Now, across the country, farmers and landowners are exploring new ways of producing food, allying with natural processes to reverse a catastrophic decline in wildlife and even challenges to human health. The biggest input for many farmers now is forethought: Nature is complex and diverse and so, increasingly, are the farms that work with her.
Regenerative farming aims to restore soil fertility and structure, where agriculture could be said to begin. The idea of integrating livestock and crops is so basic—animal dung feeds the soil, which grows the crop— that non-farmers may puzzle over why plant and animal production were ever separated. Why would anyone raise animals away from the areas where their feed is produced or grow crops far away from manure?
Mob grazing, or intensive rotational grazing, was developed after Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean stock farmer, observed how herd animals in the wild graze and then move on. Hard-bitten, the grasses spring back—absorbing carbon from the air, shedding roots to feed the micro-organisms that create soil, and putting on fresh growth, fed by the dense application of manure.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der May 20, 2020-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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This isle is full of wonder
GEOLOGY? A bit like economics, the famously boring science? I confess I suffered the prejudice—agriculture and history being my thing, both of them vital in every sense— but Robert Muir-Wood’s voyage through the past 66 million years of the making of the British landscape has biblical-level drama on almost every other page. Flood, fire, ice… or, perhaps, the formation in rock, sand, mud and lava of these isles is best conceived of as fierce poetry.
Empire protest
Without meaning to issue a clarion call for independence, E. M. Forster perfectly captured the rising tensions of the British Raj. One hundred years later, Matthew Dennison revisits the masterpiece A Passage to India
Hops and dreams
A relative of marijuana, hops were a Teutonic introduction to British brewing culture and gave rise to the original working holiday
Life and sol
The sanctuary of the Balearic Islands has enchanted a multitude of creative minds, from Robert Graves to David Bowie
'Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest creatures'
Giving himself neck ache from constantly looking upwards, John Lewis-Stempel makes the most of a sunny May day harvesting ‘tree hay’ and marvelling at the myriad wildlife including flies and earwigs–that reside on bark
'Plans are worthless, but planning is everything'
Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves
The darling buds of May
May Morris shared her father’s passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than William’s daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals
Achilles healed
Once used to comfort the lovelorn or soothe the wounds of Greek heroes, yarrow may now have a new starring role in sustainable agriculture
Spring-fed genius
The garden at Selehurst, West Sussex The home of Mr and Mrs Michael Prideaux The streams that trickle through this woodland valley in the Sussex Weald have enabled the planting of thousands of different trees and flowering shrubs
Stars of the West
Wonderful houses of the West Country are enhanced by characterful owners, from the man who bought the whole of Exmoor to Jane Seymour and Sir Terence Conran
