UNDERCURRENTS   FARMING

REGENERATION OF

Laurel Foreman talks about how her 200-acre organic farm in the foothills of the Cairngorms in northern Scotland has helped create a sanctuary, not only for animals and for wildlife, but also for people

At Wark Farm, we run a herd of Belted Galloway cattle and a flock of Hebridean sheep. We also have poultry, mainly geese for the Christmas market, and we produce small quantities of duck and chicken. Meat is butchered on site and I like to believe that the way we treat our animals also translates into the quality of our meat. That reputation in turn helps our sales, allowing us to invest back into developing a sustainable environment that otherwise wouldn’t have been affordable.

I’ve always been interested by the space between ecology and economy. A quarter of the farm here is under conservation management as the primary function, but all of our habitats are utilised in some way or other in the farm system. The hedges are primarily planted for wildlife, such as nesting cover for birds, but they also provide shelter for the sheep outside, as a lot of wind comes off the Cairngorms. The wetland is managed intensively for lapwing, curlew and snipe, but it also provides grazing and watering for the sheep and cows. We’ve got about 30 acres of wild-flower meadows, which bring back a botanical richness that has sadly diminished greatly in the wider countryside, and habitat and food for various wildlife, but at the same time they provide our cattle a herb-rich diet and a useful buffer of feed when we go into the autumn.

I like to call myself a circle builder. I’m a systems designer – not computers or engineering, but natural systems. That’s what has always fascinated me since I was really quite little. One of the central objectives of organics is to run self-sustaining systems, ones that go round and round with as few inputs as possible. We try to eliminate leakages wherever we can, so we grow the feed for our animals ourselves. But we would like to take things even further. Currently we lose a certain amount from the system, from the circle, because of the butchery. When we cut up the animals, it automatically gives a certain amount of meat waste, such as bones and skins. Two alternatives we are looking at are using such waste as biofuel or as the base for making poultry feed. Birds eat insects, and meat waste could be converted into maggots, flies, insect protein. It would be a great alternative to buying in soya for poultry in their early stages. At the same time it would prevent us from sending nitrogen to be burnt at the knackery two hours away. Designing and implementing such systems, however, requires the necessary resources in time and money, both of which don’t always come in easily.

30 Resurgence & Ecologist

March/April 2019