I first heard from Mr Blackburn back last November. His current agri-environment agreement was due to end soon, and he’d been invited by Natural England to apply for Higher Level Stewardship. Could I help? The farm was within the Upper Thames river valleys project area, so a few days later I met him on his farm.
It was a tenanted, 114 acre site of all grass. There was an onsite livery that supported some horses, but most of the farm was pasture or hay meadow running down to the nearby river, and crossed by a few small brooks and ditches. Many of the riverside fields in particular were very small. The field boundaries tended to be large, somewhat sprawling thorn hedges, and there were plenty of thickets where willow tree branches had fallen over and regrown again.
However, it had a couple of features that made it an unusual farm to work with. Firstly, it’s almost surrounded by the city of Oxford, virtually embedded in the mesh of housing and green space that somewhere gives way to open countryside. It soon became clear that one of the main challenges here was ‘farming in a fish bowl’; the holding was criss-crossed with footpaths and cycle ways in almost constant use. Every move made was inevitably scrutinised by passers by – and overlooked by some of the most knowledgeable academics in the world.
Much of the farm was also designated, covered by New Marston Meadows SSSI. This SSSI is designated for its floodplain meadows – a scarce habitat characterised by plants such as common meadow-rue, pepper saxifrage and devil’s bit-scabious. The way the meadows are farmed is critical to keeping them in good condition. However, the way they’re farmed is likewise largely dictated by the vagaries of the British weather, and especially the level of the adjacent river Cherwell.
Don’t forget your wellies!One of the steps in applying for HLS is to complete a Farm Environment (FEP). This is an audit of the main environmental features of the farm, their condition, and the appropriate management for them. The idea is that the FEP should then inform and steer the choice of options in the HLS application.
The immediate problem I had with doing this for Park Farm was the timing. For months over the winter, and into early spring, much of the farm was completely flooded. Fields where I was supposed to be assessing grassland type were under around a foot of water – with goosander swimming over them! And even when the floodwaters did eventually recede, there wouldn’t be a sniff of a flowering meadow indicator species until well after the deadline.
With a little help from my friends...Fortunately, the SSSI and nearby urban areas meant help was at hand. A local naturalist named Judy Webb was a regular on the farm. She’s an expert at identification, and passionate about the SSSI. She kindly agreed to send me her records for the site. When I received them, I was flabbergasted to see nearly 1,500 individual records of plants, moss, fungi, butterflies and bugs. It needed a bit of time to sort through them – not least because most were recorded by their scientific name only.
Mr Blackburn also mentioned that the Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation group did surveys on one or two of his hedges most years. I suspected I knew what they had been looking for, and sure enough, they kindly sent me details of the brown hairstreak eggs they have been counting there for years.
To the deadline, and beyond...With the FEP complete, I worked with Mr Blackburn to identify which HLS options would most suit the farm. We needed to secure favourable management of the SSSI hay meadows and deal with a few areas that were becoming wetter than was ideal. We also needed to balance the need of the brown hairstreak butterfly for young blackthorn suckers with the need of the narrow flower meadows not to be overly encroached by scrub from the hedges.
With the help of our knowledgeable Natural England advisor, we’d developed and agreed options and prescriptions that were tailored to the farm. The agreement was signed and went live at the beginning of the month. The income from HLS will help Mr Blackburn continue to keep the floodplain meadows blooming for the next ten years, as well as improve conditions across the whole of the farm for a wider suite of wildlife.
And I definitely intend to visit him again next summer to see the flower fields in their full glory – hopefully keeping my feet dry!