Tamarisk Farm is 320 acres of organic farm, market garden and holiday chalets supporting 2 families, occasional casual workers and ‘volunteers’. We sell freezer packs of meat, vegetable boxes and wholemeal flour locally; store cattle, finished and store lambs, cereals and wheat reed for thatching when possible.

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Tamarisk Farm is within an AONB and consists of 320 acres of high pH heavy clay facing southwest and sloping down to the sea immediately behind the Chesil Beach in Lyme Bay. The whole farm is organic and includes permanent grassland, scrub and regenerant native grassland (280 acres altogether), reed bed, ponds, marsh, hedges, stone walls and rock outcrops and arable (including a market garden). Field sizes are mainly below 15 acres with arable units below about 7 acres, mostly divided by substantial hedges. We have a very helpful working relationship with Dorset Heritage Coast in managing footpaths and with the National Trust.

We maintain a variety of small but linked enterprises to provide a buffer against the weather and the market and to make life interesting. Conservation is a thread which runs through all of them.

Conservation is vital to us for several reasons.

1.Philosophy. As custodians of the land we use it for the common good. As such we aim to produce quality food in a sustainable manner, provide access for others as much as is possible and maintain natural diversity for the future.

2. Aesthetics. A diverse and healthy environment gives us and visitors much pleasure.

3.Obligation. We are in an AONB on a Heritage Coast with SSSI’s and a Nature Reserve. We have a legal and moral obligation to conserve these for the whole of society.

4.Economic. Visitors to holiday chalets and volunteer workers come partly because of the quality of our landscape and habitat diversity. Through the Stewardship Scheme we are able to pay ourselves for tree and hedge planting, hedge laying and stonewalling. In due course well managed reed bed will produce thatching reed. We have taken a crop of seed from native pasture which will sell for reseeding other sites.

5.Practical farming. Biodiversity leads to a variety of habitats housing predators of pests, a wide botanical variety for healthy grazing, woodland for fuel and hedging stakes and scrub and hedges for shelter for stock. Ponds provide a secure water supply for market garden and stock.

The President’s Award - supplementary costing estimates

We have proposed several projects which all stand independently. Many proposals are open ended or still at a planning stage and exact costings may not be possible until details are worked out. In spite of this we have tried to estimate areas and work rates etc. to produce good estimates. We hope that we will eventually implement all of these projects but in the short term time and funding are limiting.

1. Scrub management.

(a) Laying old scrub - labour @ £45/person/day. One person can cover approximately 100 square metres/day. The work is inevitably destructive initially and so is best phased over several years. If 0.5ha were layed each year the cost would be £2250 annually.

(b) Cutting rides and and openings through scrub - some hand work at the same labour rate as above. Approximately 3000 square metres @ £1350. At present much cutting and maintenance of edges and cleared areas has been done by a local contractor. Whilst this has been useful our own tractor-mounted swipe would enable us to cut at more appropriate times and more often if necessary and with much greater subtlety (for example cutting edges in waves rather than straight lines). The cost of a new swipe is about £1800 but a secondhand one would be quite adequate at perhaps £700, although dealers we have spoken to say these machines are very rarely available secondhand.

(c) Planting protected trees within scrub - at £2.50 per tree planted £375 plants 150 trees.

2. Ponds.

We now have a clear plan for the ponds and have discussed and costed these with a local specialist contractor at £600 for both.

3. Building.

We have had preliminary discussions with the planning department and have several possible locations where a standard clear span steel framed building would probably be acceptable. Approximate cost of a modest 60’ x 45’ building including site preparation but with no ‘extras’ from a local firm is £13,000. Some additional landscaping or other disguising features would be desirable.

4.Reedbed management scheme.

This is very much an unknown quantity. We have so far approached this in two ways. Firstly the working group as already described. This will help with expertise and advice and might lead to funding from English Nature or the Environment Agency, particularly for professional hydrological surveying and planning but perhaps also (through the Reserve Enhancement Fund) for constructing ditches, bunds and sluices. Secondly; we have arranged to work in January for a day on the reed harvest with the Abbottsbury Swannery, who manage a larger but roughly similar reed bed on The Fleet a mile to our east, in order to learn how they manage the water levels and the practicalities of commercial reed cutting.

(a) We have an old reed cutting machine which we have never used. It needs repair and may become serviceable. Presumably new or second hand machines are available but we have not yet investigated this. Contractors do exist but again we have not investigated yet.

(b) A hydrological survey and/or advice on water level management might become possible through other agencies. A preliminary estimate of the cost of ditching, bunding and sluices is in the region of £3000-£5000.

5. Woodland.

Our proposal at present is to plant 1 ha predominately oak with small numbers of other native hardwoods. Hazel, ash, sycamore and maple would be liberally interspersed expecting to thin them as the oaks establish. A nurse crop of Norway spruce would be harvested from 2 years and a wind break line of poplar and Cupressus macrocarpa between 5 and 15 years. We think we would be eligible for a Woodland Grant Scheme and possibly for Farm Woodland Premium Scheme, which would leave approximately £4000 to find (at contract rates) plus any necessary fencing. It is to be hoped that income from the Christmas trees would cover maintenance costs.

6. Bats.

Probably constructing and distributing bat roosting/hibernating boxes is the simplest and most effective measure. We have simple plans for these and can get guidance from the local Wildlife Trust on where to site them and how to cater for the particular needs of different species. At about £3 each for materials, an attractive idea is to involve children from our local school to build and site these.

Tamarisk Farm is within an AONB and consists of 320 acres of high pH heavy clay facing southwest and sloping down to the sea immediately behind the Chesil Beach in Lyme Bay. The whole farm is organic and includes permanent grassland, scrub and regenerant native grassland (280 acres altogether), reed bed, ponds, marsh, hedges, stone walls and rock outcrops and arable (including a market garden). Field sizes are mainly below 15 acres with arable units below about 7 acres, mostly divided by substantial hedges. We have a very helpful working relationship with Dorset Heritage Coast in managing footpaths and with the National Trust.

We maintain a variety of small but linked enterprises to provide a buffer against the weather and the market and to make life interesting. Conservation is a thread which runs through all of them.

Conservation is vital to us for several reasons.

1.Philosophy. As custodians of the land we use it for the common good. As such we aim to produce quality food in a sustainable manner, provide access for others as much as is possible and maintain natural diversity for the future.

2. Aesthetics. A diverse and healthy environment gives us and visitors much pleasure.

3.Obligation. We are in an AONB on a Heritage Coast with SSSI’s and a Nature Reserve. We have a legal and moral obligation to conserve these for the whole of society.

4.Economic. Visitors to holiday chalets and volunteer workers come partly because of the quality of our landscape and habitat diversity. Through the Stewardship Scheme we are able to pay ourselves for tree and hedge planting, hedge laying and stonewalling. In due course well managed reed bed will produce thatching reed. We have taken a crop of seed from native pasture which will sell for reseeding other sites.

5.Practical farming. Biodiversity leads to a variety of habitats housing predators of pests, a wide botanical variety for healthy grazing, woodland for fuel and hedging stakes and scrub and hedges for shelter for stock. Ponds provide a secure water supply for market garden and stock.

Farm management has built upon the benefits of 30 years of organic husbandry. By using no herbicides, pesticides or artificial fertilisers a diverse flora and fauna has developed. We have encouraged experts to supplement our knowledge with their observations and so have a clearer picture of the most important conservation issues on our farm; particular specialists involved cover plants, birds, moths, dragonflies, dormice and reptiles. We have the following habitats of local and national significance: reed bed, unimproved native pasture (calcareous grassland with maritime influence), wet meadow, scrub, ponds, rock outcrops and dry-stone walls. Of these the most valuable is the scrub, which is now becoming scarce. As well as a general diversity of flora and fauna the more noteworthy and significant include: several unusual arable weeds, 9 species of orchid, nit grass, adder’s tongue fern, dormouse, great-crested newt, adder, grass snake, lizard, water vole, sky lark, nightingale, Chetti’s warbler, small eggar moth, several species of bat and 9 different birds of prey present intermittently or resident.

During the past five years wildlife management has been of 4 types :

-rejuvenation and maintenance of existing habitats

-creation of new habitats

-wildlife corridors to link existing units

-protection and encouragement of particular species

We have:

Much of this has been assisted by funds from the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.