• Demise of FWAG is a big loss for agriculture

    Thursday 18th November was a black day for wildlife-friendly farmers, as FWAG went into administration after being the largest supplier of environmental advice to the agriculture sector for the last 42 years. They supported the greatest number of agri-environment scheme applications of any organisation across the UK, and they leave a big hole in the capacity for environmental advice provision to farmers. The press coverage…

  • How many times can a man turn his head...

    During the last half-century there have been changes in the way we understand ‘development’ - what it promises, the obstacles to accomplish it and the ways to achieve it. Most important is the role that public and private sectors should play to accelerate it.

    For some time, the main contribution made ​​by agriculture to the economic and social development has not received due recognition, but in the 60…

  • All I needed was the rain...

    The exceptionally dry conditions in eastern England have continued through harvest and crop establishment. This has made crop management easier in some ways but much more difficult in others. Easier in that all our crops were harvested dry thereby avoiding additional drying costs, more difficult in that timing of crop drilling became very problematic and crop growth has been slow.

    Harvest went well. Our oil-seed rape…

  • Fat birds in the barley

     

    By Sarah Blyth, North Wessex Downs Farmland Bird Project Officer

    In my second year at college I did an ornithology module. My teacher was this bird mad FWAG advisor and he instilled in me a deep seated enthusiasm for the countryside and the birds that dwell there that’s never gone away. I was out doing my first FEP when I decided that farmland birds was my thing – they were what I wanted to focus on and I landed…

  • Barn owls fledge, more than a partridge in a pear tree and a visitor from the east

    It’s been a fine autumn here on Hope Farm, with some excellent sunny early autumn days, crops have been harvested and next year's are sown and already growing. One of the great things in being associated with the farm is that we often have plenty of positive stories to report, and this blog post has not one but three such stories. 

    Readers of the blog will have heard the news that barn owls bred on the farm for…

  • Pumpkin-tatstic!

     

    I've got some great news to share, and Halloween seems the perfect time to share it.  

    Halloween of course marks the zenith of the short pumpkin season, and I know a number of farmers that really grow pumpkins for their community, rather than making much profit.  They see their friends and neighbours getting a great deal of pleasure carving and displaying their Jack o' Lanterns (that's my effort in the picture…