Court & Proberts Farms

At Court Farm we seek to maximise environmental outcomes. We are working to increase biodiversity / bio abundance, increase the carbon captured by the land as well as holding water back in the landscape.  Moving in a wilder direction is a consistent theme but we do intervene at times.  We are confident that our efforts have been rewarded with a greater diversity of flora and fauna and are beginning to carry out surveys to back this up.

We arrived at Court Farm in 2014 and then in 2021 we took on further land – Proberts Farm - on the Black Hill.  Whilst both plots are becoming wilder our approach is different across the two.  Both plots are about 100 acres.

At Court Farm we continue to farm at a low level of intensity whilst at Proberts we are even more aligned with the principles of rewilding.

At Court Farm, we follow an organic approach and plan to be certified over the next few years. Choices around livestock are critical and we have made progress, over the last few years, towards reducing sheep and moving towards a conservation grazing approach employing small numbers of rare breed, White Park Cattle.  We have stopped supplementary feeding of livestock and want to achieve "Pasture For Life" certification.  Over the last decade, we have planted close to ten thousand trees in strips and copses. These provide corridors for wildlife and connect existing, established woodland and widen the riparian buffer. Having done a lot of planting, we will now largely rely on natural regeneration.  We have worked with Herefordshire Meadows Group to regenerate a number of hay meadows, using a local wildflower seed source which has proved successful and attracts an increasing number of butterflies and other pollinators.

Proberts will be fully fenced this year. Despite sheep and horses getting in regularly, since we bought the land, we have managed to reduce grazing pressure significantly and the only livestock should be a few White Park Cattle to provide a catalyst for growth and diversity.  We are considering further tree planting and have created scrapes / ponds and have also used pigs as a weapon against bracken.  Beyond this we aim to allow the site to become much wilder.

This project has been a shared family enterprise and has brought us closer to each other and to nature.  We have many exciting projects and plans on a very long list which we look forward to working on.  We have benefitted from the expertise of our farming neighbours (even where our approach is at odds with traditional farming practice) and this cooperation is essential to achieving our goals.  We look forward to collaborating with others in the Wye Valley Wilding Network and with the community in which we live.