Your Garden Isn’t Enough - Here’s Why

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Recently, I traveled to Suffukk to meet a man known as the Rogue Lord. And in this video, we're going to look at what he's doing to help wildlife on his land, how farming can work alongside reing, how he looks after and cares for his livestock, and most importantly, why we need your garden.

[00:00:21]Well, hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of Wild Garden because today I'm with a good friend of mine, Hugh Simlaton. And Hugh is um yeah, you are the first official lord I've ever met, Hugh. So, uh thank you for taking the time to meet me.

[00:00:36]>> That is that's a high bar.

[00:00:39]>> Um and Hugh um yeah, Hugh is on a mission and today we're going to be talking about his mission and uh some of the amazing things he's achieved and looking to achieve in the coming weeks, months, and indeed years. So, Hugh, why don't you start me off with a little bit of family history because I'm sure you won't mind me saying your house is not your average run-of-the-mill house, is it?

[00:00:59]>> No. Uh, that is true. Well, so first of all, thank you family. I know it's been a long time coming and it's a real >> treat for me too. And so, just in terms of that context, so we are here in North Suffuk, uh, kind of on the edge of the southern broads. The Broads National Park runs out sort of at Alton Broad just a few miles from here along the river Waven and and actually just east of us got the North Sea. So we're kind of tucked up between Great Yarmouth and Loristooft and and the Broads National Park at a place called Slayton. Uh also the name of this uh house as you say it's not an ordinary house where my family been living since the middle of the 19th century.

[00:01:35]>> Wow.

[00:01:36]>> So we were kind of a classic in in the kind of um Dan Nabi uh kind of everyone's seen Dan Nebby but we we are the kind of industrialist. far superior.

[00:01:45]>> Well, thank you. I'll take that. You haven't been inside yet. So, but yeah, so we're we're we're kind of uh you know, an industrial family made money in the west riding of Yorkshire in particularly in Halifax in the 19th centur 18th and then 19th century and some of the spoils of that as was typical of the time that industrial uh rates progress moved out to buy land and >> and join the kind of the fashion of land ownership and big houses which probably seemed a great idea at the time but not quite so sure nowadays. And um yeah, and I mean all I suppose the unusual thing is that probably that was likely to be Yorkshire somewhere as a Yorkshire family of many generations and and so I always feel a bit of a kind of a little bit of a fraud here in Suffukk and when I do visit Halifax which I love doing and there's a lot of crossly memorabilia there >> I feel of course a bit of a fraud there because I'm not any longer from there but yeah so >> you got suffoc imposter syndrome. I have a bit. Yeah. I don't know when I've when we've been here long enough when you can earn that, but there are a few, you know, people I come across who've been here for like since the revolution or Cromwell or something and you kind of can't really compete with that. But yeah, so it's our home and um uh we're kind of custodians and and look after it this amazing house and garden, but also the kind of surrounding farmland >> which we will come on to. Um so first and foremost, I should say if you ever want to visit this amazing home and gardens, people can of course do that, can't they?

[00:03:07]>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We're >> don't come and knock on Hugh's front door, but um yeah, there is a there is a general public area, isn't there?

[00:03:13]>> Yeah. Well, we're in hospitality, so hopefully you'll get a broad welcome, but yes, we're open kind of like most seasonally from sort of Easter till the end of September.

[00:03:21]>> Yes.

[00:03:22]>> And yeah, it's a nice nice day out.

[00:03:24]>> Yeah. Brill. And I'm particularly interested in this fabulous little walkway that you've got here because I'm I'm actually looking to create something very similar but on a much less grand scale on the side of my house um with these stone columns and just I mean a massive wisteria. You you couldn't get much more English country garden could you? I don't think.

[00:03:43]>> No. And actually this is so we're sort of sitting in what was an orery that there was a huge amount more glass if that is possible here including a winter garden and and that extended out to here. So we're this when it was taken down the glass was taken down. This is kind of the frame that was left. Um so and it's and it's a kind of nice to have that kind of architectural backdrop to a to a formal setting. Great for occasion when we rent the place out for a kind of summer lunch.

[00:04:09]>> Yes.

[00:04:09]>> And for this.

[00:04:10]>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean this is Yeah. One of the most romantic interviews I think I've ever done. It's it's glorious. Surrounded by serious lovely little sort of uh Yeah.

[00:04:18]hidey-hole here with this great view over the formal gardens. Absolutely fantastic. Anyway, I digress. So, let's let's start at the beginning, shall we?

[00:04:26]Hugh? Sounds obvious. Um, what was the kind of the trigger for you or is there a moment in time that you recall where you had an immediate kind of intimacy with nature or or that kind of experience that you thought, "Wow, these things called animals are quite amazing, you know." Um, >> yeah. Well, it's it's kind >> Put you on the spot.

[00:04:47]>> No, no, no. It's a good it's a good one, actually. There's some quite sort of fun segways into into that, I suppose. So, first of all, you know, I'm absolutely happy to say that I grew up on what was, you know, pretty traditional farming estate with a chute and probably spent half of my available time, spare time with our the gamekeeper. I was like another father to me. Lived just across the park. And of course, my first of all, I'm the first to admit my prism if you like, of understanding the countryside was was a gamekeepers. So you had uh a very binary world of things you wanted to save and things you wanted to kill in order to save them. So vermin of all kinds. So corvids, weasels, stos, hedgehogs, foxes, you name it, foxes.

[00:05:25]Yeah.

[00:05:25]>> And that I I mean I don't think I broke out of that world uh particularly until sort of well into my 20s and and um there was a a period in my 20s when trees became a big thing and and when as my parents were getting older before they died like I was trying to pinpoint exactly that where what was that trigger and I I wonder whether it was guilt actually for the way we were farming the way I'd grown up and and a and a sort of young man's desire to counterbalance that. But but um dad used to call me a sckless environmentalist. And you know to be fair he was sort of a little bit right probably but at the time although I was rapidly like anyone young you know when you get a position a political or or radical position as a younger person you tend to go all in don't you and get very irritated by uh older people. And I so my big thing was I used to go around to big old trees and to cut the ivy off.

[00:06:19]Uh not really appreciating that actually if those two things have become symbiotic essentially over many years or maybe hundreds of years you actually do more damage to the tree than than not.

[00:06:28]Um and then you know and I think this is probably a really critical thing to impart but I then had a restaurant business in London. I was very authentic about what we were cooking, but I was miles off thinking about where we were cooking came from, you know, particularly the the sustainability and welfare of of the animals that we were it was a Middle Eastern thing. It was another big area for me and I traveled a lot there. But when I then came home to look after the place where my father became ill, um I think quite quickly then I sort of rediscovered my old agricultural rural dimension to my character and just became and by the way I'm mid-30s at this point so not it's not like I can't >> I would have said now personally >> right I'm happy to yes make sure that goes out. Uh so yeah and I I just sort of was sort of very I had a very hard farm manager who I grown grown up with a bit but he was uncompromising on the environment I as in the land was man's sort of >> ways should we say >> yeah I mean it was very much at the time but he was a pretty strong accent of that and nothing could stand in the way of of sort of the industrialization of the farm and field scrapes were filled in with waste potatoes to bring them level to make it easier to farm. Clay was dug out to ease clay holes to make it better for farming. Hedges were cut very tight and plowed too close to and then caught spray. You know, there was not there was no compromises and >> and and then of course farmers were paid you know many decades ago to to remove hedros to make farming more efficient.

[00:08:04]>> Yeah. So dad, one of the things he stood in the way of actually was that rather sentimentally and I don't think I think this was a more of a nostalgic um view of the countryside rather than an environmental view of the countryside.

[00:08:14]But actually dad stood in the way of his progress in that regard and we we never ripped out any of some of our tenants did. Ironically now some of the biggest films fields we farm are those that have been given up by tenants that we weren't in total control of back then. But yeah, so that so I think when when I came back home I I did have a sort of bit of an awakening and and and maybe the I mean you asked about the defining point. The defining point was I had a quite have to be one by the way but I think you're coming towards it.

[00:08:40]>> Yeah. Is is the Yeah. In my long-winded fashion was I went with my quite enlightened stockman at the time who caught a sense of what I was worrying about and thinking about and he said well I think first thing we need to do is go with our animals to the abattoire.

[00:08:54]And it wasn't I don't want to sound sanctimonious around that. I totally get why most people who live and breathe livestock farming find it incredibly hard to then be the person that takes them to slaughter. They often sell them as stores. So they're removed from that.

[00:09:06]If they if they've reared them, it's emotionally very tough. But I So we went and we went on the sort of 4 a.m. low blood sugar sort of toour of of how that process works. And we're talking about a very small, very worthy local abbitar that still does all three of the main farm animals as in you can take sheep, cow, and pig there. Most of them have become single species. And very much more industrial. And of course, of course, it's the worst horror movie you've seen on an overdose of steroids.

[00:09:39]It's unbelievably. And it and and I don't want to be a vegetarian, but I think what it really harnessed was which I think was in me was okay, if we're going to farm animals, we need to do a lot better if the if in the exchange rate between taking life, you know, these sentient and and you know, the world's opening up to the sentience of things we've deliberately done down sheep, cattle, pigs to realizing actually they're pretty complex emotional characters and we we need to do a lot better. And I think that was allowed the the door to open which I think had been in me but hadn't really had a direction.

[00:10:11]>> Yes. Yeah.

[00:10:11]>> And so there we go. There's the longest answer to a question.

[00:10:15]>> I've had longer. You won't believe it.

[00:10:16]Well, I had longer and it's fine. No, I mean that's Well, yeah. What an awakening really. Um, possibly necessarily needed. Uh, >> yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, it's I mean, again, it hasn't turned me into a vegetarian, but it it just has allowed me to sort of work the prism of how we farm through a sort of, you know, and we'll come on to it, but it's possible. I think the point is is what farming faces is a is actually a cultural barrier, not there's there's no it's not an economic barrier. Most farmers will throw back at you. They can't afford to do things. And and of course, in certain instances, that is in in fact true like sheep hill farmers.

[00:10:55]It's a it's not a >> yes >> way of to make a living. But but out here on in the arable stretches of East Anglia, you can do it differently and do it better without and and actually that can be even more productive to your bottom line anyway than what you were doing before. So yeah, so it's been a journey.

[00:11:13]>> Yes. So I'm glad you mentioned farming Hugh. So um do you want to tell us a little bit about what you do in terms of the farming side of some of the land that you have here? some of that because well I'm delighted to >> and also the other side of it which we'll come on to which is of course the reing which I'm yeah obviously very very keen to learn more about >> yeah well okay so first of all it's been a gradual journey I think this you know I I absolutely understand the sentiment of all farmers that it's I don't know why but there's almost a biblical sense of purpose around all farmers around that you know the harvest bringing in literally feeding the nation that there is a motive and and very personal and the and the the the land that people farm, whether they're tenants owners or uh or land owners, you know, that it is like the back of your hand. It's very it's a very personal emotive thing. And so for me to get to where we are now was took a long time because I had to change >> and eventually let go of people I'd worked and lived with for quite a long time and and I understand that is a huge barrier for generational, you know, between families but also between different parties. But uh I was very lucky in a sense that having had this very you know so to set the context of something it's a 5,000 acre block >> and probably what's interesting for some of your viewers which maybe not always obvious is these estates certainly any time prior to the and including the industrial estates of the 19th century were not bought to be particularly productive. They were bought with excess wealth that might have come from donastic marriages or grace and favor from the king for hunting, for sport, for entertaining.

[00:12:44]>> Houses like this were built for entertaining and showing off.

[00:12:47]>> And you've you've even Sorry to interrupt. You've even just put on display of of your local house martins.

[00:12:52]I can hear >> uh Yes. Yeah. I worry about Thank you for that.

[00:12:55]>> Well, I should have said house martins actually when we're talking about the seminal thing because I worry about them more than anything. Are they coming back? Have we got the nests right? Are there enough nests? you know, why aren't there more here than there are in the north? But anyway, we can talk.

[00:13:07]>> And I and I should say as well, thank you so much for um dropping the nighting gale off in the bushes just as I arrived at the accommodation last night. I was very very >> I know. Well, I actually also had to do a sense check. Well, maybe he's putting my leg in. So, I had to put up against a live recording everyone online just to make sure that >> just to make you all aware that genuinely I pulled into the gates last night and uh as I wound the window down, there's a nighting gale singing nearly meters away from the car. And I it's the first one I've heard this year and um and apparently it's not one you get.

[00:13:36]>> Well, no, we haven't had really enough of that kind of dense scrub and and wild space which we'll come on to when we talk about rewalding. It just been marginalized to the point that hasn't been as attractive. So it's a particularly nice to have someone a who can identify one and b that of all people for you to hear it but >> yeah so so 5,000 block >> going back to your yes >> I mean and I think sorry the bit I was trying to say is that so therefore on a 5,000 acre block it might be a surprise to some people that around 2 and a half thousand acres of that is farmland as in arable farmland little bit more but but not but under 3,000 so quite a lot of it is is not people often think that well it's all farmland it isn't >> in our case we're a fairly the traditional mixed farm as in we I mentioned earlier the river wave down to the west of us now. So there's a big stretch of grass as well as the park grass and the now the rew wilded blocks of we got rich grassland on the you know classic flood plane marshes which put up a lot of good grass so we're lucky that we have that asset there you know around thousand acres of grass um >> so it's pretty productive for livestock that's the point and then and then if you think of the upland uh farm the arable farmland is sort of Rob's might show it to us tomorrow but we've done a very good map uh of just the the kind of light land farm So we're talking about former Heathland.

[00:14:51]Suffuk was made a lot of Suffach was made up of what they call the SuffK sandlings. In Norfolk they talk about the Brex, but it's a sort of used to be before enclosure anyway sort of common grazing land for probably thousands of years eventually became enclosed grazing land and then only really after the first and then second world war it got chopped up for as we got chemicals and bigger horsepower >> to to make it productive. It's not an irony that a lot of that land is now coming out of production, but anyhow, so so we we farm most of that, nearly all of it now in hand. So that that's us farming in the in the way that it's changed that it was lots of different tenants. And the reason for that is a smallish holding of 200 acres with the kind of big machinery combines over 300,000 to buy.

[00:15:33]>> Yeah.

[00:15:34]>> Tractors are over 100,000 by just over this from the 70s through to the 90s and and naughties gradually our tenants have given up. And so that then land has come back and at consequence of that is it's allowed us to make that a profitable unit because otherwise we would have been in the same position.

[00:15:50]>> Yes. So yeah, so there's a light land farm where we still do what you might call and this is a very crude line but degenerative farming in the sense of if you care about soil deoning deep cultivation irrigation and potatoes and and and to a certain extent sugar beat that come with that or onions is is is the kind of the devil of what you might call regenerative farming. However, it is also necessary. Onions and potatoes are two of our key staples and yeah >> and actually you know you can be pious about sugar beat but you know sugar is also you know we should have it in moderation but it is part of our diet.

[00:16:24]So, so on the light land we we still do that kind of farming and we we'll talk a bit about it but we do try and Rob is very good on this mitigate as far as we can the impacts of those erosive farming um me methods uh in the periods you know you have a sevenyear cycle with potatoes. So in those intervening years there's a lot of land healing that we we try and do. And then on the on the stronger land on the it's we were not a very heavy clay farm but on the land that is strong enough for non-till you know regenerative farming it obviously really suits you know first wheats or seed rape peas beans and that is now has been five or six or seven years now with with Rob who we'll meet tomorrow in a in a non-till >> uh system and it it is just you wonder how we lost sight of this because it is so compelling to see the soil rebuild under the ground to see it kind take the place of some of those chemicals that we've been using particularly nitrogen and it's um and uh and to see that actually the inputs were putting into farming drop because the land is healing. I mean, it's it's so obvious. It's you wonder why people lost sight of it >> um in the first place.

[00:17:33]>> Because of course, even when I was a I was a young boy, I can remember, you know, stubble fields over winter and people used to burn the stubble and and we used to have, you know, certainly I mean, we're only going back sort of 30 years, but I can remember seeing flocks of 50 to 100 lapwing in the field in the winter time. Now, you don't see that anymore.

[00:17:51]>> No. No. And I think, you know, not least because the land that they're on is is dead. it's not providing them with what they want, let alone everything else. So >> true.

[00:18:00]>> Yeah. So that's been so I was very lucky through actually through school through kids at school to meet regen Rob as we like to call him. I can say that on camera, but he he he slightly squirms when I say that.

[00:18:10]>> Um >> well I mean so so do you want to explain to the viewer now very briefly a bit of an overview of what regenerative farming means or?

[00:18:18]>> Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. I mean you might get a more I tell you what would be interesting to see if you get the same view.

[00:18:22]>> Yes, I'll ask Rob in this video's case in a moment. But yeah, give us your give us your take.

[00:18:27]>> Yeah. Okay. So they're kind of >> 500 words or less.

[00:18:29]>> Yeah. Four kind of key principles. So if you like oldfashioned farming has been all about opening up the soil. We believe that plowing for them to deep cultivation air rating the soil from was was good. It also breaks the weed cycle.

[00:18:42]Um kills helps kill off maybe uh um crop uh inse sorry pests.

[00:18:48]>> Yes. So there's it's not like it was uh and that goes right back to in fact turn it tanzen and and cook of hulk and the four course rotation you know but yes it's become bigger and more industrial >> and in in it's been around for a while and in some cultures it's never been not around but we're good at forgetting those but the idea that actually soil is best left undisturbed and and it can build um it's a bit like I suppose you know just thinking of um the game of Jenga that we've most people have played you know if you take out all the blocks thing falls down. Well, it's that is what you're doing to soil all the time.

[00:19:22]>> Very good analogy >> through hard farming.

[00:19:25]>> Now, no one was doing it deliberately and because you're damaging the soil essentially the way to mend it was to actually use more and more drugs or chemicals >> oil based fertilizer which which you know is so you're talking about you know not only are they a derivative of oil so you're looking at the kind of oil economy we're trying to move away from.

[00:19:43]So um hey presto suddenly people remembered that exactly you say as we when we were kids but to to actually leave the soil to selfheal in it it's better so these direct drilling techniques and non-invasive techniques became have become much more popular and um obviously you can't do it with potatoes uh you can't do it with sugarbeat you can't do it with um onions in the same way uh but um so in in addition to those so non-disturbance is number one. Then and then the other the other one is using animals back in the rotation. So as farms became more industrial, more commercial, more single oriented like I'm a wheat farmer, I'm a beef farmer, I'm a pig farmer. Obviously as you remember farms used to have all of those things in smaller quantities.

[00:20:29]So moving animals through the winter across your lighter arable land, lighter as in more sandy so it doesn't get too disturbed by them. eating a forage crop that is fixing nitrogen into the soil through the winter. So, it's helping nourish the soil. It's feeding the animal and it's providing a bit of late pollination for insects hopefully doing those three things >> eaten down slowly over winter. Animals doing well across the winter, animals being outdoors in a more naturalistic way. So, it's good for welfare >> and um so you and at the same time then you're stopping soil get washed away, the top of the soil. So again if you go back to that binary thing of taking everything away it's a bit like I don't know um just trying to think of a good analogy but you know um stripping milk of all the fat which is become idea of healthy but actually taking away almost everything that's good about the milk.

[00:21:20]>> Um >> mowing mowing a lawn as well taking off the top layer of nutrients.

[00:21:24]>> If you mow a lawn continually through June July August you get down to basically brown dust. Yeah, >> that the lawn never gets a chance to properly establish a root structure and and naturally seed to fill in those gaps. So if you actually want a healthy lawn, the best thing you can do is to mow it on a higher setting, isn't it?

[00:21:42]And mow it less so that it can regenerate itself. Sorry, I digress. But >> yeah. Yeah. Well, it's exactly that. I mean, it's very obvious awful thing like a lot of things are incredibly obvious.

[00:21:49]When they become obvious, you just say, "I can't believe we've not been doing that."

[00:21:53]>> And it looks amazing. It's amazing to have animals all all out. And I have memories of the late '7s of cattle being out, but they were all on maze by then rather than anything interesting. But now they're all out all, you know, on the lighter land through the winter. We try and let them back off into a piece of woodland. So they've got >> they can ruminate the woodland and that's great for moving around the insect, sorry, the um the soil bed and and the hopefully some of the um sea sorry, the seeded in the woodland, >> but they also can back off in harder weather. I know we don't get much of it and that's sort of good for their welfare too. And then within that of course context is allowing more which is sort of there already but more traditional maybe a grass lay that helps the ground recover for two or three years before it comes back into trying to now what all that means and this is the most compelling part of all is that >> and it helped that uh you know we've had some pretty big spikes in in in the cost of fertilizer particularly um in the last few years. It's helped farmers make the binary decision but >> because a lot of the a lot of the components for fertilizer comes from Eastern Europe is the Ukraine for example.

[00:22:58]>> Yeah. So I mean those spikes I think a thousand pounds a ton you know was like terrifying for people and tipped some people into regenerative farming but is that our input costs and so this is mostly nitrogen. It has fallen by about I mean not we we haven't quite hit 50% I think but we're forecasting to get over it in the next couple of years. I mean that's 50% over two and a half thousand acres is a shitload of money. I mean it's just so it's not a question of just it is doing good but also is you can't so you'll probably know from farming most of us hit yield plateau. So after this postwar new industrial revolution that sorry agricultural revolution this brave new world of pouring the land with chemicals came about. it plateau ran say 2000 as an easy year but in the late 90s into the 2000s people just stopped increasing yield on their because the land the soil's dead it's relying totally on like a like a drug addict on the on the drug >> and not on anything natural so the way to increase your bottom line is not actually really by increased yield anymore it's by >> it's by um it's by reducing your inputs >> and you've got inputs labor machinery and and chemicals I mean that's three big inputs so to be able to knock out 40 to 50% % and maybe more is is very compelling.

[00:24:11]>> Yeah.

[00:24:11]>> And so you've got this wonderful thing of saving time, saving carbon, saving money and saving nature, you know, and we can talk about more about those, but we've said it a lot on on Instagram.

[00:24:22]Save time, save money, save carbon, save nature. If if you begin to go into a more regenerative cycle, you begin to do all those things.

[00:24:29]>> Yes. Yeah.

[00:24:29]>> Um Yeah. So that's kind of uh that's the layman's view of regenerative farming.

[00:24:34]>> Brilliant. Yeah. So interesting. uh with the regenerative farming I think there's a there's a parallel there with uh garden settings if you ask me because you know for years it was sort of it was sort of you know driven into us that we had to use pesticides and and herbicides. We had to have a pristine lawn.

[00:24:58]>> We had to get rid of kill your aphids now. You know, there's a reason that dandelions are the symbol of a weedole bottle, you know, and and that for me, I mean, it drives me insane. So much so that I, you know, formed a petition and got the RHS to remove all their uh yeah, that their double messaging that they had because, yeah, a few years ago they they were still doing this whole, you know, let your lawn grow long, um, while selling their own branded, you know, slug pellets, you know, and pesticides and things through other brands. So, so >> do as I say, not as I do kind of.

[00:25:30]Exactly. And they they have now stopped selling that stuff. I think there's probably still one or two things they vicariously sell for for a few quid, but I'm not going to start a big dig at them today. But the point I'm making is it's been drilled into us for decades to have a pristine lawn, to have no aphids on our roses, and to basically drench our gardens in chemicals so that everything is perfect. And of course, you and I are now fighting to to make people see actually you can have rougher edges. you can still have formality but have function for wildlife as well. So I think there's a great parallel there.

[00:26:03]>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I kind of wonder about this and I think you're right. I think I think if you were to bring it all the way back to you know thousands of years ago that that the way we have ended up managing land as farmers uh until very recently anyway and still a lot of farmers but also as you say gardens and golf courses and and school playgrounds is is is almost like a sort of e if an evolutionary hangover of when we really did live in a landscape of fear. You know I must push nature away because it's terrifying.

[00:26:31]>> Yeah. And you know the man now with a strimmer just mindlessly doing the outside you know like the council of Northol I know just today coming out Britain have just done the road and of course there are times when road safety is it should be the paramount thing but actually most of it is just stuck in someone's budget oh that's what we do so we'll do it that's right >> hedge cutting on farms is that oh it's that day so I'll go hedge cutting not >> oh maybe I don't need to hedge cut >> that's right >> and similarly we also >> do rotationally do one side one year the top the next >> yeah and and so it's that it's a cultural uh thing that one's trying to sort of overcome and and here you know we we we it's interesting that what I'm looking at right now into this very formal part you probably can notice we've let the banks uh go wild so to speak as a little contribution and actually what's been interesting is that that started out as fairly you know just singularly grass and now they're the sort of big oversized antills >> um which you know and you could argue it's getting to the point where we might have to recon consider because it's getting maybe le too informal but the point is is actually also provides a lovely landscape change between the formality and the informality and >> I think I would say to anyone that once you like most things actually once you try them or once you break out of what you you know it's maybe the way you bake or the way uh you're used to doing any number of the routine tasks we all do subconsciously unconsciously all the time is if you and we're not good at this humans allow yourself to Oh, I might try that something different.

[00:28:02]>> Yeah, >> generally um >> it's easy once you start and you kind of wonder why you didn't beforehand, >> but it's just a starting that's so difficult.

[00:28:10]>> Well, that's right. And and half the time it's, you know, you go into a garden center, you'll buy what's there.

[00:28:15]So, if you've got a garden center full of, you know, figit u and roided, you'll buy that and put it in the garden if they've got an offer on. If you go into a garden center or visit the wilder garden online shop, sorry. Um then then of course then then you're you're going to be sometimes you might be presented with a few wild flowersowers and think oh that fieldcapus would look really nice in my lawn or you know that lesser napweed will do really well in in in the edges of my lawn or something. Those oxide daisies are pretty much well they are a lucanum they're just a native and not the sort of big blousy lucanthemums that we buy for our herabaceous borders. Why don't I try them? I've got, you know, my borders at home have got teasles, red camp and oxide daisy, you know, and these sorts of things in them because to me they're just as good-looking as a salvia and echynatia and a peta, that sort of thing. So, so a lot of the time it's what's put in front of us. It's the same as if you go into a restaurant, isn't it? You know, you eat what the options are. So, it's about pushing those boundaries. And I think by having these kind of longer grassy areas, you're getting people to think, you know, and um I think a lot of it is a generational thing, you know, sort of the younger generation coming up today, even below me, Hugh, um there are a few of them. Um >> they they are, you know, they're seeing climate change, they're seeing the, you know, intake declines. They're more open-minded towards these principles or these catastrophes if you if you look at it like that. um than a lot of say you know folk who might be of an older generation who are sucking their own weight. Equally I get people coming to me and saying I've just or emailing me say I've just just hit my 70s and I can't believe I've been doing this for decades. I should have done this or sorry I I should have done what I'm now doing decades ago you know. So it's about changing people's perception of what a garden or or a formal landscape should look like. I think particularly our parks and green spaces as well.

[00:30:05]>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's also good good that people I mean I think sometimes when something becomes too radicalized people run away from it and of course understanding that even a little contribution a little change is is better than nothing and it usually leads to oh you know that wasn't so bad I can do a bit more >> I mean when we started messaging around you know while decent a charity I think some people read it as you must do this >> and if you're not you're a bad person and of course that was not at all what we wanted to convey and it can get a bit like that with with the conservation generally as in you're either a a George Momio radical or you're stuck in the stuck in your ways sort of arable farmer who actually thinks it's a bit to even think about nature let alone help it.

[00:30:48]>> Yeah.

[00:30:48]>> And and that you are the one of those two binary things. And of course actually one of the great things for me as the sort of feckless wilder who had read fereral um all those years ago and and with Rob who's who's you know live or die farmer albeit of a regenerative order is that he's helped I think we've both helped each other. He's softened perhaps around what we call wild edges within the farm landscape and and the kind of um you know the reing and opened his mind to all that stuff. But he's also shown me that we can still be productive and do things really well from a farming and farmers point of view >> but produce a really solid crop for for the nation.

[00:31:27]>> Um >> which is key because of course you and I would love to see you know the entire nation wallto-wall of woodlands scrub long grass wetlands but we've got to feed ourselves. We've got to be realistic and and and you and I both know that. But but of course, you know, there are two sides to every story or often more. And I think a lot of people, you know, particularly from a farming background would say, "Oh, you you lefty woke, you know, wilding idiots don't have a first clue about it." And and I don't, you know, I've never grown a crop of wheat. You know, I don't know what kind of pest and diseases that farmers are faced with just to make ends meet and to to to make a living at the end of the day because they are making a living. That's what we've got to remember. It's a way of life. It's not just, you know, something nice to do at the weekend. These these, you know, it's it's it's it's not easy being any farmer, is it?

[00:32:19]>> No. And I think also one of the things I feel and I I've talked to Rob quite a lot about is that it's an invisible subconscious thing lurking just beneath the surface with farmers, all farmers. I mean, literally all farmers and and more in some areas and others like, you know, Upland Hill farmers particularly, but even down here. The fact is if you take out subsidy and you know global agriculture is subsidized you know that's a a normal thing it's the way it is but it does leave one a little bit uneasy because the business you're running fundamentally it without subsidy is not it doesn't work >> and so if you're a you know widget maker or or you sell bread uh in a shop in the street or do what you do you know you you kind of have a bottom line you try and make 10% maybe you aim for 15 or 20 or whatever it is but there's there's an uneasiness in farming I think which causes some of the brittleleness around you know being told what to do is that you know we all know that we are kind of beholdened to the taxpayer by way of subsidy as in it literally doesn't work without that >> and that is just is not is no one really wants to be like that much better it' be much nicer to think that actually I can make money and therefore >> I could give some back >> yes >> um by way of leaving a bit of land or or being a bit kinder to certain things I don't if other people feel like that, but I certainly I think I have unearthed that is some of the brittleleness and uneasiness in the farming community is is because broken down, you know, it's a it's a sort of um yeah, it's a sort of it's subsidized and it's not a true income in the way that no any other free marketeteer can can say, yeah, I am making money genuinely.

[00:33:59]>> Anyway, but that's that's aside aside.

[00:34:02]Well, I mean, so, so yes, going so I'd like to come on to kind of a bit more of the financial detail in particular.

[00:34:09]Obviously, you're not just doing farming. That's the point of this this interview with my visit today is obviously there are parts of the land you are reing very successfully.

[00:34:18]>> Uh, and again, we're going to see some of those shortly with with Rob. Um, but um, going back for a second, just stepping back a touch, what for you have been some of the major declines? um over over your lifetime that you've seen or or anything that you've noticed I mean we mentioned the lapwing earlier um in perhaps response to the intensification of agricultural practices on your land um have you have you lost any species of bird in particular or is there anything you've noticed? Yes, >> there may not be there may it may have already been, you know, at a point when you started to realize and and gain that consciousness, you know, after that sobering visit to, you know, the abattoire that that actually the degradation had already set into a point by then.

[00:35:06]Well, when we started Wild East, we kind of nor we all kids of the 70s, me, Ollie, and Argus, and so we sort of look, we were looking back to the 70s and everyone now knows the the obvious sort of windscreen splat thing of insect um >> life and effect. Yeah, you that probably is the easiest thing denominator that anyone can remember.

[00:35:26]>> In terms of summer in particular, I suppose again of child of that era, the area that we are rewalding and I mentioned the suffix sanding was Heathland. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:34]>> So in terms of heathland birds, I mean when we were young and we weren't, I'm not saying I was particularly conscious of this, but there were still red squirrels there, you know, at night night jar, night and gale, woodlock, I suppose, red pole in the b in the in the pine. Um, and now this is not necessarily just to do with climate and and change, but obviously the heathland was planted deliberately after the first world war and then and then incrementally since then. So it went from being this fairly open >> you know heathland to a closed canopy where bracken became the the dominant floral plant closing out light >> and of course therefore seed and insects and you know these things so it is also an accident of of uh and it's quite commercial forestry I suppose you'd say single crop >> yes >> so they are very noticeable um in the in uh in their disappearance in the same way the bit like you mentioned um lapwing, red shank and and other marshian birds along the river I'm pleased to say are are still or have come back a lot since we've changed practice.

[00:36:38]>> Great. Yeah. Um, but I think probably the easier thing, you know, I always think of the having a an imaginary um, uh, animation of a kind of bird, not rather than just a bird table, a bird life table of of just trying to show that shifting baseline of, you know, even I can remember a bird table in winter just hopping with all birds competing and or not for food. And >> now you're really pleased when you get a one or two here and there and they're probably tits. I mean, >> you know, rather than anything too exotic. So I think And I've obviously read around a lot of it now. So, you know, there were always stings in the in the bamboozery in the garden and you could walk in at night and they just all go bang.

[00:37:16]>> Yes.

[00:37:16]>> And now when you see um >> uh sorry, a murmmoration mar, you know, it might be two or 30 hund strong, but um it's just a moment of great joy, which used to be just a moment.

[00:37:30]>> Yes.

[00:37:31]>> And now it's a thing to hold on to and celebrate.

[00:37:34]>> Yeah.

[00:37:34]>> You'd mentioned house moss. It's great that they're still here. Um you would have thought the landscape that we've created in the last particularly 10 years is has more insect life as an insect feeding bird but we hadn't we you know there were always swallows as well as house martins and swifts we haven't really had swallows back on the house and around the uh there are around but not around here and I'm always putting out callers and trying to >> yes >> uh you know I suppose it's important to also say that we you know we don't really want them but there's been a huge buildup of deer Yeah.

[00:38:07]>> Um I guess because they're less keeper um than they used to be and they've just grown by population which is nice to see.

[00:38:13]>> No natural predators are there?

[00:38:15]>> No. Nice to see.

[00:38:16]>> I don't think we're getting the uh and also all the birds anytime soon.

[00:38:19]>> No. I mean wouldn't it be great to have a land alynx you know I mean >> to take out some of the deer particularly the Asian deer that you know arguably shouldn't be here but you know one must remember also that red kites buzzards marshas are all a very common sight. Now some people would say too common but uh >> the fact that they're here suggested as a food source and which is healthy and you know they were not around so there have been successes you know we can't pretend that >> yeah marsh Harry in particular I know have have really done very well in the last couple of decades and um yeah it's great to see them booming the red kite continues to spread as you say um and some species are doing okay I mean for me I'm slightly biased but butterflies are always a good barometer you know and and the fact that you perhaps once on that heaththen may have had the the silver studded blue which of course is in Norfolk you know on on sort of you know different heathers you know bell heather and things so >> well I'll make sure some of the stats come out when we join Rob because actually there's a wonderful girl in the office Michelle who's married to one of the farm guys who who looks after all the recorders brilliant >> and there is a butterfly guy there's a even more um dedicated moth guy and >> he's trying to get to a thousand species of moth recorded I think about 850 or something which he seems incredible and there is a lot of of record and one has to be careful that of course there was a period when there wasn't really any recording going on not specifically here.

[00:39:43]>> Yeah.

[00:39:43]>> Um and some of these things are because of big movements like you can get a bad butterfly year that's just >> climatically bad. Yes.

[00:39:50]>> And then there's obviously the within that the declines because of change and one has to be a little bit >> cycles you know parasitic wasps that sort of thing. So there's all sorts of players isn't there?

[00:39:59]>> Yeah. We haven't had a recording of an adder or a common lizard in the wild block which is in this last seven years that we've been recording um yet.

[00:40:07]Doesn't mean we haven't got them but we haven't you know we've seen obviously >> sloworms and grass snakes pretty abundantly but you know that's another thing that was definitely around. We were worried about addies when I was a child.

[00:40:17]>> You know you be pushed to worry about being bitten by an add now because you just don't see them. Yeah.

[00:40:22]>> So, a general a general decline. You know, that's that's that's more than I expected you to say actually. But of course, it's great that you've got these kind of historic records and you've been able to to monitor the land um over several decades and all in particular quite intensively now that you are doing what you're doing, which leads me perfectly into what you are doing here, which is of course rewing chunks of your 5,000 acres. So, what kind of a percentage and and obviously I don't think I need to ask you why you're doing that because of course we've just been speaking about it for for the the entirety of this interview so far, but I mean what you know what kind of percentage and what what kind of things have you been doing to to um >> Well, I mean to encourage more wildlife back in. Well, the thing that I would just quickly say, you're right, we have been saying why in lots of conse circular ways, but actually the why that I always try and say on interview and which I think anyone can hold on to is actually this simple idea of a debt to nature in a we all as consumers, farmers, gardeners without and by the way not often with I'm not saying there's guilt necessarily because most people have done that without really consciously thinking I want to destroy anything.

[00:41:29]uh but nevertheless we have all been complicit in a in a in a catastrophic decline and that debt is what I seek to repay and I think that's the easiest thing for everyone to you know morally get on board with in some small way to but yeah I mean here so we got two different two very different things outside of the regen farming one of the things we have done and I'm also keen to point out that we to the area around Britain lake where you're staying and where we're going to go around more later is um was part of that kind of suffuk sandings heathland. I mean until I mean when my father was a child it was all open you know still grazed by sheep >> of course there were trees but but an alder around the edge of the lake but it was pretty open.

[00:42:13]>> Yeah. So our rewalding is is fundamentally a kind of heathland restoration project if you want to bring it down to a type of landscape and it it is also and I'm very conscious of this is that it so the lake itself is a pretty valuable reservoir for local water supply. So the le the less they've always been keen on less agriculture, less runoff, less chemical pollution of the lake which is obviously really bad in the 60s and 70s and 80s and it locks you know the phosphates get locked up in the mud and so there's so there's lot there's two or three different things but the water company and generally the environment agency would love to stop farming in its catchment completely. I'm not in control of all of that. So that's one reason um to better water quality.

[00:42:58]That's a but but it is also some of the worst land that I own. So in terms of agricultural production, we talked about the chemicals coming in a little bit between the wars but really after the second world war allowed us to make poor land productive with subsidy. And so those areas around the lake weren't really farmed until the 50s anyway. And then they become farmed for either timber or for crop.

[00:43:23]>> Yes. But in a world with hotter and drier springs, I mean immersively it's been cool this spring, but it's been another very dry spring.

[00:43:30]>> Yeah.

[00:43:30]>> In the last six weeks. So that that kind of land is is very marginal, you know, but and the subsidy have changed and I support that. So rather than just getting paid to produce anything, it's it's been more nuanced. So it was quite an unknown goal for me to if I was going to take land out to support rewarding around the lake is the right place for the reservoir the right place because it's my least productive land and critically and I'm happy to admit this I'm extremely lucky that it is also >> in where I have my core tourism operation. So people are interested partic particularly eco anxious um the urban majority are keen they've shown that people are keen to see this kind of restoration. So the fact that it Fritton Lake tourism lies inside of that is is very neat for me. If it was just a piece of land somewhere over there, it just would have a lot a lot less credence. So I'm very lucky that those three things came together. But it's 1,000 acres that includes 1850 acres of water, about about 350 or so of different types of woodland that we're opening up and trying to make more naturalistic and allow more glades and space for um the floral diversity to recover and grazing to occur. And then the and then slowly the arable land as you'll see tomorrow is is reconalizing gor and birch and broom and and becoming >> what now we're talking Hugh.

[00:44:51]>> Yeah. So and so >> exciting landscape.

[00:44:53]>> Yeah. So you know in the end it will you know I think what's different to someone like Nep I suppose is the example people probably have seen is that is all very heavy boulder clay.

[00:45:01]>> Yeah.

[00:45:02]>> And so stuff wants to grow that is like having steroids for those who don't understand soil. Everything wants to grow out of clay like >> and nothing wants to grow out of sand really. No.

[00:45:10]>> So it's a slow game and um I was I was particularly uh pleasantly surprised to find out that my entire garden is well drained sandy soil. So me being used to having clay gardens in the past, this is a exciting opportunity. All of a sudden, you know, kidney veetch and small scabies and, you know, vipers bug gloss open up and I'm like, "Oh, exciting."

[00:45:32]You know, so it's >> Yeah. Well, I mean, and me.

[00:45:35]>> Yeah. Well, it is great to see that you know it it I mean I think one has to be really careful to remember the change but where we have opened up some of the woodland uh where we've had pigs disturbing the ground the really eating the bracken roots they love eating bracken roots in the winter when there's nothing else to eat and that weakens it and incrementally and it's slow and we and there's a lot to do but you know where grasses initially or or crossed heath is just recolonizing through seed disturbance.

[00:45:59]>> Yeah.

[00:46:00]>> Um and it will take you know the rest of my time for two things to happen. one for it to get the woodland to be less like woodland and more naturalistic and more of a grazing woodland um wood pasture if you like and and it will take also that time for the exarable to become really good scrub as in dense scrub like you might see at net >> for nighting girls for example >> for nighting girls yeah and and we are not averse I might say knowing where we want to go to introducing some of those things >> you know we put some boxes of you know pens of of some of those hean species in because we know that they were there and we want to see progress you So that's the main the Rolls-Royce part.

[00:46:36]And in that we have um not many pigs right now actually because as you know you can have too many pigs quite quickly. Yeah.

[00:46:43]>> But um >> they're great rotivators.

[00:46:44]>> Yeah. Ponies and and Highland cattle.

[00:46:47]Highland mainly because it's such a light land place. They do well on that kind of scrubby ground. I mean the the the national favorite again I think most people copy net of having English longhorn which is a wonderful animal but is a really big beef animal that's been bred to be a big beef animal. It just won't do well on that ground. They won't make up the weight that we need them to.

[00:47:07]So >> and we used to have highlands when I was young and they're they're good-looking crew actually. So I'm happy about that.

[00:47:13]So that's >> and what's your take on the belted gallows? Have you got any of those or have you had >> No, we have I have had them in the past and obviously they're very I saw some recently walking in the Penine way and I Yeah, they are. I mean they're the kind of ones you want on your toy farm and I would have I mean I'm not too species biased. I mean as in if if there were some better than the other by the way.

[00:47:36]>> No, no. So we wanted something as a point of difference and I actually historically we had Highlands as a sort of flying herd doing all the rough grand in those days. So it was a nod to that and to my dad, but also you know there but it didn't have to be them as you say it could have been could have been another.

[00:47:53]>> Um and I suppose the other point of difference from some of the other projects is we have not we decided we've already got a quite a big deer population we do try and manage but we decided because they are already using the whole estate and this estate if you work go up in a drone a thousand feet say it's you got the Wavely Valley to the west which is pretty bleak and open.

[00:48:14]I mean it's green but it's it's not a place for deer.

[00:48:16]>> No.

[00:48:16]>> And if you go east you get you know in fewer and fewer hedges and then lost off Yarmouth in the sea. It's pretty bleak farmland off our patch. And so we are a bit of a melting pot. So if if something's lost or or looking for a mate or you know and it finds us then it tends to stay here. We gather deer like like a sort of bee to a to a >> to a to nectar. Um and so we didn't really want to shut them out of the wild block. So we actually stock fence it rather than dear fence it. So they they're allowed to come out and use it as as they as they always did.

[00:48:49]>> Um and yeah, so that's a Rolls-Royce project and there lots of introductions I'd like to do. I'd love to have beers in the lake, but it's pretty controversial out here where most of the marshes of the river valleys of East Angler are underwater already. I mean under sea level. Yes.

[00:49:03]>> So there is that risk. Um maybe it will come. Maybe there'll be a gorilla rewer who will drop them in for me. Everyone will point at me. But it so if it isn't me, I'd love to be able to go to court and say it actually wasn't me.

[00:49:14]>> Maybe maybe Derek G will lend a hand.

[00:49:16]>> Derek, even Derek's become a bit establishment now. You see, it used to be. But um yeah, so but you know, Night Herands, we've got a white stalk release project. I'd love to see those suite of um birds we talked about and and some of the invertebrates and other mammals coming back. I mean in bigger numbers and I'm not averse to reintroducing them but I think I am quite red blooded on the fact that like ponies are a good part of the grazing system. Yeah.

[00:49:42]>> But is as nippers a bit like we've got so sheep here if you can have so sheep that go into the English food chain >> along with cattle. I would definitely keep a few ponies because everyone loves seeing them. Yeah.

[00:49:54]>> But a lot of the wilding projects have allowed ponies to breed too fast and they're sending them to France. That's fine. I mean, I don't have a moral objection to that, but I as a as a project that needs to make money and that the subsidies might change the long term, it has to be productive for meat.

[00:50:10]>> Yeah.

[00:50:11]>> Alongside nature, you know, um otherwise it's a bit of a rich man's game. And I I'm kind of keen to So, we we're going to be biased towards if I can get up to 40 breeding Highland cows with one or two years of followers at any one time, that pro when it's fully functioned, that will be that's a good number.

[00:50:29]>> Yeah. and a and a viable contribution to making it sustainable alongside a bit of timber and and a bit of tourism and hopefully some grants. But we can't I mean one thing that's not predictable at all anymore is the grant landscape >> of course. Yeah.

[00:50:41]>> In Britain. I think the other thing just to quickly mention though is >> you know it's easy for and I mentioned earlier that you know it's a most farms are made up of just farm land. Yeah.

[00:50:51]>> And most people making a living out of just that farmland. I think what everyone can do and I'm quite militant about this is in the save time save money so save carbon if you take a if you take these flag stones in fact as a as a classic field system they're all different shapes and sizes some of them are a bit bent and off center >> and generally apart from maybe some of the fence that where they were sold kilometer blocks >> um that's kind of how English landscape is all over whether it's dry sold walled or hedge they're not square often they're not the same and if you're looking at it from the environmental point of view what which is what we did as a charity at the very beginning is if every we just measured this f fantasy number we should have actually made it fantasy wilding like fantasy football everyone would have loved that but if you if you take 10 if we just said look if every farmer forget the size of the farm and the size of the field but if you took an average gave 10 meters crop to crop that would return 75,000 I'm going to say acres but might be hectares I can't remember but 5% this is just in the wild east uh back to nature and it's an existing nature highway that is an that is a network.

[00:51:56]>> Yeah.

[00:51:56]>> But most of that network is depleted as in people generally for the last 50 years have farmed much too close and farmed in the sense of cutting maybe getting sprayed.

[00:52:07]>> So it's plowed plowed right up to the hedge rather than having those marginal strips which are as you say those essential corridors for insects.

[00:52:15]>> Yeah. It's like a really mammals reptiles to move through.

[00:52:17]>> Yeah. I mean you want to get 1970s shaggy you know this is where we're aiming at. Um my phone was always trying to liken it to kind of waxing which is of course now male a man's thing as as well but you know it's just too manicured and so >> I can't say I've ever put my hand to that.

[00:52:31]>> No but if you if you anyway so that that was looking for the environment then allowing those that you know those um depleted resources to become kind of humming buzzing cathedrals of biodiversity. There's it's a huge acreage you know when you look at it a lineal acreage.

[00:52:47]>> Yeah. If you then turn that flip that coin to the farmer, we all farm big machinery. And if you if your spray boom is is the governing device in your field system, whether it's 8 m, 16 m, 32 m, >> there will always be land that doesn't fit in that block. And what we've spent the last 20 years doing is nudging along, trying to get that last corner, backing up, turning. And what happens is, first of all, it takes time.

[00:53:13]>> Secondly, you're pouring more carbon onto the field and fuel through taking more time. So that's carbon. Again, you're probably overspraying because you then hit the hedge. So you're Yeah.

[00:53:22]>> stifling nature or or or regulating growth and um and it's costing money as in time, the guy doing it.

[00:53:31]>> Yeah.

[00:53:32]>> If you just simplify that to just going up and down the field within the blocks, those wild edges that I'm looking at from the environmentalist point of view become oh my god. And where Rob is really good and you'll get this from him tomorrow. If you are really scientific about that, it that's time-saving in field. You farm better in the in the main area of the field. Um and you will not drop you don't drop yield because you don't really get yield on the edge anyway.

[00:53:55]>> No. No.

[00:53:56]>> Because it's in the shade or there's a big oak tree under a tree >> or it's been competing with other things.

[00:54:01]>> Yes.

[00:54:02]>> So if everyone and and I think it's important to say that in the farming community, there is no reason for every farmer in the country to do that. even if it's just one bit here or there. And the obvious way to do it is along boundaries like me and you as farmers, we can do it together or a footpath and a boundary because then it helps the public.

[00:54:19]>> Now lots are but also lots aren't.

[00:54:22]>> Yeah. and that idea of so that so that's what we've done here and we um are slowly doing it across the farm and it is slow because I don't want to give up too much land too quickly but we are aiming to end up with you know around five six 7% of the area taking out into those permanent wild what we call wild edges so it's in field wilding >> yes >> it's just an important message because rather like in your garden most gardeners want a straight lawn but they could leave the edge or most farmers want a straight field but they could leave the edge Yeah.

[00:54:52]>> And it's only culture that's standing in their way. It's not money.

[00:54:55]>> And I think that's a, you know, I'm quite I'm quite >> I'm quite militant on that point. I mean, of course, different scales is different for different people. And but if you take it as an average, it's culture is the barrier, not not not finance.

[00:55:07]>> Yeah. Because I mean, farming now in the UK has got to the point we will move on to a very different topic in a moment, but one that's very close to your own heart. Uh, in fact, your cap suggests everything. Um but but you know there's farmers I know that are now bringing in beehives.

[00:55:22]>> So you know Asian bees >> to to pollinate the crops that they need to to harvest. And whereas if you had those buffer strips you would encourage the insect life to then pollinate your own crops, not need to bring non-native invasive species in which are aggressive which do push out local bumblebees in particular. Uh and the whole system would would be a better fit for the landscape. But but yes, that's almost a topic for another day, but but yeah, that's the point.

[00:55:49]>> I mean, well, it is it's a you know, it is it's a madness really. Um >> I mean, they're already handpollinating apple trees in China because there aren't enough bees and insects to do it.

[00:55:58]Um >> if that's not a barometer of how catastrophic things are that that's the ultimate I think they do it in California as well, don't they? They move bees around. There lots of bee lorries moving bees around >> and that's crazy place. I need to do a video on uh on on beekeeping because yeah, there's a few >> uh a few few points I'd like to make but I won't make them today. But anyway, um I've just touched on them briefly. But um let's move on to something very closer in heart. Hugh and the cap if you can't see from there. Oh yeah.

[00:56:26]>> Says wild north. Well, we're not in the north anymore. Hugh. No, you've not even changed your cap since you're back from the penine way.

[00:56:32]>> No, I wanted to make the point that we're now wild kingdoms and so I'm taking a stab at where um Yeah. So I suppose >> the Wild Kingdom I should say is how we how we were introduced.

[00:56:43]>> Exactly. Exactly. Um >> Q got in touch and said you know hey >> well it's got this got this project.

[00:56:48]>> Well you are literally the living embodiment of what we've been trying to tell people to do you're actually doing.

[00:56:52]So it's rather nice. Um um but yeah so I suppose so wild east as I say um I can wear that tomorrow but the came about really and I must you know I can tip my cap to Ollie and August not here but two great friends both genuinely uh eco anxious farmers >> and we got together I think I sort of went to see them individually and actually Argus always tell the story that he I didn't get the time had you know what was a minor but quite um you know was in hospital for a bit so he was at a sort of web and and read the manifesto and it kind of seduced him and I think Ollie actually was sort of going through a a divorce so you know they always now reference these points that they were caught off guard and if they they shouldn't should have said no but but you know I think where we were where we where we found common ground is that I could you know as a man of relative privilege I could just kind of carry on practitioning you know the sort of things we've been talking about today in in the farmed and garden environment patting myself on the back and getting the odd award maybe um and maybe having the odd school group but actually this is a societal problem and I said this is a really critical point is um and it's therefore the it's a it's a societal solution and that you can't have nature recovery conservation you know whatever whatever you want to call it right the way back to the beginning of the wildlife trust and and the national trust and the national park movement in the you know really the 50s and and a bit a bit longer for national trust but h has been about too few people in too few place. And we have been guilty all of us um of turning it into a a kind of slightly chocolate boss as in you go and visit nature over there. You go and visit nature and then you come back and ruin it over here >> and people being quite happy with that sort of dichotomy. Um and that we all need to be David Atenburgh and we all need to be um a wild a wildlife trust in our of our own in our own space however small that is because and I think this has got to be right right that if you if anything you know I think it was Jack Kustau or his father son who said you know we love we protect what we love and I mean if you don't you know if you don't love something in your immediate landscape um however that might be then you know you can't outsource this stuff.

[00:59:11]It's got to be from here and immediately. So, so that was kind of the the the start and we were really inspired. I would just give him a name check, but American Prairie Reserves is a a similar charity in America in Montana country doing something quite similar from ground up. Um, and like like the best of the Americans when they are in good form, they don't seem to be particularly at the moment, but is you know there's a real energy that comes with that. And they would just go, you know, you just got to go for it. We were saying to do wonder that map's a bit big and they said oh come England's so small you just don't be ridiculous nature needs space and scale we still shied away from doing kingdom from the beginning which is why as men from the east we started with world east but the idea was and remained simple and it's been a checkered journey really but is to provide a platform in this case a map for people to celebrate >> the map of dreams >> what they were doing in their environments >> simply to inspire and other people to do the same because we we know you know that yes, you're coming I mean I came across so many great examples of this along the Penheim way of people who do do something whether it's just because they like having flowers or whether it's because they care what people think or whether it's because they're re wilders or nature lovers it doesn't really matter too much but they're doing stuff.

[01:00:23]>> Yeah. But you can look at a typical row of houses anywhere and there'll be someone doing something incredible. But most of them are tomacked over. Sophets are closed up on the house. It's hermetically sealed from nature. People have come too human and too divorced from what it even feels like to let nature into your kind of soul. And that and I think we were always romantic uh in that regard and stick by that. What makes it difficult when it comes to funding is that most we we as as you know from farming um particularly is it people will do it but they'll only do it for money >> and so we've had to monetize nature and I totally accept that principle but it doesn't mean that it should not sit alongside us reconnecting because if we continue to develop along as humans along more and more you know um a a very a very vain introverted single species sort of thing which you kind of see on television and in you know like say the worst uh funny sometimes but the worst end of sort of TV kind of plastic literally plastic people who were so devoid from any connection with anything to do with the natural world then there is only one way that ends and that's why everyone's obsessing with going to Mars is because you know it's ironic that we could fix our own planet.

[01:01:40]>> Yeah. And I and I think then you couple that up with, you know, I've read a lot now and I'm sure you have around, you know, those very suppressed indigenous peoples from wherever who have been singing this song all the way through their existence and all the way into our existence and now finally being listened to by white western Christian governments around the world. How do we manage fires? Well, by the way, the natives uh indigenous people of Australia know how to manage fires because they've been doing it for 10,000 years. It's only white man who's forgotten. And I think it's >> pretty embarrassing and and difficult for the kind of extreme end of capitalism to own the problem accept that it's entirely our responsibility and and to rebalance to coexist. I think it's very very difficult. It's a bit like I don't know learning a completely new I mean I've been we got a tennis coach chair and having to relearn the kind of new alcarath top spin forehand when I can hit a perfectly good flat one >> is mindbendingly difficult and I take word for it anyway.

[01:02:41]So I think what we realized is that there are loads of people doing incredible stuff unsung heroes on all scales that we wanted to capture.

[01:02:48]Unfortunately, not everyone is media savvy and friendly and and isn't shy about coming onto the map. But gradually there's a momentum and and you know that's kind of what we all we set out to achieve is to imagine this map of dreams um that might begin to tip a bit society to think differently to coexist to become less not not less human but you know not become too human to allow in themselves to even just have a 360 vague view of how we interact with nature and why it's important and what we've lost.

[01:03:20]I have this horrible vision that, you know, in 50 years time people are going to be putting on a headset and walking through a 3D, you know, implemented wildflower meadow because >> you don't realook.

[01:03:31]Yeah. And I I I mean, I think but but I think also to say that I I'm I'm the first to own the fact although it might have been in me somewhere and I'm incredibly lucky to live in a place where it's sort of all around me. I, you know, first admit that probably it wasn't until, you know, my second half of my 30s after I'd come home and and I began to explore this thing and then I read a load of stuff and then I visited lots of places and sucked up lots of information from people like you and but it's so I mean it's not but I don't and it's important people I'm not I am authentic now but I I was absolutely living the same life as everyone else as Lara will tell you I was buying Dane Pat Bill Bacon you know the the devil in a sense of commercial pig farming uh and all sorts of other unsavory things when she met me as a you know 36 year old or whatever I was um so I say that because it is to illustrate it can you know people can change right and I'm I'm absolutely >> as I said earlier people will email me in their 70s and go I've seen the light you know I now don't cut every inch of my lawn yeah and that's what it's all about >> and it's you know and I think there needs to be a radicalism I don't think it always is the right thing um uh to be to kind of extinction rebellion but I think that you know it is urgent and urgent in a societal sense and urgent in a natural catastrophe sense >> and climate change sense but I think they're not really I think they're inseparable and I think people miss and miss and miss the societal element as in you know if you go and I've been to lots of schools I'm sure you have and some people say oh the kids have got this but when you see the what they're doing and the amount the school is doing it's very sweet and encouraging that they're doing something But usually it's so infantessimally small and their knowledge is is so infantessimly small that you're thinking my god you know >> it's great they're doing something but how just sad that it's so little. I mean they've got like five acres >> that hasn't been built on on the edge of Lto. They could be doing something. I said look I'll bring my pigs. We'll rip this up in no time >> and you can see what nature will give you without you having and you know they >> and I I don't want to sound unkind but you know it really there's always a reminder for every good person you see.

[01:05:40]There's loads of reminders that most people are on rung one of the ladder or not on it at all. That's just the reality we we we we live in and don't give it enough time and haven't allowed themselves to adjust. Even most of the people who talked to me, I love it. You know the radio interview yesterday saying, "God, I'm so inspired by the dreams. She's a great broadcaster. I'd love to go and see what she's actually doing." There are loads of as you said, most people are lookers but or watchers, not doers. And >> yeah, >> I think David um David Waters down at the busted project we were talking about is absolutely right that if the movement can have an impact, it's it's creating more doers rather than more watches and you know that's kind of what you're doing. So yeah, so it's it's a great thing and we're >> yeah at the beginning of a of a project we've >> been sorely tested by because what it actually needs wild kingdom now is is fundamentally funding to accelerate that the communication of the map and to get people more like anything that you're trying to build and >> it's hard to get people to say well how do I measure my I get it. How do I measure success? Well, the number of people singing literally about nature on the map of dreams, that is that's that's the metric. But what about the number of trees planted? Because they've all been told a bit like, "Don't eat beef. Do eat beef. Do plant trees. Don't plant trees." The people have got the tree planting message.

[01:07:00]>> Yeah.

[01:07:00]>> No matter that most of them die, and no one comes to check them.

[01:07:03]>> That's right. Yeah.

[01:07:04]>> As long as they've been planted, they feel like, "Well, I've done my bit."

[01:07:06]>> Yeah.

[01:07:06]>> But the bit is the missing part of conservation is conversation in the sense of media. And until we're all until we all build it into our everyday and it becomes something we don't need to talk about, that's what success looks like. And we're we're light years away from that, I'd say.

[01:07:24]>> Yes. And um you know, I believe so strongly in your um mission, Hugh, that uh I actually turned down an interview on BBC breakfast to go and talk about no mo this morning to come here. So So that's how much I believe in Hugh's mission. So >> I am very flattered by that. Um, uh, >> the fact they got in touch yesterday is irrelevant.

[01:07:44]>> No. No. Well, actually, funny enough, one of the things that came to me, I don't think I got the heart to sing it, but I think I sent my poor wife lots of rambles when I was walking because Will and I walked this the Paname way recently and we we were kind of walking sometimes. I was behind him, sometimes we were together, sometimes, but there was quite a lot of time alone, which is part of the reason for doing it. And I did, funny enough, I was thinking about No Moo May >> uh and ended up somehow rewarding that uh Row, Row, Row Your Boat, what what's song it is. It's a school song of some kind >> with no No, no, you don't. And it was kind of no no May no May thing. And I said, Laura, I think I've got the perfect thing because we're always thinking about >> how to popularize nature. Well, there are two ways. One is through music and one is through sport because these are the things that young people live through and gaming. But those two are more and getting the people from within those sectors to allow for their lyrics to be repurposed for nature >> was something I'd love to do. But anyway, it's funny that No.

[01:08:45]>> Um, of course, when we came out here today, we were mowing. So, >> no, but gardens kind of a necessary evil, isn't it? In in places, but it's that mosaic. That's what I've always banged on.

[01:08:56]>> Actually, mograss is is good. I mean, >> mograss is great. you know, stings will visit it because they'll then feed on the leather jackets that are within it.

[01:09:02]You know, and a moan lawn promotes the regeneration of things like your dandelions, your daisies, your red clover, your birds, your cell, all the stuff that's going to flower for longer, therefore providing more nectar for the insects if it's cut rather than just let to go to seed and then that's it for the year. So, there are merits to having a lawn and and I'm I've talked about it in many videos. I think it's a mindlessness that you attach to it when you see particularly councils and schools and >> where oh it's Thursday the third so I've got to go and do the verges when actually uh >> I you know that's that's another cultural thing it doesn't if it doesn't need to happen >> for sure >> and it's repositioning the reasoning well we're marrying this roundabout because there's an a black spot but we can leave the middle >> that's right >> and and it's just building that in it's so it's extraordinarily challenging just to have that conversation we try to do it with our village green why do we leave the outside because It's a it's a council school.

[01:09:53]>> Yeah. And um anyway, >> yeah know the Nomo May is interesting actually um because I have I'm not quite sure that the the researcher that got in touch with me from the BBC uh knew my full view on Nomo May because my actual view on no May is is quite different to what most people's is which think it's a it's a great idea and I I I think in principle it's a great idea but the trouble with the trouble is that plant life have never moved away from that no ma I contacted them I had to you know lengthy discuss discussions with them about saying look you you can't just do no mo and let it bloom in June you know knee high in July and all this you you've got to so I came up with the hashtag no summer because the trouble is you go cutting your you leave your lawn for May then everybody thinks right get the mower out in June and and and raise it to the ground whereas you know all that invertebrate life that's then moved in you know is is wiped out so actually if you're not going to do no M for any longer than the the month of May don't bother is my is my honesty opinion because it's it's providing that false sense of security for wildlife for it to then be moaned down a month later. So yeah, that's me going off on a tangent, but the no may came up. I thought >> yeah, there's a good there's a book that I um a local author wrote who I I know a bit where I grew up a bit with but um called the easternmost house and she lived in house it's now fallen in the sea just over over there. Okay. So, it's a sort of diary of her last year, but there's she'd obviously read about rewalding and did get in touch, but there's this other nice bit where she and this is the point you're making is that uh and in her garden that she is obviously too small to have actual animals in it like a pig or a goat or a sheep or a cow. Um, and so how do you mimic kind of if you like the patina of of a naturally grazed landscape where you do get very short grass where you get sheep hitting it hard? Uh but also you get torn grass from cows and and then brutal ground by pigs. And so she sort of got her fork and her clippers.

[01:11:48]And she sort of was crawling around her garden trying to do implement a little bit of an area which is like sheep. So really tightly taken down and then a kind of tusky area where the pigs had obviously broken the top of it >> and then tearing with her leather gloves at the longer grass to try and get the kind of cow tear.

[01:12:04]>> Absolutely exhausting sounded but but rather lovely. And of course that's the point is it's nuance >> and complex. And if you try and put it in a box, it immediately is wrong for someone. And and of course, the chaos of the natural system is what people were so frightened of. And all of our land management has been to box that down so it's not frightening and and and more productive or more organized. And allowing oneself to take take your foot off the accelerator and accept a bit of nuance. Like Raguar is the obvious one here. It was everywhere in the park. And there's a moment usually in late July, early August. And I say to Rob, you know, you got too much. And and actually we always do the same thing. You put you look at it like that, it looks terrible.

[01:12:48]But if you go up on a drone, you realize it's a clump here and a clump there.

[01:12:50]It's not that bad.

[01:12:51]>> Horses don't actually eat it when it's growing live in a field, do they? They eat around it. Otherwise, there'll be no more Dartmore ponies in the world.

[01:12:57]That'll be evolution.

[01:12:58]>> They sort of got round.

[01:13:00]>> Um, >> yeah.

[01:13:01]>> Well, look, I mean, I really look forward to taking some of this out into the into the wild well the wild blog.

[01:13:05]Not to take it away from the garden getting out what actually happens from Rob.

[01:13:10]>> Okay, so here we are on what feels like an island after a short boat ride and some expert driving skills from uh from Hugh. Um and some landing skills from Rob. Now this is apparently regen Rob.

[01:13:21]Rob, lovely to meet you. Um nice to meet you.

[01:13:24]>> That's Hugh's title is given you. That's not the title.

[01:13:26]>> Not my own. Y >> um and now we're going on a bit of an adventure, aren't we?

[01:13:30]>> Well, we are. Yeah. So we're we're sort of pretty much in the in the in the middle more or less in the middle of this what we call Frit Lake Wilding which is 1,000 acre wilding project which is very broadly made up of of Britain Lake which is obviously a reservoir and um about 150 acres of that um sp uh that acorage and then and then there's a sort of mix woodland around that which is sort of planted over Heathland traditionally suffix sandlings. Um and then around that there's there's which is really particularly Rob's specialty that the the exarable.

[01:14:01]>> Yes.

[01:14:01]>> Which is also now changing a lot. So it's a up here on the sand with low rainfall. It's a slow transition and we've got a lot of quite valuable timber here that much that it might not be typical of a wild project. It has a value.

[01:14:15]>> Yeah.

[01:14:15]>> And it has a nature value too. So we're not in any rush. We see it as a long-term sort of you know 50 to 100 year project of change.

[01:14:22]>> Yeah.

[01:14:22]>> But we're 7 years in. Um, and yeah, and it's actually always nice to show someone around who who yeah, who who knows a bit about it, who can see some of the things. Bit worried about your expertise on birds. You might catch us out, but >> I'm not that much of an expert.

[01:14:39]>> Yeah. No, looking forward to it. And obviously nice to have um the the garden wobbler right outside my accommodation this morning. Another nice warbler to add to the list of beautiful birds along with the nighting gale. You really are, you know.

[01:14:52]>> Yeah. Well, I think that I mean, I'm not sure if Joel's hearing things or whether they're these are your with little the speakers pumping out birds on, but it's been very nice. It's working.

[01:15:02]>> Excellent.

[01:15:03]>> Right. Okay.

[01:15:03]>> Let's go. Let's go take a look. See what we can find.

[01:15:06]>> Uh, yeah.

[01:15:07]>> And that's great. It shows some sort of sevenyear 20.

[01:15:21]heading over here.

[01:15:24]>> Yeah. So, we often stop here because in a sense you've got this we're in the intersection here between old Heathland to the to the left. Um, >> and what's happened to that in in the 100 years since the First World War is it's been gradually planted over and so we've lost they're fragments of heath and we're sitting on a fragment of old suffix sandlings here with you can just see crossle heath which is a sort of not heather but a classic um heathland plant that used to >> marvel food plant for the uh silver spotted skipper which hopefully will turn up in time >> exactly and and uh and then over here this field Um, I think I might saying Rob, we took out a production in 2016.

[01:16:06]>> Yeah, that's right. It was a bit before my time.

[01:16:07]>> So, we we were we were angling for to put this into wilding, but we didn't we hadn't heard the right noises at last, having tried initially in 2009. We're coming from natural England, but we didn't know with any shorty that we were going to get in. So, we took a bit of a wing and a prayer and as a very very light land and quite awkward farming field with pylons and and it's very very sandy, we took it out and put it into a set aside. And luckily by the time that would have naturally had to go back into farming we were inside the scheme. So this field um has been the longest uh in in this side of the lake it out of arable.

[01:16:43]>> Yeah.

[01:16:43]>> And actually you could argue and I think we often do wonder why it isn't further ahead because the first four years it didn't have any grazing apart from incidental g deer grazing. Uh so it had quite a few years to kind of recover and begin to put up some uh secondary growth in the form of either gorse or birch particularly and and broom and maybe even scrub oak. And we'll see in a minute, but there is a lot on there, but it's taken an amazingly long time and and I think because ultimately it doesn't want to be a scrub field. It wants to be a more open heathy kind of field. So you can see we've introduced uh one or two pens with with mostly gor.

[01:17:22]a bit of thorn for over winter food. Um, we've actually also brought in a few uh fruit trees which are not typical of heathland or at least not not in the record here. But of course, if you're going to have pigs or ponies, you know, rotten apple and birds, rotten apples in like orchard style is very valuable food source. So, we're not we're not too precious about the introduction side. To the right you can just see one field that we has stayed as arable. It's a sort of anomaly within the block. Uh quite a big nice flat field where we still can grow spuds. It's one of our um you know valuable fields in that sense.

[01:18:01]So we've left that and actually what we do see is in the great in the thousand acres one field of arable which changes from you know from uh through it cropping rotation does actually add diversity. It doesn't look quite how people imagine it's going to look but often you'll find all the deer out there.

[01:18:19]>> Yes.

[01:18:21]>> Speaking of deer and there were there were some uh in the distance I just saw as we turned.

[01:18:25]>> Yes. So there's there's a lot of fow here. Uh the purists obviously bang on about them not being native, but I'd say that if they came with either the Romans or the Normans, they they can they can uh you know, they're as native as any of us really. So um so we like having them.

[01:18:39]Yeah. So right over there you can see our our um exal ponies. We've at the moment just got gelings. We haven't fallen into the trap of breeding. Lovely though it is because unfortunately this country is not yet ready for horse meat and we don't really want to end up with ponies we've got to sell to France. It doesn't feel necessary. So, we've just kept kept the gelings and they're a riot because what they do um is they charge about um seemingly having the best time >> uh without any particular reason. You'll see them galloping through the view um on the charge or on like they're having a game. Whereas obviously cattle tend to be more sedentary and you don't you don't they don't seem to have the the joy of being in the in the wild that the the exmores really do.

[01:19:19]>> Yeah.

[01:19:19]>> So, we love them and they're good.

[01:19:21]They're good and also quite easy to see and get close to.

[01:19:24]>> Yes.

[01:19:25]But this is, you know, an an interesting place. And actually, Rob, thinking about it, that in the years that we've been sitting here and talking about it, um, we have begun to thin, it doesn't look like it particularly, but to strip back the forestry on this side slowly but surely, leave these old scrub oaks, but to reduce the amount of birch, which then will be kept down by the livestock.

[01:19:45]Um, it's a long way to go, but as I said earlier, we don't want to just take uh timber out to prove a point. Um, no, we want to take it out because there's a value and we we have quite a big firewood business that goes through Fritain Lake which harvests a lot of the birch.

[01:19:59]>> Um, and we and of course birch is a is a a native pioneer. So, it's here for it's here for the right reason, not the wrong reason. Yeah. And hopefully the kind of slow encroachment of this gor down either side of this ride is going to provide a great habitat for a lot of breeding birds as well. things like the white throats, you know, yellow hammers, um the garden w I saw this morning, you know, and things like that. It's just such a great shrub, isn't it?

[01:20:24]>> And it's interesting to see how the different fields have developed differently. So, this one's sort of 10 years in, but it has been quite slow or 9 years in. You can see the scrub and the birch is now coming. On the way back, we'll show you another one which was which was grass for sort of 10 years and since then, it's had 10 years of proper reweling. that is now a much more advanced kind of early birch wood, you know, wood pasture sort of plants in >> and actually the next field over which has been on this has got really advanced course.

[01:20:50]>> Yes.

[01:20:51]>> Um so it really just depending on what seed bankank is like, what the soil type is like. We see it really varies sort of from field to field. But yeah, we'll provide that mosaic habitat that we're looking for. But what's encouraging is if you if you if you were to harvest 50% of the birch here on our left, you know, right now actually the difference between the left and the right is far reduced from when we were looking at it 5 years ago or six years ago. So it's quite encouraging even for me. And I mean actually talking of the gor, you're right, there was a lot of it here a a long time ago, but we our last big timber extraction came along here. It was quite wet and the machine obviously turned the path up.

[01:21:28]>> Yeah.

[01:21:28]>> And that's a result of this. you know, it could have been pigs, but yeah, >> it's actually, you know, we we recognize here anyway that >> mechanical intervention is a necessary um part of the exercise alongside um natural through pigs and and grazing.

[01:21:44]>> That's like me with the you know when I go in I people think it's a bit radical going in and you know using a 20 ton bulldozer to strip an acre of soil off but you know unless you've got a hundred years and sheep not most of us have that long to live.

[01:21:58]So, so it's, you know, sometimes the mechanical aid really does speed up the process, doesn't it?

[01:22:03]>> Yeah, it really does. Um, >> those fellows dead ahead.

[01:22:06]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, we can, let's let's push along here and and then do a bit of Delfield and Amazing how the oaks I mean.

[01:22:32]>> Oh yeah. Yeah. So we we've probably got about third. We've I mean we don't we do do head counts but we we I think the honest truth is we've got too many deer but across the >> uh they're allowed to move between the wild block and the rest of the farm that we're not p they're not penned in.

[01:22:50]>> Sure. Um, and I mean, who who wouldn't who wouldn't want to have them? They're not great. They're not great for natural regen, but this this area, you know, if you're looking at oak, it's it would struggle for natural regen.

[01:23:05]It's very very light land.

[01:23:06]>> Yeah.

[01:23:07]>> Um, and they do move quite wildly. They don't sort of tend to sit on one spot.

[01:23:14]They move move a lot.

[01:23:17]>> But there are some states that have a zero deer policy. They'll just shoot shoot to kill everything.

[01:23:21]>> Yeah.

[01:23:22]>> In order to allow more regen, but we're we're rightly or wrongly we're a little bit on the fence. We sort of sit in the middle.

[01:23:32]>> We think we've got sort of around 30 or 40 bellows at any one time.

[01:23:37]They get poached quite a lot because they're easy to see from the road and people at Christmas time you'll find a head uh head without the body that someone inside >> and and then of course you lose a few on the road a few move out naturally. So >> what's your view on the roaded end?

[01:24:06]Well, so when we when we when we put in the scheme originally on in 2009 and sadly at the time didn't get in, we did actually the other big uh application at that time was to remove natural England were very there was if you there was that big battle about Snowden and the locals wanted to keep the red dendran and natural England wanted to strip it away which is non-native.

[01:24:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. And actually I haven't been there recently to see what actually happened. But here I I appreciate there's some right on our left, but when it was brought in by the Victorians to as an ornamental plant to to there's a central carriageway that goes through this wood that was ornamentally planted the species trees obviously back in the Victorian times and roadendron and it spread everywhere.

[01:24:47]>> Yeah.

[01:24:47]>> So although you can see a bit of it, we've we've knocked it out. would not I mean sorry probably close to 80% of it from within the woodland and and especially on the edge of the lake where um it was growing almost like a mangrove over the water >> and of course if you you know anything about you were talking about ponds earlier you the deep water not a huge amount goes on but the shallow water where life is.

[01:25:10]>> Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:11]>> It was being killed and so the water the water company >> and all the nature organizations were very keen that we got rid of it. So, we got a big grant to remove it.

[01:25:20]>> Yeah.

[01:25:20]>> And I have to say that that has been I mean, easily the biggest success story and the biggest project that I'll probably ever >> um be involved with within the context of nature conservation here because it was 2 miles worth of very very thick 160 70 year old rodendran and it's almost all gone. I mean there's still seedlings and we we're still quite brutal. We go along and pull them out and pull them out and pull them out >> within the actual woodland. We leave the odd clump because it does provide a bit of winter cover. It is pretty and we know it can't expand. But along the edge of the lake, it's incredibly hard to manage.

[01:25:56]>> Yes. Yeah.

[01:25:56]>> So, um and now you got great, you know, um re recovery of reeds, older um and all the aquatic species that come with that willow herb.

[01:26:07]>> Yeah. So, this field uh was rewed or let go um in in the tenure of RJ and Rob. Um um and it was Spuds, wasn't it, Rob? The last of the last.

[01:26:20]>> Okay. Yeah. So, we've walked we've walked um is that there's a woodlock.

[01:26:24]Woodlock there. Oh, no. That's a hawk.

[01:26:26]Sorry.

[01:26:27]>> Room right behind you.

[01:26:30]>> Right. Right about 10 ft from the track.

[01:26:32]>> Oh, yeah. I haven't We haven't seen any of that. So, we've had a lot of gor coming in, >> but we the this is a field where we think we got we Well, I haven't updated for Michelle, but we there has been a pair of woodlock on here quite a lot.

[01:26:44]>> Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. Um, and we hope this year they were nesting. Last year they um, but we we did march the pigs across this field after the barley just to sort of rutle and motivate. Um, which obviously is quite good for that sort of seed activation and so it got a bit of a head start compared to some of the fields. Um but you know sometimes that one comes up here and there's a slight nostalgia to the fact that you remember bouncing across here on a tractor and it's a good you know it's a reasonably good this is also um being a light landfield in our spud rotation and so if you are thinking of welding or anyone's thinking of welding the one of the things that will there probably two things that will stop you solar and and potatoes >> because they you know are both more valuable crudely um at least it's sorry valuable financially valuable But now that it's beginning to change a lot and um you can almost begin to sort of see this there's a road this is our road border with the old oaks along it and you can sort of now begin to see that um you know that that in another five or so years when these boats get a bit bigger it will feel like one thing rather than two different things. Yeah, >> it's less and less like a field now. Um, it's never going to be I mean often people have been to net and they come here and and obviously that's >> a lot much older but also it's on clay and everything grows like stink out of clay.

[01:28:02]>> Yes.

[01:28:02]>> And nothing's going to grow fast here ever. You get another >> you get a hot dry July and everything's brown in in a couple of weeks here. So >> and so and also it's I mean it's not meant to be it's not meant to be that.

[01:28:13]>> It's a different solution. This is probably the field that we feel it almost feels like a cheat because um it's just been so rapid and and as Rob was saying that >> the cattle have it sort of lost the memory of of going right around both sides of the lake. So the last which has been a frustration because obviously it means they're overg grazing some areas.

[01:28:35]>> Yeah. Um, and actually we're we're I'm very pleased to say they're now you'll see them later, but around the north side um after a couple of well a year or so of just forgetting about it or or maybe we've changed I think we changed the mothers. We we we thinned out some of the older cows and maybe the younger ones hadn't remembered but but if you know normally there's plenty of there's plenty more and more forage and what's encouraging is there is slowly more and more forage inside the woodland.

[01:29:01]>> Yes.

[01:29:02]>> Whereas when we started in 2020 this was exarable. So it was basically earth and and full of you know chemical residue and and weeds and and the wood is was unthinned and and basically bracken.

[01:29:14]Yeah.

[01:29:14]>> So though it's a thousand acres it's not a thousand acres of food. It's in fact thousand acre desert.

[01:29:19]>> Yeah.

[01:29:20]>> Certainly for livestock.

[01:29:21]>> And so it's now quite exciting that it's beginning to you know with a bit of give and take for the different seasons and the different uh variations from summer to summer putting up quite a lot of food.

[01:29:33]>> Yes. Yeah. And I think we hope Rob to have I mean in theory maybe not quite yet but certainly by 2030 and beyond maybe about sort of 20 to 30 breeding cows in here. So yeah >> sort of 60ish head of cattle at any one time as our main herd.

[01:29:48]>> Yeah.

[01:29:48]>> And then a few pigs and ponies and who knows a few goats at some point in the future.

[01:29:53]>> Yeah.

[01:29:54]>> Or bears of course and link links.

[01:29:56]>> That's it. Lynx. Lynx. Lynx first and the wolves. Um so all we've got to do now is find find the cows.

[01:30:02]>> Yeah. We do. We need to find the cows.

[01:30:04]We're going to have a quick trip up to the across some of the arables so Rob can talk so you can hear actually what regen farming is.

[01:30:10]>> Regen Rob can do his piece rather than my rather than my um >> sort of I did feel slightly on the spot.

[01:30:14]I was thinking of that map, you know, that that used to be I think it was a ground swell map. I'm trying to remember yesterday, but >> it it it it was a reasonable showing, but I think we'll get some more detail.

[01:30:24]Great. I look forward to it. Great.

[01:30:29]This >> is right Rob. We they did soil sampling, didn't they? From the five or six different fields. This being one of them.

[01:30:39]>> Yeah.

[01:30:40]>> And on the basis of what they found, they we went some was in Heathland restoration, some was in acid grassland.

[01:30:46]>> This one field were earmarked for Heathland restoration and actually the sorrel and you know the groom coming shows that that's >> absolutely got a penned area there. Yeah. So I I mean you know again purists are a bit naughy about this kind of thing but you know maybe 20 years ago when when NET started and don't forget they obviously learned from the Dutch and so everyone's learned from someone but we kind of know what this was from the record. We know this was all heath. I've got maps of it as heath. Yeah.

[01:31:14]>> There were none of those trees. Uh it was all open graze heath probably for thousands of years in one form or another.

[01:31:20]>> And so I personally you know with the years I've got left I'm very happy to try and accelerate the process we know.

[01:31:27]I think it's more controversial if you I mean arguably none of this um what we might loosely call corskin or europine it should be here but it is here now.

[01:31:35]Yeah. And the fow deer you could argue the toss about them but um I think we have to be broad shouldered.

[01:31:42]>> Huh.

[01:31:42]>> You work with what you've got.

[01:31:43]>> Yeah. Yeah. And and you know there's probably I don't know a million quid of standing timber if you were to take it all today. Well that's a value to the to the ecosystem but also to the to the business. So, you know what we look to see here is if you were if you were looking across this in another 50 years, this will be quite woody shrubby with hopefully eventually some scrub oak alongside the birch and the brook gor and the broom, but but but quite open, but that will be much more open and we'll be able to see much further through that. Most of that will get harvested. Um and so what we what we are doing is when we do a harvest is we do the routine thinning that fits with forestry and then at the same time have earmarked an area to open up completely.

[01:32:24]>> Yeah.

[01:32:24]>> As whereas before it's just been routine thinning routine thinning which is just like farming. Yeah. Trees and that's really the big change. But you only do forestry every six years. So it's it's slow.

[01:32:35]>> Yeah.

[01:32:35]>> I mean and that's dependent on six to eight years depending on the market.

[01:32:38]>> Yeah.

[01:32:39]>> You know we did a big thinning through here at the start of the scheme. So maybe in the next year or two we'll So we also want your eye to be able to travel through to where we were and link the heaths so it's easier for birds to move and easier to sort of see it as one landscape whereas a series of >> you could just see through those pine to the other side of the valley and if the pine were gone it would really would be quite one continuation wouldn't it? It would certainly be visually great but at the same time whenever I go and mark trees I then get you know you know ear marking people for slaughter it's quite even with a tree even with I say even even with a tree even more with a tree you get quite emotional.

[01:33:12]>> Yeah we >> I like just to make fun of our efforts with all the fencing is just over here is another another clump of self set you know naturally occurring doors which is nearly and then nature just literally saying don't worry we've got this exact you guys you can we've got we we're under control. I mean, it's amazing how much there is here. Um, and it's like it's been put in the line. I mean, I don't quite know >> how that happened. It looks >> too good to be true, but it's it's all just come of its own accord.

[01:33:39]>> Um, >> an old boundary of something.

[01:33:41]>> Yeah. I mean, there's obviously Yeah, there might be an old field boundary there. You're right. That would be quite an interesting thing to look at the old maps to see whether cuz this would obviously been more than one field.

[01:33:50]>> Yeah. Um, one of the things that's um, interesting having now been around a few of the other wild uh, wild blocks is most of them are on what you might loosely call fairly traditional agricultural land. Yes. Not all of them, but some of them net being a good example. So 10 years ago, you could see the big hedges. Now you can't. In our case, apart from the boundary hedge right pretty much right around the whole thousand acres, there's no almost no internal hedges.

[01:34:17]>> Yes. So we haven't got that seed stock of of thorn uh and all the other sort of hedge species to just to just apart from on the edges. So >> yeah, >> it see one one hawthornne down there behind you in flower right now.

[01:34:29]>> Uh yes. Okay. Well, that's good.

[01:34:31]>> But they're going to obviously being bought in by birds and and and by wind slowly. But what what some of the other people doing is they're doing a big copus on a hedge creating a lot of seed source and very quickly you get >> you know particularly with blackthorn it just comes. So yes, >> look how quick this is coming.

[01:34:49]>> Yeah, this is really coming along, isn't it? I think this is a point where the livestock can't, you know, just take everything because they'll come and strip a few, but then and what's great is that they become a bit more shrubby once they've chewed a bit rather than just another a load of bean poles.

[01:35:06]>> I reckon another another five, seven years, Hugh, you'll have yourself a a proper nighting gal belt down here, won't you?

[01:35:12]>> Yeah, I hope so. But they really do love that kind of mid- height uh shrub, don't they? 10 to 15 feet, you know, and then once it gets too leggy and too woody, that's when they tend to move on. So, the management of this in time is going to be crucial to to providing that habitat for them.

[01:35:29]>> Yeah. And I think that's probably quite true of of of the of the our block of land. Oh, I'll just get this.

[01:35:41]So really the main uh the main sort of challenge when I came to Lelayton seven years ago was that uh we we're moving away from an area where farms got subsidies just for farming into more sort of public money for public goods situation. Um and also on the back of sort of general profitability of arable cropping has sort of been under pressure for a lot of years.

[01:36:01]>> Um coupled with Hugh's desire to to get the farm working for nature as well. So really we had sort of quite a big um crossroads that we had to decide which way we're going to go.

[01:36:10]>> Yeah.

[01:36:11]>> So what we've done really is we've we looked at the map of the farm. Um thankfully all of Hugh and all his sort of ancestors have kept all the hedges intact, all the trees intact. So it's quite it's got quite a lot of natural capital already. Yeah.

[01:36:22]>> But that does mean the fields were quite small and awkward shaped. Um sort of not very efficient for modern farming machinery. So, so what we've done actually is uh most fields if they're a funny shape will be sort of farming a rectangle in the middle which is really efficient and then all the land around the outside the sort of funny shaped bits will be used for um you know provision of habitat conservation of some kind or another.

[01:36:43]>> Um and at the same time the hedges that that are in existence we've allowed to change the cutting regime so they can basically be allowed to get incrementally bigger and bigger. So instead of being a sort of small box which gets cut back to the same point every time, we just let them let them enlarge into kind of a really, you know, 20 foot wide uh kind of corridor >> with with some kind of buffer on either side as well because however kind of carefully or regenerative you're farming.

[01:37:07]>> If you're growing a crop up to a particular point, you are effectively making it so there's not much other habitat there. So got to have that network of connectivity throughout the whole farm.

[01:37:16]>> Really big areas which are now kind of managed for wildlife. And then we crop the bits in between as sensitively as we can. So that sort of changing the cropping >> and that that kind of that perimeter around those fields is is actually quite a long linear feature, isn't it? By the time you add up the meters after the meters, >> it joins everything up. That's the key thing. And so every field is kind of all the others. So when you look at the map of all our kind of wildlife options that we've got around the farm, it's it's big part of it. It's probably 25% of the farmed area. Wow. Um and and also it hasn't really affected our ability to produce because we we're farming the most efficient bit in the middle.

[01:37:52]>> Yeah.

[01:37:52]>> And we've changed the cropping rotation as well. So instead of quite intensive roots and sugar beat and some sort of not very soil friendly cropping. Um we've got we've you know stretched out the rotations. We've got just behind us here you can see there's a that's a that's sort of a herbal lay. Um sorry the hedges just got in the way.

[01:38:08]>> That's right. Bloody hedges. But so yeah, but you know growing sort of a long-term herbal lay which would be producing food for the animals for our livestock and giving the arable land just a really good.

[01:38:19]>> And how do you manage that? Just one cut a year then for a hay or do do get a couple cuts?

[01:38:22]>> Could be two cuts around here. We are quite sort of moisture limited. We're mostly quite light land uh and quite low rainfall. So in a dry year like last year we got one cut uh and that was it.

[01:38:32]It just basically turned >> course is better better again for the breeding bird.

[01:38:36]>> Absolutely. any lap wings that might be in the area sky.

[01:38:40]>> Summer there's some short grass with a lot of seed on the ground. I mean what you know wildlife love it. So any point any time around the year there's going to be you know all manner of cropping all kinds of cover cropping um legume fow options uh sort of interwoven throughout the farm landscape and an awful lot of um winter bird food as well which we plant for them. Yes. So we'll grow it like a crop and then in the winter just leave it standing there and there'll be tons and tons of you know small seeds which is we've seen huge increases in sort of the farmland bird population as well.

[01:39:08]>> So your linets your goldfinches.

[01:39:09]>> That's right. Yeah. I mean huge flocks in the winter time it's better cuz they're all concentrating on the areas we planted. You know you drive down they just kind of move out like clouds in front of you. Quite something to see.

[01:39:19]But so um we'll we'll stop um >> maybe when we get to the end of this field here we can have a look margin here. um which you can see we're a bit early in the year to see any blossom, but it's all coming. We're farming the rectangular bit in the middle there. Um which is actually going to get planted with one of our rotational legume fellow mixes. So it'll be mostly legumes and some flowering species planted to grow over the summer.

[01:39:42]Yes. Um which is putting a lot of, you know, nutrients back into the soil, really good soil structure, and then that'll be returned to cropping. If we stop here, Hugh, that's quite a good quite a good spot. So this really marks um this is the rectangular sort of efficient section on the right which is good for farm machinery and that leaves a a funny shaped triangle with a bent edge on one side. So we just drew a straight line down here. Uh the left hand side is kind of naturally regenerating. We call them wild edges really and you can see the hedge itself is is getting bigger and bigger.

[01:40:11]>> This is a really good hedge because it's mostly sort of hawthorne and blackthorn which can get bigger and wider without taking any ill effects. Yeah, >> we have got some elm hedges which are more difficult because if you let elm get bigger and bigger it just gets Dutch elm disease and dies. So those ones have to be managed more.

[01:40:25]>> So this is a good example. Yeah, wider hedge a really good kind of natural regeneration buffer. Uh and then the farming alongside there. So when it does come time to harvest this field or prepare it for the next crop, you know, all the wildlife has got a really safe sanctuary to go to so we don't lose anything. So >> that's great. Perhaps if we pull forwards to the other side.

[01:40:50]>> So you can see the hedges suckering out here and just getting wider and wider.

[01:40:53]>> It's quite a lot.

[01:40:54]>> Yeah, it really is scale. But blackthorn is the sort of number one for that kind of thing.

[01:40:59]>> Yeah. Suckering out and getting wider.

[01:41:02]>> Everything else takes a bit longer.

[01:41:03]>> So you can see this is the counterpoint to this sort of bent hedge is that we got another straight line here. So this field has been cropped on the left and again it's got a this foreground is actually a planted wildflower margin and then into the distance is a is a natural regeneration buffer with the hedge getting wider. So again right in the middle of the farm landscape a really stable valuable you know habitat corridor.

[01:41:25]>> Yeah and it's not really losing you that much crop is it?

[01:41:28]>> That's the thing. It really hasn't changed the the cropped area that much.

[01:41:31]What we do is more efficient because reversing combines into tight corners is not productive. You just cause compaction and lose time. So, um, we've got red campion coming into flower over there. Look.

[01:41:42]>> Yeah, that's right. Hugh's got a very natty log line of save time, save money, save nature.

[01:41:47]>> Yeah, it's good. Good thing >> carbon, save nature. Yeah. So, the crop behind it here is um is Marisotta winter barley. So, that's a crop that uh we like growing because it's it's used locally to produce craft beer.

[01:42:00]>> Okay. Yeah.

[01:42:00]>> It's been grown in this area for it's one of the oldest varieties of barley going actually. And it's got >> and that's that's why it's so popular with craft breweries because it's um it has been used for a long time. It's one of the highest quality >> that there.

[01:42:12]>> Oh yeah, it's a butterfly on the champion.

[01:42:13]>> Is a wall brown hue.

[01:42:15]>> Well done.

[01:42:16]>> Wall brown butterfly.

[01:42:18]>> Very nice. There's another one here actually.

[01:42:20]>> So there's you can see a few little oaks just coming in this in this margin.

[01:42:23]>> Yeah.

[01:42:24]>> So >> Oh, look. Yeah, it's doing well. So this uh we're a bit early. If you come in June, this is an absolute riot of color as you can imagine.

[01:42:31]>> Yes, I can imagine. But it is is coming.

[01:42:33]>> So you got you got red campion, lots of oxide, lots of napweed, classic wild flowers here that are going to be doing really well. And you know, just to have three wall brown within a matter of meters on a cold day >> on a cold day in in May, which is the first brood of the season. I mean that's that's amazing. That is >> a testament to your to your efforts, Rob. For sure.

[01:42:54]>> I hope so. I hope so. And so what we're really trying to do because I mean Hugh's Hugh's aware that some people would have just sort of said let's >> another one. What have we got down there? Painted lady.

[01:43:04]>> Oh, well done. There goes >> zooming off.

[01:43:07]>> Sorry.

[01:43:08]>> Cuz we we were quite keen to um rather >> another wall brown.

[01:43:10]>> Oh yeah.

[01:43:11]>> Well, I tell you what, you might you might you might have a few distractions for looking at this.

[01:43:16]>> But some people might have said, "Well, why don't you just rewald the whole estate?" But really, we felt that is sort of abdicating the challenge of producing food cuz it's got to happen somewhere. Well, I think yeah, it's a very it's a very fine line, isn't it?

[01:43:28]You know, you've got to make it profitable for you guys from a business sense. Uh I'm sure as much as you and Hugh would love to do this for free, >> you've all got to make a living and and equally another painted lady.

[01:43:41]>> Equally, we all need to eat. So, it it is a balance. And >> it's just incredible to see. And this why this can't be replicated across every farm in the UK is >> Well, that's what we thought. If you if you just do the conservation, everyone can say, "Well, that's fine for you, but what about what are people going to eat?" So, we really wanted to um produce a model whereby it is profitable, it is producing food, you know, in a serious, you know, commercial capacity, but it is also delivering for nature. Yes.

[01:44:08]>> And so, we felt if we can do that, we've actually got something we can be proud of and uh and show off.

[01:44:14]>> I think you're doing a very good job from what I've seen so far, which is which is only a small part of it.

[01:44:19]>> Excellent.

[01:44:23]And this is a field which is it is sort of still an arable field but it's having a a three or four year break from actual cropping. Okay. So this has been in a sort of range of environmental stewardship options for a while. So we've got basically a kind of planted wildflower mix in the foreground. Then what you see in the back there is a the stubble of what was an overwinter bird food crop.

[01:44:42]>> Okay. Yeah. So we planted a mixture of millets and uh and sort of small seeded crops which we'll produce we'll plant them again in about June and then they grow leave them all summer and then in the autumn they sort of set seed leave it standing there and it's just produces tons and tons >> and of course the millet really good for tree sparrows. Do you have tree sparrows on this?

[01:45:00]>> Yeah.

[01:45:00]>> Fantastic.

[01:45:02]>> So you can see we sort of just split it up. Um >> Wow. Yeah.

[01:45:05]>> So eventually >> so this this will be uh kind of moan and collected as a bit Oh some lucern. Is that lucern?

[01:45:11]>> Yeah that's right. Yep. um sand probably.

[01:45:13]>> Yes.

[01:45:14]>> So, producing lots of blossom.

[01:45:15]Basically, it's supposed to produce pollen and nectar during the summer months.

[01:45:18]>> And then you'll you'll just get a hay crop off it later on in the year to feed the the cattle. Or we just >> we may cut it or it may just be if we just leave it to to dry out and set seed. We might just mow it and sit you and let it come back another year.

[01:45:30]>> Oh, and there was a I couldn't quite see. I think it was a hornet, by the way. But >> Oh, yeah.

[01:45:35]>> Another painted lady.

[01:45:39]So the idea is that um we haven't given up on this field for cropping forever, but this got absolutely hammered by um sort of under the old regime a very late harvested crop of potatoes in really wet conditions, really terrible for the soil.

[01:45:53]>> Um you know, and that was just the point when Q and I were sort of changing the way we're running the farm.

[01:45:57]>> So So we're not going to do that anymore. We've changed what we're growing on the rest of the farm. And to give this field a bit of a reset, it's now had I think we're into year four of this uh stewardship option. So eventually this can come back into cropping when it's had that rest.

[01:46:09]>> You may thorn on that.

[01:46:11]>> When it's had that rest and sort of repair um period, we can then move those options to somewhere else on the farm, crop that one again. So So yeah, it's really is trying to intermingle the habitat provision within within the farm environment without giving up on the farming.

[01:46:25]>> So where are we now then, Rob?

[01:46:27]>> So we're now on the historic parkland which surrounding Summer Hall. So this was originally conceived as sort of a semi-natural backdrop to you know a big a big grand stately home.

[01:46:37]>> Um and over the years some of it had been converted to arable and the rest really had um instead of being semi-natural it had become quite um crimped and pined and carefully managed like a lot of parks around stately homes are. They kind of look a bit like a bowling green. So just moan very short kept very tight. Exactly. remove all the dead, make it look very tidy, which I think was sort of a Victorian thing is for the first time we had, >> you know, the machinery and the capacity to do this stuff and if you weren't doing it, you were a bad land manager.

[01:47:05]>> That's right. Yeah.

[01:47:06]>> Um and that sort of that that >> keeping up with the Joneses.

[01:47:09]>> Exactly. That's right. So, it takes quite a brave person to say, "Right, we're not going to do that." Even though it really is what the world expects. Um so, we six, seven years ago now, we put this one into kind of a a semi-reed management. So, instead of mow instead of mowing it, here's our stalks.

[01:47:25]>> Oh, goodness me. Now that's >> Now that's a thing, isn't it?

[01:47:30]>> Yeah.

[01:47:33]>> Wow.

[01:47:35]So, this is a bit exciting, Hugh.

[01:47:37]>> Yes. Well, I'm >> white stalks.

[01:47:40]>> Well, they're moving around the the cage, of course, the enclosure. But >> tell me more.

[01:47:46]>> Well, we were talking about Derek G, the rebel reder.

[01:47:49]>> Yes. um before who become a friend and he very kindly offered me two pairs um I think sort of four years ago.

[01:47:58]>> Wow.

[01:47:58]>> And so they're very young birds and so it took a whole sort of year and season before they sort of started to lay eggs.

[01:48:06]But actually we've had quite a lot of success at the right hand pair we just disco now know have got she's got three chicks for this year.

[01:48:12]>> Oh fantastic. Um, and the left hand pair, she's sadly gone off the nest, which worries me a bit, but is has got four eggs, and she's had eggs before, but hasn't actually bought off any young. So, we're hoping maybe maybe this might be breakthrough year for >> for her. But what obviously the like all these things, um, the idea out here, we have to have a claim, and the claim is that they'll be the most easterly stalks >> actually on the east coast. But >> here we go. She's coming back to her nest.

[01:48:36]>> Coming back. Good.

[01:48:37]>> Um, wow. And uh they're rather extraordinary birds actually. But they also made the lovely sort of clacking noise that you can hear from the house.

[01:48:44]And I think we're close to the point if if they do successfully bring off young this year that you know we can start to let some of them out. Yeah.

[01:48:51]>> Maybe keep some of them in to keep the other birds close. And there's some lovely big ceders over there that they might nest in but gradually just become a resident population that then could hopefully expand um here and maybe uh in into neighboring landscapes. But yeah, I have to say that like all these things like the the um we talked yesterday a bit about the uh the great busted project um down on sour plane with David Waters, but also I've been to see the Dutch and their Dalmatian pelican project. And for anyone who hasn't been close to these sort of birds, you know, we're all used to garden birds and even though they're very depleted and need our help, these sort of big uh sort of birds, it seems forgot. They really are. Yeah.

[01:49:36]And they've got a kind of rare elegance and presence in the landscape that we've just forgotten and and it's it's not it's very sad really. But so anyway, they've given us a lot of pleasure. There's quite a lot of work involved, but not these putting up a pen like this. You got to have room.

[01:49:53]>> Yeah. Uh, and if we did it all again, I think I'd have tried to get maybe four pairs at the beginning just to increase that >> um breeding window because obviously the plan is to let them out. But don't forget these were cage rid so they're not used completely used to being outside. So you have to do it very carefully. Um anyway, it's a great project and some people Paul would say we should be concentrating on other things and but I think in in the mix you need some iconic things that draw public interest and we've seen how much they did that at NEP and so we really hope they can do that here too.

[01:50:24]>> Well the same with NEP. I mean, at the end of the day, it's it's a it's a passion of yours, but of course, it's an industry as well, and the more the more you can create in terms of tourism, the more visitors you can attract, the more money it puts in the pot for other projects, right? So, >> you know, it it helps. So, the more people visit, the more people put that interest into into what you're doing.

[01:50:44]And I I can't quite believe I'm looking at a ST there. They're just are they not one of the most magnificent birds, you know, and then >> they really are >> to think that they are now colonizing our landscape.

[01:50:56]>> Well, brief stalk interlude over. What a what a nice surprise that was to see.

[01:51:01]>> So, where are we heading now, Rob?

[01:51:03]>> So, we're now traveling through the parkland around some hall, which you can just see behind you if you peek through the trees.

[01:51:08]>> Yeah. Oh, we got some Egyptian geese there with some >> young.

[01:51:12]>> And here come the uh the landscape managers.

[01:51:15]>> Yes.

[01:51:17]So this is a herd of Welsh black cattle.

[01:51:19]>> Welsh blacks. Yeah, >> Welsh blacks. They suit this quite well actually because they're they're sort of obviously from the hills of Wales where they're not fed huge amounts. They have to sort of make a living on, you know, nothing too special. So actually some extensive grazing, it works really well.

[01:51:32]>> Yeah.

[01:51:32]>> So these are out here 365 days a year, >> which is completely different. Normally, as we said before, parklands would traditionally be sort of, you know, cut with an inch of their life, kept really pristine, maybe take a cut of hail silage off them um and maybe graze them for a bit and then have nothing on over winter. So, we've stopped all cutting, all mowing, obviously, no fertilizers or sprays or anything. Um, and then these guys are out here 365 days a year. And the idea is it's much more like a sort of savannah landscape where in the summer the grass will grow really fast, far more grass than they could ever eat.

[01:52:02]You get long, you know, long wavy grass in seed. um lots of food, lots of habitat, and then over winter um they will slowly sort of munch through it and the grass dies off. So you end up with this kind of landscape you can see here which is sort of uh some quite well-developed tusks of grass which never get grazed.

[01:52:19]>> Some thicker patches of uh of bramble coming through and lots of scrub and thorn coming. Um and there's some areas of short grass where the cattle really favor it. So trying to get that kind of natural wood pasture landscape. Uh you can see there's a few a few young saplings and bits of scrub coming around us here. There's a bit of gor coming over there. Um and we do try and accelerate it with a bit of planting and protect some areas as well.

[01:52:42]>> Brilliant.

[01:52:42]>> So that's really it. It was quite easy to start here because the parkland had a wall built all the way around it. So 300 acres with a wall all the way around the outside.

[01:52:50]>> Yeah.

[01:52:50]>> So all we really had to do was to change the management.

[01:52:53]>> It was up at Fritton where we were there was 10 km of fence to build through very difficult you know start. So um so this is quite an easy start.

[01:53:02]>> I mean this won't go completely wild because it is still the backdrop to the house and it sort of has to reflect that. So wood pasture rather than actual kind of turning it back into into forest but >> yeah. Wow.

[01:53:14]>> Yeah. So and it's it's been so nice to see that I was saying earlier some thorn making a tow hold particularly out on this east part. It seems that life well be happier or getting ahead more here >> and it doesn't look like much after five or six years but actually that is that single transformation. And the other one that of course you know we're talking about iconic species is that when this was being cut it was basically you know for ry grass. There was a prior to Rob obviously it's fed uh for fertilizer.

[01:53:45]Actually Rob made a very observant and common sense um uh observation really that that obviously as old pasture even with a bit of nitrogen it's not producing particularly good grass.

[01:53:57]>> Yeah. So now now we produce grass in the arable rotation where it's you know farmed so we get a really good crop which gets us through the winter and this is left to naturalize and you know I'm not a botist but it's wonderful coming and where we can see the flowers but also the native grasses as well that are less >> uh less obvious have come back come roaring back really and so it's this really rugged landscape that that perhaps it was meant to be when it was set out actually as well and >> yeah sort of more more semi wild and I mean it is a slow process when land sort of changes but even in the first couple of years we got the tussks well before we got any scrub coming >> really >> and even those tussks that provides the habitat for vos and uh you know small mammals and then immediately barnals came back and started hunting over the park got the food so >> you sort of you build the food chain from the bottom up but it takes a while but we are we're getting some good results >> there'll be absolutely loads So, you're saying there's a there's a part of the estate which we we won't quite get time to go to today, Rob. So, what what what kind of a landscape is that?

[01:55:08]>> That's right. It's quite distinct.

[01:55:10]>> I've now jumped jumped into the front of this aquatic German beast, by the way.

[01:55:13]So, if we get stuck, I'm just going to have to translate some of these to uh Yeah. see if we can get out.

[01:55:20]>> Yeah. Amazing. So, sorry. Yeah. So, so what have you what have you got on the other side of the lake?

[01:55:24]>> Yep. So down to the south of uh of this block is a sort of southern border of this state which is the river Waven and as part of the flood plane of the river Waven there's a a big area of grazing marshes which are >> okay >> really in contrast to the the Arab land is quite sandy and droughtprone whereas the marshes are flat clay with sort of water close underneath >> so really in the hot summers any grass on the arable upland is a bit prone to you know burning off and going brown whereas on the marshes they just grow and grow they love you know however hot it gets however however dry it gets, they've got the warmth underneath them and the facility to grow.

[01:55:58]>> So really our kind of the main cattle herd on the estate um is only really here because of the marshes. So yes, the the what we're trying to do is the cattle graze the marshes all summer where there's loads of grass. Then in the winter time when it's too wet, they come off the marshes and come onto some cover crops that we grow for them on the arable land between the between the you know cash crops. It's a really good system. And those marshes are also really valuable habitat for waiting birds.

[01:56:24]>> So we've got um we got red shank and lapwing birds that don't have a lot of um of habitat because there is very little wetland in the UK.

[01:56:33]>> Yes, of course.

[01:56:34]>> So when we've we've sort of improved the management in terms from a bird's point of view by digging a lot of foot drains u making a lot of scrapes, a couple of islands >> really because we can bring water on in the winter really easily. I mean they they flood in the blink of an eye. So we can sort of control that water and get it to a level where there's a bit of grass and a bit of standing water attract all the birds over winter sort of grazing habitat and then >> fantastic >> and then get some breeding going on in the spring. So >> yeah.

[01:57:01]>> Yeah, it's really >> And how do do you have curies on that part of the estate?

[01:57:05]>> Uh yeah, we do. Yeah, we sort of have have a good suite of >> um of waiting birds. And actually we're quite lucky cuz we're not on our own.

[01:57:12]We've got uh Raveningham estate um which nearly borders us to the west >> and then to the north we've got um uh suffer wildlife trust nature reserve called cult marshes.

[01:57:22]>> Okay.

[01:57:22]>> But they're managing their marshes in a very similar way. So actually there kind of there's a bit of a selection of places. So if one site gets a bit of disturbance one year or something the birds don't just have nowhere to go, they've got one of the neighboring places they can go to.

[01:57:35]>> Brilliant.

[01:57:40]So, we're now heading back to the direction we came from to see uh the famous Highland cattle. Hopefully, they'll make an appearance. And uh just heading along some of these edges of the field. It's really fascinating seeing these margins, seeing how just a few meters along these arable fields around the margins can really provide a lot of habitat. Seen so many butterflies already. all rounds, small whites, green bone whites, painted ladies, all within a few meters. But of course, you times that few meter width by 100 meters and all of a sudden you've got a large expanse of wildflower meadow and verge.

[01:58:19]So absolutely brilliant to see. So and I'm loving this truck aquatic beast that uh that Rob and Hugh have acquired. How how old is this vehicle, Rob?

[01:58:29]>> I think it's about 1974.

[01:58:30]>> 1974. Okay. Yeah. So it's a Yeah, a good 50 years old. So yeah, fantastic. Still going strong.

[01:58:37]>> Got no microchips to go wrong.

[01:58:38]>> No microchips. Yeah. No fancy electrics in this thing, that's for sure.

[01:58:42]>> A good status. There's 70 km of hedro on the estate. So >> 70 km. Wow. Okay. So there you go.

[01:58:48]There's some stats for you. 70 km of hedro. Obviously great breeding ground for a lot of birds. Great corridors or a great amount of corridors for so much of the wildlife that's here on this estate.

[01:59:00]So yeah, wonderful to see. And some hawthornne and flower behind me are just coming out now. So really good to see those. And obviously they're going to go on to provide a lot of berries for the autumn birds in particular our thrush species such as our field fairs.

[01:59:14]>> Good black boots.

[01:59:16]>> Yeah. Sorry. So we've made an emergency stop.

[01:59:18]>> Yeah. It's just a good example of one of the arable fields which is in a temporary >> zoom in on that.

[01:59:24]>> So that's a temporary kind of wildflower meadow.

[01:59:27]>> That's right. Exactly. Yeah. So it's been wild flowers for three or four years. Uh and then that option can move somewhere else in the estate and this can return to cropping.

[01:59:34]>> Fantastic. Wow.

[01:59:39]>> This is actually small point, but these sort of awkward corners, little bits of farmyard that again historically they would have just been moaned short. You can't crop or grow anything on them.

[01:59:48]They're too small and awkward.

[01:59:49]>> So you could just keep them tidy with a flail mower. Um but we we made the choice to sort of allow them to to become little mini rewing areas of their own.

[01:59:58]>> Yeah, love it. Bit of wood brown. Yeah, >> it's great habitat, great scrub regeneration for so much wildlife.

[02:00:05]>> Really safe places for birds and >> Yeah, got a red abil around there.

[02:00:09]Brilliant.

[02:00:09]>> Just takes a takes a a land owner who can, you know, tolerate people saying that looks untidy. You say, "Well, that's the idea."

[02:00:17]>> Yeah. Fantastic.

[02:00:23]So, we're back to back to the field where the ponies are.

[02:00:29]So you can see they can get quite fat on no food at all.

[02:00:33]>> Yeah.

[02:00:34]>> Like you said, if we were farming ponies, we'd be we'd be millionaires.

[02:00:37]>> Be millionaires, modern.

[02:00:42]>> It's really quite fascinating to see the amount of scrub generation, isn't it?

[02:00:47]And of course, you know, >> it's quite a good >> almost all of this is non is isn't planted, is it? It's just none of this is planted.

[02:00:54]>> Natural regeneration. So again, it just it takes it takes a while for 5 years coming out of arable, what you really get is sort of arable weeds. Yeah.

[02:01:02]Followed by kind of a few native grasses that start to come in. Uh and then but it takes a long time for these kind of larger structural plants to sort of take root. And you do also have to manage your uh the number of livestock on here quite carefully, >> of course, >> because if you have too many cattle, then you get a hard winter and they would nibble all that down to nothing.

[02:01:19]>> Yeah.

[02:01:20]>> So um you got to watch it. You can see the bramble is coming and the bramble really is sort of stage one cuz um once you got bramble that'll dissuade grazers and that'll be somewhere where if there happens to be a birch seed or an acorn under there.

[02:01:31]>> Yeah, it sort of harvests them, doesn't it? Yeah, it gives them chance to grow.

[02:01:34]>> They say the thorn is the mother of the oak which is quite right.

[02:01:37]>> Yeah, it's very true.

[02:01:40]Some nice birch colonizing there.

[02:01:44]>> So, sort of five or six years to get to this stage, but another five six years and they'll be 15 ft high.

[02:01:49]>> Yeah. But once they get a tow hold, they do they do go quick, don't they?

[02:01:53]>> A nice block of bramble there.

[02:02:00]>> You often see if you look at a >> There's the >> Oh, yeah. There we go. They're the ones we saw earlier.

[02:02:15]>> There's a couple of m jack running off down the path.

[02:02:17]>> Oh, yeah.

[02:02:22]These tracks are unfortunately from forestry machinery that is really heavy.

[02:02:26]It has to do its work in winter.

[02:02:28]>> Yeah.

[02:02:28]>> So it does tend to leave some quite deep ruts.

[02:02:30]>> Big ruts. Yeah.

[02:02:41]So, one of the interventions we do make is um we're trying to break dominance of bracken here cuz >> the trouble is if you get a lot of pine >> then what tends to happen is you get a bracken understory that is so dense that really it just shades everything else out.

[02:02:55]>> Yes.

[02:02:56]>> And it grows so well. Um >> so it's not very good for the diversity.

[02:03:00]So we're although we are reing we are sort of intervening where we think there's a good case to do so. So, we've been trying to control the bracket. It's quite hard work as you can imagine. It just grows back so quickly, >> but one of the things we've done is fenced in a couple of acres with electric fencing and keep some of the pigs in there.

[02:03:19]>> Pigs are really good at sort of churning up the ground and they can actually >> motivated you can get on.

[02:03:24]>> Absolutely. Yeah. And they can actually eat bracket roots as well. I didn't know this, but if you dig that all up, there's kind of a long thin sort of um tubular root, which if you break it open, it's quite like a water chestnut sort of consistency.

[02:03:35]>> And they'll pull those up and give them a good chew. And of course, over a couple of years, that really does, >> you know, diminish the the bracket's ability to come back.

[02:03:43]>> But then you move the pigs on and you got all that bare ground, very fertile.

[02:03:47]Um and hopefully some other stuff comes back. We really want a sort of, you know, slightly grazable understory where is actually toxic and Nothing eats it.

[02:03:57]>> Yeah.

[02:03:59]>> Yeah. So, the uh the hard rush is a bit of an indicator that this is potentially a bit damper than the other areas around the woodland.

[02:04:08]>> We've had a really dry spring, so there's not much water to be seen. But this is very springy land kind of the the ground all slopes down towards the lake >> and there are springs all over it, which is why it grows timber. So, you know, it grows timber like crazy. There's a load of >> I think these are sweet sweet chestnut.

[02:04:25]There's a lot of sweet chestnut which will be planted and and cppus.

[02:04:28]>> Yeah.

[02:04:28]>> Is this a honey suck? No, it's a rodendron. Yellow rodium.

[02:04:31]>> Yellow rooendron.

[02:04:33]>> So the road here's the lake on the left here. So the roaded engine were all planted sort of Victorian ornamentals.

[02:04:39]>> Yeah.

[02:04:39]>> Which obviously I mean they are gorgeous but the trouble is they are quite an invasive species and they will take over >> and so um it was before my time but >> none of this birch was here. It was just solid roadendron all the way down to the water's edge >> and it's actually not not very good for the water. It shades out, no reads can grow, so the water quality diminishes.

[02:04:58]And again, it's non-native, so not many things actually eat or live in live in it.

[02:05:02]>> No.

[02:05:02]>> Um, and so there's been a big effort to to sort of reduce the roodendrron to a manageable level.

[02:05:08]>> It does have wildlife value because in the winter time it's evergreen, you know, it provides good habitat.

[02:05:14]>> Yeah.

[02:05:14]>> And bees bees actually love it, don't they?

[02:05:16]>> Yeah. It's full of blossom. So >> uh if if we never did anything again, it would just be roed entrant here and everything else would die. So >> yeah.

[02:05:25]>> So we talk about rewing, but actually it's all it's all still managed. We still have to make decisions as to what we're going to do with it.

[02:05:32]>> Yeah.

[02:05:34]>> Well, then it full it comes full circle because it was man's intervention that put the roaded engine here in the first place.

[02:05:39]>> Yeah. Exactly.

[02:05:43]>> It's a nice Douglas fur.

[02:05:46]>> So because this was sort of pleasure grounds, there's a lot of Victorian planting. There's some um giant redwoods here as well which do >> Okay. Wow.

[02:05:54]Talking of redwoods, I saw the uh the Wellington in the um in the gardens yesterday. Oh, yeah.

[02:06:00]>> What an incredible tree that is.

[02:06:01]>> Absolutely, Sam.

[02:06:13]>> So, this is where the pigs have been uh Yeah. foraging wildly.

[02:06:17]>> That's right. Yeah. They're quite good at ruffling up the ground and digging it up. And again, it creates some bare soil, which is another another habitat, another sort of opportunity for some pioneer species to get in. So, it's just constantly breaking it up, making that mosaic, but the mosaic that shifts all the time.

[02:06:34]>> Yes. So, in case we don't see the pigs, Rob, what what breed of pigs are they?

[02:06:38]>> So, they're they're large blacks.

[02:06:40]They're um sort of ones that we've taught to live wild really. We put them in here. We had to start off >> to begin with. They don't know how to forage. It's a bit like us. if we suddenly got dropped in the woods, we wouldn't be able to do.

[02:06:51]>> So, we fed them for for quite a while and then slowly reduced that and they started to learn that they could forage for the chestnuts, they could dig up these back roots, they can eat all manner of grubs and so they learned their way around and now now they don't get fed at all and they're they're quite fat if we do have to come across them.

[02:07:05]Here's one of the um >> that's one of the redwoods >> ornamentals. Yeah.

[02:07:08]>> Yeah.

[02:07:15]>> Is that a pig?

[02:07:18]No, sorry. Just a black tree stuff.

[02:07:20]>> Yeah.

[02:07:45]So, we're now trying to find uh a crossing over the lake, which Rob is used to finding on foot. So, we're we're now reversing back through these roadendron uh to try and find it. Hopefully, we'll find it. Fingers crossed.

[02:08:13]There we go. That'll be fine.

[02:08:16]>> We found it.

[02:08:17]>> Yes. So, we're at the narrow end of the lake now.

[02:08:20]>> Yep.

[02:08:21]>> So, this is a causeway to this very marshy ground. Um, but there is co which has built up by bringing down some some rubble over several years.

[02:08:30]>> Yeah.

[02:08:30]>> Uh, and I walked it the other day and it was pretty good. I might just quickly do our German translation and find four-wheel drive and diff lock before we get any further.

[02:08:41]>> The green lever on the right next to the yellow lever is green lever is four-wheel drive. Great.

[02:08:46]>> There you go.

[02:08:50]Look.

[02:08:56]See if I can hold it on. Anyway, we'll see. We probably won't need it. It's got good tires.

[02:09:02]So we're now on this raised causeway which is very narrow.

[02:09:06]>> Yeah.

[02:09:06]>> And a bit soft.

[02:09:12]>> So the cattle have found this. It took them This is where saying it takes a couple of years, but >> eventually they got either nosy or hungry enough to find their way down here.

[02:09:21]>> Yeah.

[02:09:29]>> Right. And we're now on the bridge.

[02:09:32]>> So there you go. So that is the very end of the lake.

[02:09:35]>> Yes.

[02:09:35]>> All overflows through the slle.

[02:09:38]>> Uh and it actually then goes into a Lounge Lakes which is owned by the water authority to provide drinking water to the lower stuff.

[02:09:44]>> Oh right. Wow.

[02:09:45]>> So right well that was get off this.

[02:09:53]Well that was the tricky section. Now we're climbing the hill into the woodland on the other side.

[02:10:02]Very well driven.

[02:10:03]>> Yeah, thank you very much. Glad the engine's warmed up now.

[02:10:09]>> Didn't like the cold start this morning, did it?

[02:10:47]Okay. So, this looks like a different landscape.

[02:10:49]>> Yep. So we're now opening coming out of the woods and coming into some um exarable land which is now sort of more like 15 20 years since it was cropped.

[02:10:58]>> So you can see straight in front of us is all the pig has been pigs have been digging this up.

[02:11:02]>> Yeah.

[02:11:02]>> Quite serious on here. But you can see the forest, you know, the woodland is getting so much more advanced. It's just sort of coming out of the woods and creeping into the into what was crop land.

[02:11:13]>> Yeah.

[02:11:14]>> So again, just really good sort of succession. And you got the older trees the nearest the forest and then it peters out into these emergent saplings.

[02:11:21]So over time this will just kind of gently march across the landscape until it's all this kind of this mosaic we keep talking about.

[02:11:28]>> Ah and there's some pigs over to the left.

[02:11:30]>> Oh there we go. Excellent.

[02:11:31]>> Fantastic.

[02:11:31]>> There's some pigs and I wouldn't be surprised.

[02:11:33]>> We spent so long talking about them that it'll be a shame not to see them.

[02:11:38]>> And I bet there'll be some cattle over shading under those trees or something.

[02:11:49]So although this land hasn't been cropped for quite a long time, it was a sort of managed grassland until seven or eight years ago. So it would have been grown every year.

[02:11:58]>> Um >> yes.

[02:12:04]>> So you see all this roughness and the reason so bumpy and is cuz pigs have dug this up. This is what they do all day long is wow stick their nose under this.

[02:12:11]this fact she's lying in a fur that she's plowed with.

[02:12:15]>> Wow.

[02:12:21]>> So, has a a self-made bed.

[02:12:22]>> That's right.

[02:12:24]>> Look at that.

[02:12:28]Best rotivators on the planet.

[02:12:34]And with that amazing nose, I can imagine she's probably smelters rather than seen us.

[02:12:39]>> That's right. And they're they can't really see very much with their ears sticking over like that.

[02:12:44]Oh, interestingly, the cattle are um a bit in the woods actually.

[02:12:53]>> So, I've got some um tracking collars on some of the cattle.

[02:12:57]>> Okay. Yeah, >> I think you're going to see some >> some live figured up right now.

[02:13:01]Obviously found a good bit.

[02:13:03]>> Yeah.

[02:13:14]And of course the cows the cows are going to be grazing but the these pigs are as we've seen they're going to be just rumaging around creating all this kind of you know rotivated ground which as you say Rob is just perfect for all the kind of regenerative >> just keeps it all keeps it all refreshed. If you had no livestock on here at all, you would just get trees, you know, wallto-wall with nothing underneath and actually biodiversity would would go down.

[02:13:42]>> Yeah. Really where you find the most biodiversity is this kind of edge habitat. So you got some shore grass, some scrubs, some trees, some uh you know emergent saplings. And so really the the idea is to get the combination of animals right in here. So you got enough grazing to keep some grass short.

[02:13:57]You got um you know stop any stop the saplings from taking over the whole thing. And then the pigs are there to create a different type of landscape where they literally set it back to day one with some bare soil. And then you get, you know, windb blown seeds coming in and starting all over again.

[02:14:11]>> So if you get it right, the idea is it should be a sort of self-sustaining landscape where there's a mosaic which provides a home for everything.

[02:14:19]>> Yeah. And um that's bed number two down there.

[02:14:22]>> That's right.

[02:14:24]>> Fantastic.

[02:14:26]So you think you think we might bump into some cattle next?

[02:14:29]>> Yeah, I think so. We've actually we have got some tracking collars on them and I had a quick look and they're uh they're not far away now.

[02:14:34]>> Excellent.

[02:14:37]>> The pigs do make it very uncomfortable to drive across I'm afraid.

[02:14:43]>> It's a necessary evil.

[02:14:51]>> Got the mjack over there.

[02:14:52]>> Yeah.

[02:14:57]>> Oh, there we go. Oh, brilliant.

[02:15:06]>> I'll take left and then go around so you can see them out your window easier.

[02:15:10]>> Thank you very much.

[02:15:13]>> Be interested to see what they're eating. Actually, fantastic.

[02:15:29]A proper healing coup just loving life.

[02:15:37]So, how many highlands have you got at the moment, Rob?

[02:15:39]>> So, there's 12 cows in here.

[02:15:41]>> I think there's two more in the woodland down there. I've just >> That's right. I can see there's several down at the lake. We can go and have a look. And they're probably just having a drink. So, 12 cows plus their plus their calves at various different stages. Here we go. These are going to look quite cool.

[02:15:56]hiding in the woods. Oh, here we go.

[02:16:03]Cow blockade. Look at them all lined up here.

[02:16:16]>> So, because they're pretty much left to live as they please. Obviously we we sort of control of it when the bull goes in and when he comes out to make sure that the bull isn't in with his own daughters and that sort of thing.

[02:16:26]>> Yeah.

[02:16:26]>> Um but apart from that there's not much handling. So they are quite wild. You know most cattle you can sort of go and walk up to them and move them out the way and load them onto a trailer whereas this lot are not really interested in that.

[02:16:37]>> They wouldn't appreciate you doing that.

[02:16:38]>> No that's right. Sort of get a bit more deerike behavior.

[02:16:42]>> Yes.

[02:16:50]But as Hugh says, it's slightly about rewing the humans as well.

[02:16:53]>> Yes, very true.

[02:17:00]>> Seeing things you wouldn't expect. Sort of pulling branches down from trees and >> Yeah, >> they're obviously finding something that that they need.

[02:17:08]>> So that's looks like fox gloves. She's in a patch of there. Yeah, >> I can't imagine she's eating those, but good example of um you just what grow what wants to grow will grow.

[02:17:20]>> Yep.

[02:17:32]Right.

[02:17:37]So, ah, that's our gate down there.

[02:17:41]Through this bit here, maybe this is what you call off-roading.

[02:18:06]I was taught a long time ago you put your thumbs to the outside of the wheel >> and then they don't get broken when it gets spun on a tree stump.

[02:18:13]>> Yeah.

[02:18:14]>> There we go. Well done.

[02:18:22]Well, Rob, I can't say I've ever been in a 50-year-old German beast of a vehicle like that before. That was absolutely amazing. And hats off to you. Your driving skills are second to none getting through some of those swampy areas. And it's not even wet at the minute, is it? So, >> yeah, that's right.

[02:18:37]>> Yeah. Well, well done and and thank you for for the explanations. So, I now fully understand why you're known as Regen, Rob. Uh you've lived up to every expectation that uh that Hugh put forward to me. So, uh, thank you. It's really been an eye openener for me just seeing how we can manage these areas or how you can farm these areas and still still make a profit.

[02:18:57]>> Yeah. No, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to show you around and yeah, great. Well, lovely lovely day to do it and nice to have someone who's gorgeous knows knows about it and is interested.

[02:19:04]So, thank you very Well, I'm learning all the time like the rest of us. But um but yeah, I mean, if you had any any bits of advice for anybody in the farming industry that may be watching this that wants to maybe sort of push towards more of a kind of a natural >> margin or anything like that, what would be your your kind of advice as to how to make it sustainable more than anything?

[02:19:25]I think one of the biggest challenges is that um that we've been sort of polarized into these two camps really where it's like you've either got farming or you got conservation and you can't have both at the same time and I just really think that we all need to reject that because we've got to have farming clearly but we also got to have conservation. So we've got to find ways to do both you know in the same landscape all over the place. So we want to have farming and nature across every part of the country really. So so don't see it as an either or. There are ways to put it into into every every managed environment.

[02:19:53]>> Yeah. And clearly you're making a a profit from it cuz you're still in a job. The machines are still running. So it it's working and and I'm so pleased that I've been able to see that and and you know, hats off to your knowledge for showing me firsthand >> and and the wildlife. You know, we we're what we've just ended the first week of May. We've already got multiple butterfly species up and down these marginal corridors.

[02:20:14]>> Yeah.

[02:20:15]>> Imagine if that was all over the UK. It' just be amazing.

[02:20:17]>> That's the thing. It' be continuous, wouldn't it? So >> bird life, bat life, insect life.

[02:20:21]>> Yeah. Well, the more people know about it and can support it, that's uh, you know, that's what will make it happen.

[02:20:25]>> Well, you've done a great job in showing how that can work. So, thank you, Rob.

[02:20:28]Yep. Great to meet you.

[02:20:29]>> Great to see you again. Thank you very much.

[02:20:31]>> See you again soon.

[02:20:31]>> Take care. Cheers. Bye.

[02:20:34]>> Okay. So, so what are your uh what are your final words of wisdom then, Hugh?

[02:20:37]If if people are looking to to rew and I I've done an entire video on reweing, you know, because I think in a garden setting, you know, there there is a difference. you know, you can't bring in great big herbivores into a garden and let brambles and nettles and everything take over your garden. So, so I'm conscious there is that difference, but but from what you've seen from your travels around the country and obviously you're you're interviewing and and you're seeing lots of different people, you're seeing lots of different habitats um from a garden to hundreds of acres.

[02:21:09]Um, what would be your kind of words of wisdom as to anybody who's looking maybe they're starting, you know, they've just heard the phrase re wilding for the first time or wilding for the first time or they've just bought their first house with a garden. What would be your advice to them for in terms of not necessarily how to how to wild it or what to do with that space, but but but for for in terms of how they can start to think about that journey. Well, so I think the first thing that I would say and I think this is quite true of farmers but I think also a lot of a lot of us generally and certainly was probably true of me is that when this wide conversation about nature recovery and or wilding there are it's it's still quite new it's been slightly polarized and quite a lot of people probably think I mean a bit so when health and safety came in I remember my dad in his generation thought it was a bit you know you know like why and also a bit they were a bit affronted that anyone in this case Europe or the European director were thinking that they weren't looking after their people in the kind of context of being safe and I think and that and now it's completely normal it's on the agenda of every meeting you ever had and we've just taken it on board I think that wilding nature recovery is a bit stuck where health and safety was in the sort of 90s as in there is a judgment a bit a bit why wouldn't I cut my lawn why why wouldn't it be neat oh bloody you know birds and bees I think there is a bit of a problem with perception and so and I think people worry about what the neighbors think sometimes depending where they live there's a sort of keeping keeping up with the >> you know the Joneses sort of problem and so I think you know it does take a bit of courage >> and I've met enough people who do doornocking where they get a slam door or no I want to keep my BMW there I don't want to do you know want a tarmac not don't so you need a bit of perseverance >> uh read a bit around online because if you are worried about how small the impact of a window box might be actually you can get there's some great data out there now the the biodiversity gain of a just a window box compared to a say a field of wheat is you know so don't be shy about the scale of what you're working at >> and kind of just let go a bit and don't worry too much about the outcomes initially you know if if you're going to let I mean some people love wild flowers they want to do a wild flower garden some people like the idea of just wilding as in as in brambles and there's an area that can be for that um other people are kind of really horiculturally want to grow And so they that might be their contribution towards nature having a kind of growing patch. But I don't I think that don't worry about the rules.

[02:23:40]Don't worry about what one website might say compared to another. I think these things are pretty instinctive in us even people who are really removed from it. I think the key thing is stepping off a bit like your first visit to the gym and no one wants to go to the gym and you're worried about what the other people in the class might think and whether you're as bendy as the other yogis or they're going to laugh at you. But ultimately we can all put things in a way all the time of all sorts of things.

[02:24:04]>> In the end, it's for those of us who step off and try that new thing. So I think number one is just stepping off and doing something ever small >> and letting go a bit and and not getting too, you know, rewalding is is is not is is outcome non-specific.

[02:24:18]>> Yeah.

[02:24:19]>> You know, and so getting that mindset is is really important.

[02:24:22]>> And it's not difficult to have a biodiversity net gain, is it? By simply not mowing parts of your lawn, you will have a biodiversity net gain and you haven't had to put a single tel in the ground.

[02:24:31]>> Yeah. And I think another thing that again maybe is a bit bookish but if you wherever you live and I I appreciate this is less true in in densely populated cities than maybe towns but if there's usually these older books that you can look at past times books if you actually look through them and try and configure what you're looking at compared to what is now every single one every single one the the picture will have a more naturalistic rough look a village green or somewhere within your village where there might have been an orchard You'll be amazed to see how stripped down, how few trees, how few hedges, how manicured almost everywhere is compared to a book from the 70s or 50s or >> good old lady.

[02:25:12]>> It's quite interesting. Yeah, it's quite interesting that um uh if people are worried about it not not being right.

[02:25:17]But I think that's the thing is and and I would challenge anyone once you start that you know and I'm I'm an advocate of this and a sort of a real evangelical adv advocate of this is I I I mean I okay this is a different scale but I didn't really when I first came back I didn't really enjoy the land part of my existence that I grown up with. I had a really nostalgic memory of the farm and going around the farm with my dad and the guys on the farm and the tenants and the animals and and and of course shooting in those days and all that stuff. But I was very very attached to it and I couldn't find my access point in as a mature person coming back and I felt isolated from it and I think I then sort of broke through this sort of invisible glass ceiling if you like and and this rewalding but nature recovery regenerative farming and gardening has has given me that recovered that access point and I I think a lot of people probably aren't aware that they feel like that but they do feel like that >> and so I'd be amazed of anyone who starts a rediscovery of what it me feels like to not wonder why what well realize what they've been missing and wonder why they didn't do it ages ago and won't won't you know have an evangelical amount of joy from just seeing something happen >> and that is >> but that's a good point you make a long answer but that's >> no no but but I was just going to say as a as a bit of a roundup to to just sit and observe because even if you've just got a window box like you say or or a balcony with some plants just sit and watch it, you know, take some time out.

[02:26:47]Leave your phone inside, you know, and just sit in the natural world. Try and get, you know, used to the birds calling and and try and identify some of them and just get a general, you know, field guide on some of the wild flowers of the UK and start to identify them because I I get an enormous amount of gratitude from being able to walk into the countryside and go, "That's an oak tree.

[02:27:08]Um, that's a I know it's obvious, but a dandelion, you know, that's a a a mason bee, for example, you know, or that's a common blue butterfly. So, I think just getting in, like you say, reconnecting and identifying what's out there and starting to learn. It might seem daunting. It's still daunting to me. And I've been, you know, I've been looking at this stuff for 30 years now, but there's still stuff I'm learning.

[02:27:30]There's plants I'm learning about in the UK that I thought, I didn't know that was native here, you know. Um, so I think just just starting that journey and just sitting and observing what comes in and out of your garden is a is a real eye open.

[02:27:42]>> Yeah. And actually that makes me think of I mean I'm not trying to be have the last word at all but but actually one thing that welcome for people for people who don't feel that they have you know are not connected at all. You know it's pretty obvious point and I always do this in schools but you know what do we thrive off? We thrive off networks, social activity, connectivity, hotspots where we can go like out for the evening or go shopping or whatever it is. Well, always try and relate what we need and what we enjoy to what nature needs and enjoys because almost it's almost exactly the same. They need hot spots to go and feed. They need safe places to have a family uh to be protected from the weather. Uh they need space to exercise and to enjoy, you know, if particularly birds and and they need connectivity with other species both in terms of food sources but also in terms of you know getting together most species are pretty social >> and you know it's quite I think one of the problems is people have so disconnected they've forgotten though that obvious principle you know whether it's your farmyard ducks or or your house martins or your butterflies you don't have to be one but to recognize that they kind of need exactly what we need and the very thing that we thrive off and give ourselves connectivity through roads through phones industry, the tube, through telephones and all that stuff. Computers is the thing we've spent a lifetime depriving nature of.

[02:29:04]We've taken away all of those things and just give them back and immediately they they do much better and and as you say, no scale is too small. So, yeah.

[02:29:15]Yeah. That's that's my closing statement.

[02:29:18]>> I love it. No lesson.

[02:29:20]>> Thank you. Yeah. No. Well, well, thank you sincerely. I I've thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed my visit. I very much hope it's not my first and last visit.

[02:29:28]No. Um and you know I'm very hopeful that that we can work together to try and push the map of dreams. So if you are looking to do anything today and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your own home, sign up to the map of dreams and and how can people do that Hugh? What's the best way?

[02:29:42]>> Yeah. So so I mean you can do it through the link through Instagram but if not through our website. So you just >> I'll put a link to your website in the description below this video by the way.

[02:29:50]So people can just you can just click click. But um >> yeah and and I think at first point it's a skin deep thing. There are lots of people who want to be really detailed and forensic about what they're doing and that's fantastic. But actually much more than that it's about you know saying yeah I recognize the crisis I'm I'm in. I'm I want to do something and just start that journey and then you'll find other people on the map maybe near you. So it's that sort of uh and actually what's so remarkable is we've been sitting here for the years telling people to do some wild gardening or rewalding in their garden and and but everyone says well how and Now, now five years later, we found you.

[02:30:25]>> I think there's more of a collaboration here than we both realize at the minute.

[02:30:28]So, yeah, we're working on that. Yes.

[02:30:30]So, um >> but no, thank you, Hugh. Thank you for hosting me. Thank you for for showing me the the wonderful things you're doing here. I'm sure >> I'm sure I'll come back to document how things are in over the years as well.

[02:30:41]And um yes, thank you so much for for all the detail you've given us today.

[02:30:46]It's fascinating the insight into that different world that you know most of us have in our two three bed houses you know looking at farmlands from the outside and how they're managed and to have your view I think is essential in today's world so thank you sincerely >> well my pleasure hope it's been interesting inspiring I should say >> yes and if you've enjoyed it please comment below so thank you so much for watching if you've enjoyed the video please give it a like and do follow the channel I'll be sure to bring you more content content from here at Hugh's wonderful abode and all the magical things he's doing. Stay tuned. Stay wild. I'll see you all very soon.