Community Meadow Restoration

Days don’t get more satisfying than this. Working outside in the fresh air, doing something for the better good of the environment, and in partnership with Cotswold National Landscapes, Glorious Cotswold Grasslands and Thomas Keble School, today at Knapp Farm we were sowing yellow rattle to help establish a new wildflower meadow in conjunction with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Golden Valley project.

After a busy, and I would say, rather stressful few weeks getting the field ready for seeding, we were delighted to welcome Anna, Harvey and their volunteers, Maureen, Chris and Debs. We weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but turns out, the task of sowing seeds is a lot more straight forward than we thought.

Gill in particular had been very worried about the state of the field - maybe there was too much grass still on show, maybe there wasn’t enough. We had no idea if what we had done was going to good enough. Thankfully, Anna and Harvey were hugely impressed, so far as saying it was one of the best prepared sites they had worked on. We were relieved!

The majority of the seeds came from a donor site in Chedworth, which apparently has similar characteristics to our field. However, Harvey, pictured below, was working on a separate area of the field, scattering seeds from a site in Bourton-on-the-Water, which is prone to a little more dampness.

I just loved the wonderful texture of the seeds. A combination of seed heads mixed in with the actual seeds produce this rich, magical material. Holding them in the palm of your hand is a great tonic.

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of our hippo sack of seeds…WITH OUR NAME ON!!!

Just love Debs! Smiles all around as she scattered the seeds…

…and the smiles continued with Anna Field, one of the lead coordinators. A woman with such great enthusiasm and commitment.

It was a rather regimented line up as the guys prepared to scatter the seeds. Walking in a straight line, at a certain distance apart, then return…

…and fill up your buckets in the process.

It only took an hour to seed 3/4 of the meadow. Anna and Harvey kindly left the remainder for the year 10 students from Thomas Keble to do. The connection to bring TK students up was instigated by Gill at Knapp Farm. Having already established a positive working relationship with Annie Parfitt, a teacher at TK, through a previous project, the Shared School Woodland, Annie was keen to get her SEN Employability students involved in this too.

While Anna talked the students through what they were doing and why they were doing it, Harvey filled up the buckets with more seed.

It’s hard to put into words the huge amount of happiness that the photo below gives me. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to facilitate opportunities like this. To know that we are helping to educate children about how to help the environment is a real privilege.

And of course, the wonderful Chloe Turner, who must be such a busy lady in her role as a county and district councillor, still finds the time to come and sprinkle seeds.

Once all the seeds were down, I asked the students if they would help set out the poles for the electric fence. The neighbouring farmer has cows and we need his cows to help trample the seeds in. It’s simply a case of opening up the fence between our two fields and letting the beasts in! We did it last year as a first stage in the prep work for the seed sowing. Fingers crossed all our hard work pays off!

Community Hay Rake

Knapp Farm is committed to helping improve biodiversity and reversing habitat loss. We are working with a variety of different organisations and individuals in order to help us to achieve that goal. These include Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, Cotswolds National Landscapes, Glorious Cotswold Grasslands and MinchCAN. We are also grateful for the support from Chloe Turner, District and County Councillor for Minchinhampton and Environmental Chair on Stroud District Council. She is an inspirational lady who always seems to find the time to support every local initiative.

Our land covers around 12 acres, not much in the grand scheme of things, but it encompasses some quite rare habitats including wet woodland, calcareous grassland and a traditional orchard.

One of the projects we have been working on is the restoration of our second field. We want to seed it with yellow rattle, which is semi parasitic on grass, in the hope of establishing a new wildflower meadow. This project forms part of Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Golden Valley project, which looks to create new wildlife corridors in Stroud, helping the large blue butterfly and other species.

Knapp Farm enjoys a really positive relationship with the team at Glorious Cotswold Grasslands, which is part of the Cotswold National Landscapes. After an initial site visit last year to assess the suitability of our fields for sowing, they returned to do a botanical survey this Spring, which revealed how rich and diverse the fields are. We were told to have the fields ready and prepped for sowing by the end of October. Little did we know just what this involved!

Gill purchased an old tractor back in January and had a romantic vision of using it to restore her grassland in the Autumn. In the end, it came down to the wire. The tractor was returned at the end of September, leaving her with a very small window, to top, rake and harrow before seeding.

The topping was relatively straight forward, if not a little terrifying. Having never driven a tractor before to then farm on the side of a slope felt like being thrown in at the deep end.

The raking was more of a challenge. With no budget to invest in any fancy machinery, it came to the old fashioned method of hand raking. The neighbour had an old wooden tool which didn’t hold up well against the dense thatch that tumbled across the 4 acre field. A few back breaking days out in the sunshine though and progress looked to be happening.

Ultimately, it came down to a bit of a shout out to the local community to help get the job done. Off the back of the MinchCAN Sustainability Trail, we were thankful to have asked visitors for their email addresses as a way of keeping in touch. As ‘Friend's of Knapp Farm’ Gill sent a plea out asking for help! Amazingly, many wonderful fold turned up!

Those that were too young to hold a rake simply watched on.

The truck and trailer proved a useful combination when it came to picking the thatch up and carting it away. We did start out taking it over to the compost, but gave up relatively quickly and simply left the cuttings on the edge of the field. Not ideal and we probably won’t repeat the process next year, but we were pushed for time.

The finished field looks almost professional! Of course, there then came the small matter of working out how to harrow it.

Investing in large scale harrows wasn’t really an option given the relatively small budget, so we tried using an old set of harrows that were lying around the yard. They didn’t cut it, even when we weighed them down with other objects such as an old foot pedalled sewing machine. Many late night eBay searches later and a rather odd trip to a plant hire company in Swindon and we eventually found the right tool for the job. A huge old cultivator that we had been assured was in full working order. Oh how naive we were. After a day spent just lubricating the PTO and other mechanisms to get the parts moving, we were disheartened to find that the PTO still wouldn’t turn the blades. With the help of a neighbour we managed to get the side plate off and discovered the whopping chain was broken. A day later and a new chain was found and a week later it was on and the cultivator was in full working order. What an achievement! So satisfying to see the first section of the field getting churned up!

Later that day and the tractor, Colin and the cultivator were still going strong!

Day turned into night and the tractor, Colin and the cultivator returned. All in one piece!