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White Lane Farm, farming in the Surrey Hills
Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier Scheme
We were delighted to be accepted by Naturual England into the Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier and Wildlife Scheme back in January 2019. This provides the farm with a broad range of environment benefits. Countryside Stewardship supports Defra's strategic Objective of a cleaner. healthier enviroment, benefiting people and the economy. It also supports Defra's 25 year environment plan for our country to be the healthiest, most beautiful place in the world to live, work and bring up a family. We support this too and will be working to improve the area we live in. The main priority of the Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier is to protect and enhance the natural environment, in particular biodiversity ....... the diversity of wildlife and water quality. Other issues supported are flood management which we have already provided to our neighbouring village with a extensive Flood Relief Scheme on the farm back in 2016. The farm benefits from 25 acres of its own mature native broadleaf woodland. This includes approximately 4 acrea of managed regenerated woodland, assisting the farm's carbon mitigation. One of our goals is working towards achieving net zero carbon emissions on the farm.
We have started to further enhance our farm environmentally especially for our wildlife by carrying out some projects within the scheme. To give you a flavour of what we have been up to, see below.
The Forgotten Pond - Many years ago this pond may have thrived, but due years of neglect it became over grown and silted up.
Forgotton Pond fully restored for
the wildlife
Consultant Inspection taking place prior to the pond work commencing
Self seeded goat willow being removed from the pond base
Pond renovation well under way
Re-planting out of Norfolk Reeds (Phragmites) which existed at the pond prior to it's renovation.
It is hoped that once these Norfolk Reeds are re-established,they will offer useful cover for any nesting water fowl or wildlife/birds.
We have also undertaken a couple of other wildlife projects within the scheme. Last summer we planted 8 hectres of winter bird food, to provide important food resources for farmland birds, especially in Autumn and winter. This was drilled in June 2019 and has provided a substanial amount of food for numerous amounts of wild birds, throughout the Autum, Winter and early Spring.
Tractor driver checking depth and seed distribution, during drilling operations in June 2019 - AB9 wild bird food mix
Wild bird plants well estabished and flowering during September 2019
Wild bird food planted meadow including prominent flowering Sun Flowers 2022
Whist we have provided winter bird food by planting it out in June, we also feed a supplimentary bird feed mix between the months of December and April. This is done once a week by hand broadcasting 50kgs specially prepared winter bird food mix, in accordance with Naturual England's recommendation, on AB12
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