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HELPING YOU TO HELP WILDLIFE ON YOUR FARM |
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Lowland wet grassland with shallow scrapes and channels (foot drains) |
01.11.2005 |
Author: George Fenemore (farmer) and Mike Shurmer (RSPB Midlands Wetlands Advisor & Rotary Ditcher Project Manager)
Farm: Home Farm, Clifton |
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Aims:
To improve the 41 hectares of river valley flood meadows for breeding waders, protect archaeological features and restore our species-rich flower meadow. |
Management:
Home Farm is a 210-hectare mixed farm, in the middle reaches of the Cherwell Valley. The farm is an all-tenanted, family-run enterprise, growing a range of combinable crops, a flock of 400 breeding ewes for fat lamb production, and a hive bee-keeping enterprise.
We have a mix of soils ranging from heavy clay loam, ironstone and limestone brash, and alluvial silt over blue clay in the river floodplain. The farm has 52 hectares in permanent grass, of which 41 hectares are in the river valley flood meadows.
The whole farm was entered into a Higher Level Stewardship agreement in February 2006, and we now have a range of HLS options in place across the farm. On the grassland, these include options for archaeological features, species-rich meadows and wet grassland. These options suited us as the changed flooding regime meant the low-lying pasture was becoming harder to manage agriculturally.
We have undertaken a number of capital works on the wet grassland. These include hedge coppicing and willow pollarding to reduce the number of predator perches, building soil bunds with integrated simple angle bend pipe sluices to control the water levels, reprofiling ditches, and we created 4,620 m2 of shallow foot drains and scrapes using the RSPB’s Rotary Ditcher. These provide soft feeding areas for curlews, redshanks, snipe and lapwings, most of which are now breeding on site.
Problems encountered and how were these overcome
Wet weather meant that some of the capital works on the wet grassland could not be completed as early as hoped, but we did what we could and just had to wait for the earliest possible window.
Future changes
We are planning further improvements to the wet grassland, creating some more scrapes so that we can hold water further into the early summer. This will be done with the RSPB’s Rotary Ditcher in 2010.
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Achievements:
The entire farm is monitored by the RSPB to assess the effectiveness of the project, and the response to the wet grassland management has been wonderful. We are seeing a marked increase in farmland birds, with redshanks and lapwings being recorded breeding on the meadows for the first time since we have been on the farm. This is also the first record of breeding redshank on the Cherwell since breeding wader surveys started in the area in 1982. The number of curlew pairs has also increased from 1 to 4.
For the past 10 years, the meadowland has been managed under Environmental Stewardship Schemes as part of the wider farming enterprise. This has given us an opportunity to answer some of the many criticisms about modern food production and their effects on the natural environment, while producing high quality primary food crops for human consumption, paying a modern day rent and improving our own living and working environment. |
| Web Link: http://www.rspb.org.uk/rotaryditcher |
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©2010 Farm Wildlife |
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| Images ©RSPB, except Greater Horseshoe Bat ©Bat Conservation Trust |
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