The annual volunteer conference today with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Taking place this year at St Edward’s school in Charlton Kings, the agenda was a series of talks in the morning, some lunch and then a visit to a nearby farm in the afternoon.

We started off with a message from the CEO, who couldn’t be there, and then an interactive session on what gives us hope for wildlife in Gloucestershire, and also what additional skills volunteers can offer the trust. This was a good opportunity to interact with others attending.

Speaker with slides in a room giving a talk
Talks in the morning

We then had three excellent presentations on “Do one thing”, introduction of beavers into Gloucestershire and nature reserve monitoring. It’s good to see what else is going on in the Trust, because the rest of the year you just get caught up in the particular projects you work on.

These were followed by an excellent lunch and catching up with people before heading over to Whittingdon Lodge Farm to have a tour of the farm with Ian Boyd.

We started off with a ride in the tractor from the car park to the top of the farm, which both Graham and I were insanely excited about.

This is a farm I’ve been to before, having seed harvested here and done winter habitat management a few times.

A red tractor pulling a large green carriage that people have just alighted from in a field
Transported by tractor to the start of the walk
I man showing a group of people a wedge of soil he's just dug up
Looking at soil quality

The ethos of the farm is to work in harmony with nature and make a commerical profit.

There are no nitrogen inputs, and it’s a mixture of arable, beef cattle and grasslands.

Crop rotation is planned carefully with four years of herbal ley in between two to three years of cereal.

You could see evidence of the approach when comparing a soil sample in an unploughed pasture with an adjacent field in it’s second year of ley. The colour was dark black in the pasture – a sign of nutrient richness, compared to a mid brown in the herbal ley. But the purpose of the ley mix is to return nutrient back to the soil so it can carry an arable crop again in a couple of years.

In the meantime, they are mob grazed by the 100 or so head of Hereford cattle kept on the farm for beef production. These are finished entirely on grass, and the meat sold directly to customers on their website cotswoldbeef.com.

We then took a look at a species rich grassland slope which was home to grass snakes and the occasional adder. Also some stunning examples of Greater Knapweed which were in flower.

A sobering moment when Ian showed us a birdseed field which is under Countryside Stewardship (along with field margins and other parts of the site). This scheme provides public benefit but comes to an end in November, with no planned continuation. It’s a worry when you think what will happen to all these areas across the country when the payments stop.

Finally we walked to the lower part of the farm where barley was growing which is used in Belgian beer making. This had yet another way of producing the herbal ley, this time by under-seeding when the barley is planted. This has the advantage of being able to fill out immediately after the crop is harvested. Next year, it’ll be used for haylage.

It was an excellent tour and really inspiring to see how a farm can be as profitable as intensive agriculture (lower yield, but lower inputs) and points to a mixed use model for farming in the future.

Many thanks, as always, to Ellie who works tirelessly through the year to support volunteers at the trust and is the principal organiser of this annual conference.