Category: Latest News

  • 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…

  • Crisp Malt

    Visiting our neighbours along the Wensum and understanding how we can better work together is always a positive and productive use of our time. Crisp Malt were kind enough to offer the Wensum Farmers a tour around their site. The aims being to better understand the malting process and to appreciate the lengths that Crisp’s…

  • Something to tweet about

    The majority of Wensum Farmers take part in the annual Big Farmland Bird Count hosted by the BTO, so to tie in with this national initiative, we ran an internal competition to monitor the status of some of our rarer farmland birds. The group were challenged to count the red listed birds on their holdings…

  • A way forward

    A Vision for the Future. A day filled with plenty of buzzwords and blue sky thinking but a much needed chat around a renewed purpose for the Wensum Farmers. Questions pertaining to where we want to be in 5 years time and what success will look like, mixed in with suggestions of collaborative hockey teams…

  • Winter ponding

    You associate January with the bleak midwinter, with new starts and resetting the clock on your personal goals, but what about conservation? Whilst the wildlife sleeps, the volunteers and farmers are busy maintaining one of the best biodiverse resources at their fingertips! Farmland ponds have been proven to be hotspots for life in the middle…

  • Navigating SFI

    Having spent the late Autumn and early Winter visiting Wensum Farmers members to determine what would be of use to them, a meeting of the minds was organised. We invited Norfolk FWAG to join us on a cold January afternoon to discuss the intricacies of SFI, Higher Tier and existing HLS payment schemes. Having started…

  • Restoration and Connection

    Wensum Farmers were delighted to be joined by Norfolk Rivers Trust, Anglian Water, Natural England, Water Resources East and Norfolk Ponds Project in this collaborative meeting, looking at a recently restored section of river on a member’s land.  This re meandered tributary used to be a dead straight land drain, and now boasts extra space for nature. Whilst there, we were treated…

  • Digging for Treasure

    How many times as a child have you dreamed of finding treasure in a hole you had dug? Imagining you were a lost explorer about to discover the greatest haul mankind has ever dug up? Throughout the month of August, Wensum Farmers have been doing just that.  Digging through the soil horizons to that hidden Black…