgerows and hay making areas (with management to benefit associated wild flowers and birds)
• Improving conditions for farmland wildlife – including birds, mammals, butterflies and bees.
• Enhancing landscape character by helping to maintaining important features such as traditional field boundaries. This includes traditional hedging techniques (see below for more information).
• Maintaining rare breed farm stock on site. We look after several rare breeds at the Farm. Some like the English Goats are in the Rare Breed Survival Trust ‘priority’ category, while others are in the ‘at risk’ section.
• Reducing nitrogen and other deposits going into waterways.
• Maintaining orchards and protecting trees and plants from disease.
• Protecting soil from wind erosion.
• Disposing of our waste responsibly.
• Maintaining farming operations to safeguard nesting sites.
• Allowing educational access to children and groups covering subjects such as how farming can be sustainable.*

Within the High Level Stewardship Scheme is a genuine wish to return to more natural system of farming which aim to be economically, environmentally and culturally sustainable. Animal care and site conservation is a long-term commitment, therefore we have implemented appropriate land management plans which include appropriate animal care and rotation, in line with our animal welfare policy.

As an organic farm, we graze pastures in a relatively traditional way. This is a more environmentally friendly way to manage the land and helps to give the farm its good soil quality.

Our soil quality is checked during annual inspections, which help confirm our organic status. Because we need to maintain our soil quality, we plan the movement of grazing animals across the year, paying most attention to the movement of the largest animals, our cattle. Cows are a ‘keystone species’, meaning that they can help shape landscapes and ecosystems.

As the cows graze the fields, they encourage plants and flowers to grow, which leads to increased pollinator activity and other wildlife moving into the site. Cow dung also helps to sustain a rich variety of plant and animal life.

In winter 2021 we hedged many areas of the farm using traditional hedge laying techniques. The number of traditional hedge layers has declined since the beginning of the twenty century but we are lucky enough to know some practitioners who would come and work on our land. It had been five years since we had worked on the hedges, which are also part of the stewardship agreement. Hedgerows in the UK play host to a wide variety of wildlife and are a shelter for 125 species of threatened wildlife, so it is important they are maintained and new hedgerows are created.

*List adapted from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/countryside-stewardship-get-funding-to-protect-and-improve-the-land-you-manage