Turning a very bleak hillside into basically wood pasture and wet rush pasture With shelter belts, ponds and thousands of trees in wetlands or scrub corridors - with a 100 year vision

They don’t want solve any of the structural problems, lead and pay the costs - they simply want to displace the effects to the edges of vision Farmers sensed this a while ago - and they were right - we are supposed to play green and carry risks whilst new runways etc get built

Our greening actions are being undone faster than we can do them It makes a mockery of it all

I watched a discussion last year between Rory Stewart and Kate Raworth that has stayed with me He pointed out that growth is basically the get out of jail free card for every goverment - and that he couldn’t see them giving up on it - and that’s what’s basically happening

I started working in Ecology at a County Wildlife Trust. I saw then the scramble for BNG as far back as 2005/6 mad support for this from Wildlife NGOs. It boggled my mind and still does that they helped build a system that requires the destruction of habitat in order to fund the

Shame on you Keir Starmer The choice wasn’t between funding the NHS and a tax break - a staggeringly ill-judged explanation You just killed the last vestiges of any social contract with British farmers Well done to the farmers who blocked him in today - escalate it

Eggsy Pony and Friends posted their Valentine's Day card to you on Ko-fi where you'll find lots of "Love is" pics ko-fi.com/post/Valentine… Happy Valentine's Day xxx

This ivy growing up a big sycamore tree used to provide vital urban nesting habitat for birds, heaving flowers for pollinating insects, and clumps of winter berries for food. Now it’s dead because someone thought it looked ‘untidy’. Tidiness really is the enemy of nature.

Ben Goldsmith The amount of ignorance of what is good for nature is so frustrating. Similarly we are happy to throw up ugly architecture while making it nature proof. It’s a madness!

Hovering Barn Owl! 😍 Taken last week on the Somerset Levels. 🦉 (Let me know if you're getting bored of Owls!) 😁

And we ignored him and are still ignoring the science hoping it will go away - which it won't.

On #InternationalWomensDay I wanted to once again pay tribute to Tirzah Garwood, Eric Ravilious’ wife. They met when she was a student at Eastbourne College, married Eric in 1930 & a dozen years later was a war widow. Her work continued, and she deserves to be much better known.

This evening the goverment shut the door for new applications on the new environmental scheme (SFI) that was supposed to be the replacement (if the farmer was environmentally progressive) of the old subsidies Farmers can NOT now apply for new environmental support

This is actually as dumb, as regressive and frankly irresponsible as anything happening across the Atlantic in Trump’s America I knew they’d do it and wrote about it - but still breathtakingly bad news for the British farming, food and nature

If you want the context it’s explained here unherd.com/2024/11/a-farm…

The promise was absolutely clear We as a country would dismantle the old production subsidies and would be offered this green transition The promise has been trashed 76% of the old payments have been taken away and now no alternative support exists for many farmers

Wren belting out its song at Apex Park in Somerset this weekend! 😍 (Wren's are actually smaller in real life than this one appears in this photo!) 😮🐦😊

I still have lots of my Grandads old pots, I have used them Hundreds of times and they are a non matching hodgepodge of things, but I do love them. I always think of him at this time of year when I am growing things in them.

Just leaving this here after 10 hours outside while having a tea break….average hill farm business income 2023/24 was £23,608. That’s for the business, usually a family, not per person.(source gov.uk). We didn’t make that much last year.

I know you won’t all agree, and that’s fine, but after nearly 20 years of farming the role of our farm has become clearer to me recently 1. To produce a healthy ecosystem providing clean water, thriving plants and wildlife, great soil health and microbial cycle including fungi,