Summer has kicked off with a flurry of exciting activity at Natural Habitat.
As we finished up our final in-school sessions for the Learning From The Land project, we had wonderful news that Suffolk & Essex, Coast & Heath’s branch of Farming in Protected Landscape are generously funding a second year of our Weaving Farms, Land, People & Planet project (WFLPP).
We are over the moon, and have jumped straight into a summer season of school-farm sessions, bringing more local children out to the Blyth Valley land venues to learn from the landscape. This year, we are focusing on the importance of diversity and how it’s key to resilient futures for us and wildlife.
While our WFLPP project will continue to work with local schools, farms and a multitude of nature supporting practitioners, we are also collaborating with Barleybird CIC on a sister project, called Diverse Communities, Diverse Crops.
This project has also been supported by Farming in Protected Landscapes, and will expand our reach to market gardens, urban communities and the exploration of non-native crops, for cultural and climate importance.
June has had us back out to Jane Thomson’s beautiful Brick Kiln Farm with Bramfield House School, with year 8 – 10 pupils, working with our forager Jon Tyler and filmmaker Lewis Wickwar to explore Deer damage as a conservation issue, different species of grasses for insects and livestock health and Jane’s resident snakes!
Getting outside and using creative tools to meet participants where they are at to support engagement continues to provide remarkable results. Bramfield House School works with pupils who have special educational needs. We focus on getting the group to support us in documenting the farm – which led to some wonderful interactions. Their teacher Chris had this to say about our recent session:
‘The transformation of the boys was amazing. S who is often not willing talk to people even if he knows them, went straight up to Lewis [filmmaker], introduced himself and held a conversation including asking questions about Lewis which he never does.’
Other school sessions have visited Brights Farm in Bramfield and Hall Farm in Wenhaston, where Holton and Ilketshall St Lawrence Primary schools have enjoyed the wide range of farming approaches, rare wildlife and historic land management practices such as scything for nature support meadow management.
‘I heard a Turtle Dove – they are really rare’ Pupil comment
‘I learnt that diversity is lots of different things and its good’ Pupil comment
In our collaborative project with Barleybird, we hosted our first session at urban community gardens; Active Gardens, Ipswich and The Big Garden, Colchester. The we took our groups out to Bennison Farm, Oak Tree Farm and Fellows Farm to connect with local market garden scale food production.
These sessions have been filled with joy, food, extraordinary knowledge exchange and lots of ideas for potential crop trials next year. We have had a wide range of cultures and skill sets represented at the sessions, including an Ethiopian Teff Farmer and Plant Pathologist, Caribbean poet, Bangladeshi growers and Kurdish cooks to name a few.
‘…this project means a lot to me and really helps me feel connected to nature and growing.’
‘There is real potential for using more of the crop with these ideas. This is great, we could easily grow that squash here, one community could enjoy the leaves and another could enjoy the fruit – win, win!’
Away from the on the ground delivery of sessions
, we are also working with Suffolk Wildlife Trust to create a Stakeholder Engagement plan for the Connecting Constable & Gainsborough Landscape Recovery Project. This is an ambitious and exciting project working in south, west Suffolk, across 18,000 hectares of land and with over 60 farmers and landowners. More updates on this work will be shared here very soon.
