MinchCAN — Knapp Farm — From The Ground

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!

It was an absolute delight to be invited to share in this year’s MinchCAN’s Sustainability Trail. Having only just moved to Knapp Farm a year ago, we have made great strides in putting the farm on the ‘Knapp Map’. When we first moved here, we were so overwhelmed by the amount of space and opportunities that we reached out to many local organisations for advice. The Stroud community is a wonderful, all encompassing bunch of multi talented people who are a total inspiration to newcomers like us.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the MinchCAN Sustainability Trail, here’s a bit of info about it in all its wonderful glory.

MinchCAN want to connect people living locally with the experiences, wisdom, knowledge and ideas of their neighbours. They want people here to know more about where they live. They want to start people thinking. They want to give people a fun day out. In more detail their aims are:

Walking (or biking) and talking; wellbeing, action, ideas and learning.
Start, strengthen, enrich and extend local conversations around sustainability and resilience.
Connect local people with their local landscapes, communities, and sustainability heroes by asking them to walk or bike around a set trail on the same day.
Reach people who do not normally connect with sustainability issues.
Be inclusive, especially of those who don’t easily connect with sustainability.
Be super-local because localism is a lot of the point in sustainability. Involve communities within easy walking and biking distance of all parts of the trail.
Showcase practical sustainability-positive activity from individuals, families, neighbour groups, neighbourhoods, organisations, businesses &c. along and near the trail route.
Involve and highlight smaller communities that do not often participate in festival-type events.
Begin conversations and relationships that will result in continuing benefits for these communities, which otherwise may not have happened at all.
Connect sustainability projects in our communities.

We have a real sense of humour at Knapp Farm! Gill and the kids so enjoyed bringing ‘Bernie’ the bee keeper to life. He was thrilled to welcome visitors to our wonderful farm!

As with everything we put our minds to, we organised a lengthy list of activities for visitors to involve themselves with. Our biodiversity workshops focused on making plastic free bird food and plastic free bird feeders. The ‘Climate Caravan’ ran a looped video of biodiversity clips highlighting the current climate crisis, whilst in the ‘Biodiversity’ barn we ran a raffle and quiz and served up cakes and drinks, all of which were donated by the Stroud Brewery and Hobbs House Bakery. The Stroud Brewery also donated the raffle prize, a brewery tour for two. It raised £15 for MinchCAN, which may not sound a lot, but was more than most thought to do. There were also opportunities to try out our bike generator, visit our ‘Bird Hide’ eco loo and experience our ‘Wild Sustainable Glamping’ project.

Gill and the kids had particular fun putting their art skills to work to create some second hand, up-cycled 3D bees! With a few screws, we successfully fastened them to the welcome sign alongside ‘Bernie’.

Visitors enjoyed taking part in our plastic free bird feeder workshop. Kids loved banging in the nails, fastening the chicken wire, whittling the perches and rubbing in the bird food.

At Knapp Farm we have such passion to work with kids and help educate them about the things they can be doing to help the environment. It can be a hard age group to reach, but we are a determined bunch, and we don’t give up easily.

Knapp Farm is a whole family enterprise. One of the youngest members, Wren, instigated and ran a biodiversity quiz, which she put to visitors on arrival. In return for a £1 donation, they got to learn about lots of interesting biodiversity facts. Wren did a great job at helping to engage the local community.

It was hugely rewarding to welcome so many young people to the farm and show them all the exciting things we are doing. The bike generator was especially popular. It is normally hooked up to the battery down on the glamping site to power the kettle, toaster etc, but today, we bypassed the battery completely and plugged the bike straight into the inverter. It meant that the energy that visitors created was sent straight to powering the lights rather than getting stored in the battery. A useful exercise for people to understand exactly how much energy and effort it takes to power something as simple as a lighting circuit.

Young and old alike, the bike generator was a hit with everyone, although I think it made the task so much more hard work being sat on a child’s bike!

We hope Knapp Farm is getting a reputation for being a very happy place, but the animals that live there are just as friendly as the people, as this young chick shows! Dubbed ‘Snuffles’ by the children, she was raised in an incubator and definitely sees humans as her maternal family.

Below is another of our favourite chicks born and bred in our incubator. ‘Little Jim’ is an offspring of one of our fondest chickens, ‘Jim’. The youngsters who came along on Saturday enjoyed making friends with her.

It was great to welcome the Arboretum Association to Knapp Farm. They were leading tree walks to help educate folk about local flora and fauna. We were blessed with wonderful weather. The fields made a lovely backdrop.

One of the things we love most at Knapp Farm is welcoming people and showing them all the great things we are striving to achieve. We were on one of the steepest parts of the route so it only seemed fair to thank people for their efforts by rewarding them with free Budding and cake from the Stroud Brewery and Hobbs House Bakery, plus a few vegan and gluten free delicacies of our own! This lovely lady was very grateful.

Finally, and perhaps the biggest show stopper of the day, was the arrival of ‘Sylvia’ the tractor! Gill purchased this wonderful relic back in January from a private homeowner in Oakridge. It had been in a repair workshop ever since, and yet, the irony of life is such that, out of all the days and all the months it could have been returned, it arrived on the back of a trailer at 7am on the morning of the trail. A truly wonderful moment! It provided a great talking point for kids and grownups alike.