As part of the Bromyard Downs Common Association ADM grazing and Grasslands Manager John Phillips will be giving a presentation on the use of Virtual Fencing and GPS cattle collars at Epping Forest. Epping Forest is a 3,200Ha ancient wood pasture landscape stretching from East London into Essex receiving over 15 million visitors a year. The site has been owned… Read more →
Tag Archive for grazing
Research Evidence Gaps on Meadow Diversity and Grazing Strategy exposed
Jo Riggall’s Grassland Gap talk in February highlighted that grassland is often the poor relation compared with peatland and woodland and this is clearly the case when we look at research evidence about the role of diverse, deep rooted, well rested swards and the ecosystem services they provide in addition to food production. With Environment Agency funding hosted by Herefordshire… Read more →
Winter Management workshop at Barns Farm
On 27th February Meadows Adviser, Rory Johnson, headed up into Shropshire to deliver a workshop on winter management practices for recently restored swards to a group of farmers and farm advisers at Barns Farm. The event was delivered in collaboration with Buglife who carried out extensive grassland restoration works at this recently acquired National Trust property last autumn as part… Read more →
Winter Management Training and Seedling Safari 2023
A very big thank you to Jocelyn, Charlie and Sarah Finnigan who hosted this year’s seedling safari and winter meadow management training day at Homme House in Much Marcle Jocelyn, Charlie and Sarah have restored 5ha of species poor grassland using funds very generously provided by the Woolhope Dome Environment Trust and brush harvested seed from Plantlife’s Joans Hill Farm… Read more →
Seedling Safari and Winter Management practices for recently restored swards
A very big thank you to Malcolm and Ann Russell who hosted this year’s seedling safari and winter meadow management training day at Westfield Steading on a misty late November day. Malcolm and Ann have restored 1.5ha of species poor grassland as part of the Airwick – WWF-UK project using brush harvested seed from two local donor sites. After an… Read more →
Seedling Safari and Winter Management practices for recently restored swards
A chance to discuss winter meadow management with or without grazing livestock to increase the chances of your restoration being successful. Alongside this we will be testing out our plant ID skills with a seedling identification session. We are very kindly being hosted by Malcolm and Ann Russell who restored 1.5ha of grassland as part of the 2022 Botanica Project supported by Air Wick… Read more →
Celebrating flower rich grassland: integrating wood pasture and wood meadow with farming
We had a full house at the fifth and final event in our 2022 Meadows, Mosaics and Mitigating Climate Change series hosted by Nick and Nicci Lloyd at Fernhall Farm. It was fantastic to have been able to have Dan Carne, UK Director of the Woodmeadow Trust, as our guest speaker for the event. Dan kicked off proceedings by giving… Read more →
National Meadows Day – Saturday 2nd July
On Saturday 2nd July we celebrated National Meadows Day, a day dedicated to species rich grasslands. Miriam Griffiths and Anthony Furness hosted a farm walk at Olchon Court where we discussed the management approach they have followed that has created such wonderful, diverse meadows in a mosaic with trees, woodland, pond, riverbank and orchard. This included talking about some of… Read more →
Grassland Carbon – restoration, creation and management practices that affect carbon sequestration in grasslands
Caroline Hanks (Herefordshire Meadows) chaired a sequence of talks and a panel discussion at a Zoom event hosted by Plantlife as part of their Meadow Makers partnership, that gave an introduction to the rapidly evolving science on grassland carbon. Drawing upon the findings from her 2021 report for CIEEM entitled Carbon and Ecosystems: Restoration and Creation to Capture Carbon Penny Anderson… Read more →
Shelterbelts and ‘Living Barn’ Wood Pasture Mosaics
This event will be of interest to anyone outwintering livestock who would like to discuss the theory and practicalities of trees and shelterbelts on farms and how these can support and enhance grasslands and grazing systems. We are delighted to be joined by Sam Hollick (Bangor University) who will discuss some of the findings from his PhD work entitled ‘Optimising… Read more →