Farmed environment
Buckminster Farms adopts modern-day farming practices while managing the land in a way that benefits and enhances wildlife: an approach that we see as an essential component of safeguarding the future of British farming.
We have recently entered a new Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship agreement, creating new and enhancing existing habitats for farmland birds and insects, protecting water quality and our soils. We have recently introduced sheep into the system combined with increasing the area allocated to temporary herbal leys. With the variability of weather caused by climate change, and the incentive to align to natural capital outputs, farms are orienting to a greater diversity of cropping and stocking, focusing stewardship plans on marginal land, and choosing crops best suited to the productive land and profitable markets.
Crops and their uses
A wide and varied crop rotation is the key to long term success. This reduces the build-up of competing weeds, pests and diseases, and helps to maintain our soils’ fertility. Our wheat can be used in a number of ways; as flour, cereal, bread and cake ingredients, and for bio-ethanol production. Our barley crops are used for animal feed and malting, depending on the grade of grain.
Oilseed rape was an important crop as a break between wheat crops. The vivid yellow flowers produce a black seed from which oil is extracted for use in cooking oil, food, fuel and industrial products. However, with concerns over chemicals needing to be applied that likely reduce bee populations, alternative break crops are being resorted to, such as feed beans sold for high protein animal feed or exported to Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries for human consumption.
We also grow a wide range of other crops such as oats as a low input spring cereal which is used for foods such as porridge and cereal bars, rye as a low input feed grain for the pig industry, linseed used for its high-quality oil and sugar beet from which sucrose is extracted for use in a wide range of products. We are able to store a large proportion of our output in modern grain stores able to dry and condition grains and seeds to optimise timing to market.
Improving the soil structure
Over the years we have moved away from a more intensive to a shallower cultivation system meaning less regular ploughing. We try to limit soil compaction by reducing the ground pressure and weight of our farm machinery for improved field drainage and subsoil structure, combined with chopped straw incorporation to encourage microfauna which, in turn, reduces the need for cultivation. We grow and incorporate cover crops and manures where possible. The additional organic matter improves soil structure and nutrient levels, locking in carbon and encouraging worm life, increasing the potential productivity of the land. Cover cropping also acts to enhance water quality by absorbing valuable nutrients over winter and holding the soil together, reducing soil erosion.
Working with us
We employ a team of agricultural students for harvest in the summer months, ensuring Buckminster provides future generations with the skills they need to operate machinery safely.
If you would like to work with us over the summer, please call us on 01476 860 297 or email [email protected]. You must have a full driving licence and tractor experience is desirable. Students are offered live-in accommodation in the converted stables in Buckminster where there is a lively village pub and two shops.
Wildflower and grass habitats
We plant and manage grass and wildflower margins to provide an abundance of habitats and valuable food for mammals, birds and insects. The mixture of annuals and biennials ensures there is a range of cover, seeds and pollen through the year to encourage a well-balanced biodiverse ecosystem for invertebrates, butterflies and bees.
While the pollinating insects inevitably help with flowering crop pollination, it is common to see an array of wildflowers next to a wind-pollinating crop such as cereals because the margins remain in situ while we rotate crops around the farms: flowers often seen are Sainfoin, Common Vetch, Lucerne, Fenugreek, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Alsike Clover, Black Medick, Red Clover, Phacelia, Red Campion, Sweet Clover and White Campion.
In the summer, we sow a mixture of Triticale, Linseed, Barley, Kale, Fodder Radish, Gold of Pleasure, Quinoa and Millet alongside over 40t of supplementary bird feeding which extends the cover and food provision through the lean months of winter.
Livestock
We have recently introduced sheep into the farming system at Buckminster. We have been working with genetic line specialists in order to establish a low input, hardy outdoor lambing sheep system which can utilise forage from herbal leys or cover crops over winter.
Herbal grass leys, which are a mix of grasses, legumes and herbs, have been introduced using a variety of pollen-rich legumes managed for the sheep and pollinating insects. The increased grass area, in rotation with arable, helps us in the challenge of reducing the competition from output-sapping and spray-resistant blackgrass weeds.
Get in touch
If you have any queries or questions about the farmed environment at Buckminster, please contact our Farm Manager, Matthew Wallace on 01476 860 471 or email at [email protected].
If you have a general enquiry on the farmed environment, please complete the contact form below or email [email protected].