Balancing biodiversity at Upper Red House Organic Farm

 

 

I manage about 20 acres of neutral grassland as species rich hay-meadows. In the early days it was exciting when a few orchids appeared. Now, after 20 years, the Common Spotted and Southern Marsh Orchids are in their many hundreds, increasing every year, along with at least seven or eight grasses, a long list of other flowers, plus grass snakes, grasshoppers, butterflies, bees, moths and on and on. 

 

The changes in species are always interesting. A large patch of eye-bright took over part of a meadow – never noticed before and now fairly dispersed - and it was intriguing to find a scattering of white Self-heal flowers (not blue). I’ve given up battling the invasive Hogweed and now find it has retreated anyway. Now a glut of knapweed is encroaching instead. The highly poisonous Hemlock Water Dropwort flourishes along the damp edge. It’s beautiful, the invertebrates love it and the cattle seem to love it too (as long as they don’t eat the Dropwort roots, they’re fine). There is far too much Yellow Rattle! So needless to say the hay crop has reduced by half to 3-4 round bales per acre. Recent dry summers have something to do with that. Glastir payments make up for some of the financial loss, but when wandering through the fields in June, delighting in the life all around, who cares?

 

The awful moment comes at mowing time, about mid July onwards, extinguishing in an hour or two all that life and beauty. But the hay is lovely. (They say it’s good hay if you feel hungry at the smell of it!) But at what cost? We do leave wide un-mown margins in the fields as a wildlife refuge for the rest of the year. But mowing lays waste the great majority of it, and every year so far it all comes back and the trauma subsides. Until next July. At MMG light conservation cattle grazing on our Wet Meadow reserve is a success. But economically viable cattle numbers on a farm would probably graze species rich meadows too heavily for the biodiversity to survive.

A quandary now is what to do about the need for more trees to mitigate climate change. How much of the bio-diverse meadows can I bear to lose to new woodland? How do I balance biodiversity and grassland CO2 sequestration against the take up of CO2 by new growth of young trees? The science is still to be settled it seems. Climate change is upon us and we’re 50 years too late anyway, so perhaps we should just enjoy what’s left, if we’re lucky enough to have it. (Sorry to be negative, but the science is undeniable). I’d invite a few beavers, which would be fun and make wonderful habitat. But - er - they do need water! 

 

All are welcome to come and look (by appointment), or to walk the public footpaths across the farm. All plant and insect surveyors are very welcome.