Great Wollaston Farm

Address: Halfway House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY5 9DN

Farmer: Robert Kynaston

Website: http://www.greatwollaston.co.uk/

Member since 1999 and LEAF Demonstration Farm since 2002

The Farm

Great Wollaston is a 242 acre mixed family farm on the English/Welsh border. Winter wheat and winter barley is grown for home use with any excess being sold off the farm as well as a mix of peas and spring barley for the 110 strong dairy herd’s forage. The farm breeds all their own stock and utilises a paddock grazing system. Manure is recycled back onto the land to improve soil fertility and structure and milk is sold to Arla.

Activities

Skylarks, finches, yellowhammers, owls and hares are regular visitors to the farm, attracted by sensitively managed woodland, wildlife corridors, ponds and field margins. The farm has had a number of surveys conducted on behalf of the RSPB as well as training for recorders by Preston Montford field centre. In 2001, Great Wollaston won the English Nature and NFU President’s Award for Biodiversity, which enabled the creation of a reedbed on the farm. This provides a diverse habitat for beneficial insects, birds and small mammals as well as help with dirty water management. A bio-mass log burner is fuelled by coppiced timber from the woodland.

The farm has a large mid-tier agri-environmental scheme in place with 6m field margins, some floristically enhanced, wild bird seed areas and nectar and pollen plots, over-winter stubbles with spring crops and cutting internal hedges once every 3 years, a third every year.

People are encouraged on the farm to show that healthy food can be produced by balanced, sustainable farming and where wildlife thrives and the farm participates in OFS every year. Great Wollaston also works with Harper Adams, giving farm tours for their agricultural students and foreign visitors and providing support for their studies and surveys.

Particular interests/farming topics:

• Growing high protein feeds for cows to replace imported soya
• More use of clover
• Growing fruit trees in fields with livestock/ agroforestry
• Understanding soil.
• Livestock in an arable rotation.
• Integrating wildlife habitats into the rotation.

Visit this farm

Click here to arrange a visit to this LEAF Demonstration Farm.