Category: Latest News

  • Member Insights: R J Bidewell & Son, North Elmham

    November 25 The sunflowers, which were part of our SFI winter bird food mix, brought glamour to a flinty arable field. Many people commented on how good it made them feel to see this splash of colour. To stand amidst them, eyes closed, listening to the hum of insects was a step back in time.…

  • Member Insights: Pensthorpe Natural Park

    Unlike many of our colleagues within the group, Pensthorpe is all about integrating our farmland and nature reserve for the benefit of biodiversity whilst retaining our high visitor interaction. The work can be very varied and often much smaller on scale than traditional farms. Our wetlands need lots of work after the latest breeding season.…

  • GT Bunning & Sons

    Did you know one of the primary manufacturers of muck spreaders and pallet inverters sits snugly next to a community pub on a quiet village green in the heart of the upper Wensum catchment? A fascinating evening with some of the team at Bunnings, Gressenhall. We were shown the production processes from start to finish,…

  • Goop & Paludiculture

    No, I haven’t made either of these words up. Despite sounding like a fairy-tale villain, these terms both refer to ways of ensuring you are managing your soil to the best of your ability given its conditions. Goop is an exciting product launched by Daniel Tyrkiel, Director of the Soil Ecology Lab. He spoke to…

  • Member Insights: Sennowe Estate, Guist

    It has been a very different autumn this year and a first in my farming career. We have not planted any combinable winter sown crops! But the drill has been very busy drilling cover crops, grass on fields coming pigs and several CSS and SFI mixes. It doesn’t feel right, but when you look at…

  • Member Insights: Sparham Hall Farm, Lyng

    The ‘straw’ harvest is over for another year – not much straw, though.  The winter barleys held up pretty well considering the severe heat and long drought; but the spring barley here was truly awful and I’m done with it for good. The maize will soon start to be harvested if heatwave number 4 goes…

  • Living Time Capsules

    Listen closely and you’ll hear the landscape whispering to you. It’s telling you a tale of time gone past, where horses were the main means of transportation and for agricultural work, where the land was worked by hand and communities banded together to get the job done. Look for the depression in a field to…

  • A deep dive into our soil

    Soil. A whole living world beneath our feet. The most important feature for a healthy planet – with healthy soil comes healthy plants, happy animals and thriving people. But how can we ensure our soils remain at their best whilst trying to grow a commercially viable annual crop and feed our communities? This was the…

  • An AGM with forward focus

    As we gathered for our AGM in a local village hall there was a real sense of optimism amongst Wensum Farmers. The meeting gave the normal run down of finances and the legalities but we swiftly moved on to a review of all the milestones we had hit in the last 12 months, took a…

  • Sennowe Estate: Trees, traps and timber

    Wensum Farmers, along with our friends The Ryburgh Wildlife Group were delighted to be invited to Sennowe Estate last Thursday evening for a walk and talk. Starting the evening in the main farmyard we were greeted with a massive sawmill enterprise and informed that 60% of the timber extracted from the Sennowe woodland, is used…