What’s happening this year to celebrate Hope Farm’s 25th Birthday
Georgie Bray, RSPB Hope Farm Manager, talks us through some of the plans for commemorating 25 years of of nature-friendly farming at Hope Farm.
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25 years ago, the RSPB bought Hope Farm to demonstrate and research nature-friendly farming techniques. Here, we look back on the history of our ownership and reflect on what has been achieved in the last quarter of a century.
On our 10th anniversary, we celebrated fantastic increases in farmland bird numbers, including the arrival of grey partridge increasing skylark territories by a factor of four, and linnet territories increasing 6-fold, to 36 pairs. We celebrated the monitoring of other species, our skylark plot research, and the fact that we as a conservation organisation, owned and managed a farm with our contractors
On our 20th anniversary, we continued to reflect on the positive impact this sort of nature-friendly farming has on wildlife, but also the changing practices in field, in contrast to the picture-frame farming approaches of delivering habitats around the edge intensively farmed crops. We mentioned our joined up work with other farmers and organisations, sharing knowledge on nature and climate-friendly farming, and launching our webinar series at a time when we were locked down with no visitors on farm.
For our 25th birthday, we are looking forward to reflecting on all the above, including a huge thanks to all those who help to make hope farm happen. Without further ado, best to introduce what we are getting up to this year…
Launching into 2025 with our technical webinars
2025 kicked off with webinars, involving key farmers, NGOs and research organisations, to look at habitat provision on farmland, so that it can deliver genuine benefits for biodiversity and food production. Herbal leys and wildflowers are two habitats that farmers are really striving to deliver more of in their systems, recognising how they can fit into farm businesses. We are always looking for the practical solutions and the evidence behind habitat management, so hope that the webinars produced support farmers and advisers to deliver that evidence-based sustainable farm management.
Even if you’re reading this after the 18th March (when our final webinar on herbal leys is being held), all recordings of this years’ and previous years’ webinars can be found on the Farm Wildlife Youtube Channel
Celebrating and finding solutions to Nature-Friendly Farming, with farmers and advisors
On 25th April, we will be hosting a group of farmers, to come to the farm and join us on a farm tour including workshops with leading researchers into sustainable farm management. Out in the field, farmers will be joining ADAS, UK CEH, and other advisers and researchers we’ve collaborated with in recent years, on insecticide-free oilseed rape trials, agroforestry, herbal leys and pond restoration. We’re inviting farmers to share their honest views on what we’ve been up to, share their experiences, and hopefully help us to improve our collective knowledge that can then be shared further afield.
A big Open Farm Sunday Party
Open Farm Sunday is our key event every year that is open to the public – and this year took place on 8th June. We have always involved our amazing volunteers, RSPB staff members, and other incredible people that we work with, to show what nature-friendly farming is all about.
25th Anniversary Celebration afternoon
On the 25th June, we will be hosting some senior stakeholders in nature-friendly farming to come on a farm tour with talks to commemorate a pretty special birthday. We plan to distil the findings of our farmer event, and all that collective thinking from pioneers in the industry, to help leaders of key organisations in nature-friendly farming to also better understand the pulls and pushes required to help conservation and farming work together long term.
What’s going on outside the farm gate
Our Hope Farm X account will be keeping everyone up to date, and we will also be pulling together a video of the 25th harvest year at hope farm. We can’t promise anything on the scale of Clarkson’s farm, but it should give a genuine insight into what we get up to.
From farmers, to Hope Farm founders, there is something that we are doing for everyone this year. All with the core message of thanks for helping to make Hope Farm what it is today, and to give ourselves a bit of a pat on the back for what we’ve worked for – and why not!