https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/transcript-strickley-farm/
Transcript: Strickley Farm
00:06
James Robinson, Dairy Farmer, Strickley Farm, Cumbria
So this area on the right down the bottom, that’s why Danny’s having a bit of a… he’s poking his nose over the hedge. [laughs] So yeah, that's where we've done a fairly big bit of digging. We'll go and have a look at that now.
Text: We visited dairy farmer James Robinson in the Lake District, to see how nature restoration works alongside food production on his farm.
00:28
James
We've always had this bit of land, it always floods because it's on a floodplain. Historically it’s been drained. We’ve had probably 3 different goes at it draining it in the last hundred years, none of which really made much more difference.
I wanted to see standing water, hawks hunting over it, and then, when you come down, I wanted to be able to see some invertebrates over the water. So that's what I said to Danny, I said, there you go, do summat.
00:51
Danny Teasdale, CEO Ullswater Catchment Management
Community Interest Company (CIC)
So I just found the low spot through here, re-meandered the stream back through it, put some ponds onto it.
Text: This land was unproductive and prone to flooding. Danny re-meandered the stream, creating a natural habitat for wildlife that can also be used for grazing livestock.
Danny
Now, when it floods, it floods, doesn't it?
01:15
James
Yeah, but it doesn't flood any more frequently than before. It'll hang around these lower areas that Danny’s created. But it’s also, you know, there’s areas of dry as well, so there's more of a refuge for creatures to go and hide on.
01:27
For the majority of farmers, you’re doing so much work, Danny knows exactly who to go to, he knows roughly what it's going to cost, he knows how long it’s going to take. Job done, you know, and he knows what permissions to get as well.
Danny
This is the local Environment Agency that are trying something different, working with us as Ullswater CIC (community interest company), and we're tying the Environment Agency in to the farmers, working it through us, and it just brings them together, and we end up with a really flexible good idea at the end of it.
01:56
The CIC, it's a community interest company, it's a non-for-profit, it's that local approach, and it's ground upwards, the ideas are from the farmers, it’s up to us to then facilitate it. And there are another couple of CICs that I know that have set up. There's another one in West Cumbria, there's another one in Windermere. It does seem to be a good model that seems to be working. The Ullswater CIC set off in Ullswater. It started off in Glenridding after the floods in 2015. And then from then on it's expanded throughout Ullswater, further out into Ullswater, but it’s then moved into South Cumbria and West Cumbria because people seem to like this model. And then farmers talk and then someone else will get in touch. We are growing. We've been able to employ local contractors. Any money that comes into the CIC goes locally as well.
02:42
James
And that then creates more trust from our end as well because, you know, you know the people that are doing the job for starters, you know, so they're going to be local people that are doing the work, but you know that the money is staying there as well. You get just this much more sense of community that you are doing something for the local area.
Now this bit of land we had here was 4 or 5 acres, it was rubbish. In agricultural terms, it was rubbish, but environmentally and its potential for habitat is huge. So we might as well, really, put it to something where it’s going to actually do a better job than it was farming. Linking all them together with bits of becks and repairing strips and a few hedges, you know, all of a sudden then, you're making a huge difference to habitat and water quality, flood mitigation. In terms of pounds spent on this type of project, pounds of public money spent on this type of project, its value is absolutely massive because it ticks loads of boxes.
03:31
Danny
There’s dragonflies in it, there’s snipe in it. I mean, you’ve seen barn owls in here.
James
Yeah, so we hadn’t seen a barn owl over our farm for… Well, I'd never seen one, so over 40 years. And then we've come down here one evening and there it was hunting, and we see it most evenings now, hunting over here.
Now that's here because we've allowed the habitat to change and allowed nature in, and the amount of dragonflies, it'll just be incredible to see, won’t it?
03:57
Danny
Yeah, and it's having an option that is available to all farmers, isn't it?
James
Yeah.
Danny
It's not a rewilded landscape, it's something that everyone can do.
James
We can still put cattle in here and graze it. We don't want it to turn into a small woodland in here because that would harm all the water and everything. So I want to keep this grass level reasonably low, just have a real mix of habitat in here, don’t we, which cattle are fantastic at being able to create.
04:23
Danny
Controlled grazing on this, it’ll be full of wildlife, won’t it?
James
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Danny
It's replicating how it used to be. From the top corner where it comes in here, I’ve then used a laser level and found the lowest part. It's then putting the stream back through it, how it should naturally flow through here. And then there should be offshoots for ponds and wetland areas.
James
10 months in since it was done, it looks like it's been here years, if not decades already, but we’re going to let it do what it wants. You know, we're going to allow it to re-naturalise.
05:02
So that there is ragged-robin, which is a really identifiable plant once the flowers are out, but we just weren’t too sure what it was, like that. And then that there is lesser knapweed.
So yeah, I've just got an app on my phone, just for doing that sort of stuff, but it's amazing what does come up. Mayflower, cuckoo flower, lady’s smock, it’s got loads of names, we call it mayflower here.
The orange tip butterfly lays its eggs only on these, so they come out around now [April]. I've seen an odd one or two and they lay their eggs on there, so they're dependent on these flowers.
05:31
So these are king cups, marsh marigolds, they are very much a wetland type of plant so they need wet feet, as it were, to be able to grow.
Having all these early flowers is great for early pollinators around this time of year. But you need a real mix of habitat to do this.
This is meadowsweet, tall, white, fluffy flowers, almost like a champagne sort of colour. They’re really late flowers, so like August, September, when those will be flowering.
05:57
And then that's a sorrel there, so that's like a June-July flowering, you’ve got different things flowering at different times of year.
This is a green dock beetle. It's a really iridescent colour, really shiny, and when you see them in the sun, they’re beautiful. These are the eggs from that. And then those will all hatch
into little black grubs. And then the black grubs eat all these leaves and… Oh, I think I've just disturbed them in their moment of passion. [laughs]
06:24
But they're really good if allowed to breed, because they do keep the broad-leaved dock in check, which is considered an undesirable weed within grasslands. So they do a great job,
and you see them sometimes just devouring across a field if you get the life cycle right, but sometimes that's more luck than management.
Danny
Look, you’ve got all the tadpoles at the bottom.
James
Ah, there is, yeah, yeah. Loads of taddies!
So, get all that right, you've got food for the birds and areas for butterflies to be, and the dragonflies are going to be on here once the sun comes warmer in June, July.
Well, it just shows, doesn’t it? There’s this ‘build it and they will come,’ there wouldn't be any of this stuff here if there was no pond. Nature moves in, you know, if you just give it somewhere to go.
07:09
They’re loving it in the sun there! And then there's all the stuff, the pond skaters on the surface, there’ll be water boatmen, and other beetles underneath. In fact, there’ll be loads of life underneath in the mud, as well, so the edges are really important as well on a pond.
We’ll give it time for a lot of these early flowers and things to flower and seed, and we'll put the cows in, we’ll put 10 or 15 cows in here, for maybe a week, 10 days, they’ll come in, they'll trample it, they'll push it all in, so they’ll… And the idea of mob grazing is graze a third, trample a third, and leave a third, and then they'll go out, and then it’ll allow the grassland to recover, the roots and everything to recover, and all the stuff they’ve trampled in will just be stored as carbon in the soil.
07:52
You can pick bits of your farm out almost immediately, and say well, yeah, I could fence that bit off there, and it's maybe an acre, but in reality how much grazing do I get off it? You know, very, very little. And if there's funding there to fence it off, and there’s funding to pay for that area, and that area then might even become one of the best paying areas on the farm in reality. But you're not farming it in a traditional sense, you know, you’re farming it in terms of protecting its habitat.
08:22
Danny
It's another financial element of the farm, isn’t it?
James
Yeah.
Danny
You've got somewhere that you can't farm and you can't do anything with.
James
Yeah, there comes a time when the economics of trying to constantly agriculturally improve areas just becomes completely unviable and you're fighting a losing battle. Nature will always win, it generally does, and we might as well work with nature really.
08:43
Danny
But that’s it, though, isn’t it? And as you say, it's probably worth
more now to you than it was before.
James
Yeah, and I think really as farmers, we have to… And in all the teaching and everything that goes into farming in the industry, I think we've got to look at production as much more than what leaves the farm on a milk tanker or whatever. If we look at production in terms of what we've done for environment, and for the landscape, and for local social care, and mental health and everything, you know.
09:19
I mean, you look at the stuff on the verge side here, and all the bluebells and the stitchwort and everything, dandelions… The colours are just wonderful, and that's, you know, it's only there because there’s a healthy hedgerow behind it and everything. So, yeah, we just really need to see the farm as much, much more than just kilos of grain or litres of milk.
END
