Seeds of change at cannerheugh

By Nic

I’ve always found the diversity of plants on our farm a bit disappointing; I guess we thought that longer rest periods and no sheep would unleash this amazing seed bank that has been dormant for generations with random flowers popping up!

 In fairness, there has been the odd patch of ‘ragged-robin’, the primroses along the beck edge, the patches of orchids; maybe I’m never satisfied.

We have loads of ‘herbal leys’ but these are bought in from a seed merchant out of a bag, we wanted to source some original Cumbrian stock.

Here 'Mrs Blue's Bales' come in

A couple of years ago Reno had been to see Alan Robinson who farms Mrs Blue’s land at Tebay. She has some incredible hay meadows restored and luckily for us had some hay bales off these fields for sale.

This wasn’t what they call ‘green hay’, where hay is cut and immediately transferred and spread onto land, these were round bales of hay that we use in our ‘bale grazing’ during the winter months. So we thought the uptake probably wasn't going to as good as green hay but still worth a try.

We are now two years down the line and it turns out it worked pretty well: yellow rattle, native red clover and plantain, knap weed, Veitch all thriving on our pastures, it’s blooming marvellous to see!

These bales were an hour away, and haulage was expensive but getting these plants growing on the farm and seeing them thrive has been worth it.