Chew Valley gets Planting!
Back in the Summer of 2021 Chew Valley Plants Trees had a vision of sending personal hand-delivered letters to 100 farmers across the valley to invite them to Chew Stoke Harvest Home.
In September, interested by the invitation but unable to come on the day, George Ford from Nempnett Pastures picked up the phone to have a chat. Soon after we arranged to visit him on his farm and spent a lovely time walking the land and hearing about the farming happening now and George’s vision for regenerative farming, planting trees with the needs of the land and his business in mind, working with the flow of water, providing shelter for livestock and protecting and enhancing biodiversity to ensure natural ecosystem processes can take place.
George’s love of his land was palpable, born into a farming family, he spent his childhood surrounded by this familiar and beautiful scene, learning to farm from his parents and grandparents. In fact he is the 6th generation of his family farming on this land, now making the decisions with his wife Megan and their young family. This stewardship across time is seen in the protection of hedgerows and the charming field names passed down from generation to generation: Fairytoote, Swellymeade, Bosmead Hill and Longthorn.
There was a magical moment during our visit when we walked into Lane Field where half a dozen 100 year old oaks stand, each in their own space, reminding us that the term ‘acre’ was that given to the space an oak tree needs to grow to full maturity.. “There used to be more oaks here,” he said “and one day I plan to plant oaks that will last for the next 100 years”.
This March Chew Valley Plants trees joined up with Black2Nature (an environmental group which aims to enable more people from visible ethnic minorities to have opportunities to enjoy the countryside,) and spent a day tree planting mini woodlands into the field edges in five fields on the farm. These were native trees, a mixture of oak,willow,birch, aspen, alder, rowan, beech and hornbeam:465 trees in all. They were sourced through the ‘I dig trees’ programme via Black2Nature who also received grant funding to help with additional costs on the day. George and Megan made sure there were some home made refreshments, Ayesha Ahmed-Mendoza from Black2Nature co-ordinated the equipment and volunteers and Chris Yerbury from Chew Valley Plants Trees offered the technical support for laying out the scheme and showing others how to plant and stake each tree.
Next Year George hopes that Nempnett Pastures can take advantage of DEFRA funding to move to the next stage of his planting vision and he has already invited us all back to help put the trees in the ground.
For more information about Nempnett Pastures: www.nempnettpastures.co.uk/
For more information about Black2Nature: www.facebook.com/OfficialB2N/
If you are Farmer who would like to work with us email chewvalleyplantstrees@gmail.com