Fields, we’ve never had a field before!

Having moved from a ‘semi’ rural location, to Sparket Mill, we now had some land. Not much in local terms, but a couple of fields that are bordered by a river. Having followed some of the local farmers on social media, I knew of one person that I had contact. This was Danny Teasdale at Ullswater CIC, https://www.ucmcic.com/

Danny knows about river catchments and has been instrumental in lots of local biodiversity schemes and has worked with local farmers to help them keep their lad productive, whilst benefitting nature. Danny brough in Rob Dixon from Wild Lakeland, https://www.wildlakeland.com/ Rob is a very talented ecologist who did a survey on our fields for us. It turns out that we have a huge number of wildflowers for such a small patch. This was music to our ears and exactly what we’d hoped for.

When we moved here, there were some sheep grazing on the land. As much as we love sheep, we had to make the decision to ask the farmer to remove them until we knew what we wanted to do. The land begin to grow and show us the diversity that was present in such a small space. We did end up with four sheep that spent our first Winter with us, but the grazing stock had been dramatically reduced. Even with those four sheep, we noticed that the regeneration was slow and the young growth was allowed to develop. This was always going to be a learning curve and will take time, but part of the fun is the journey.