Inspirational 150 Acre Regenerative Farm in the Scottish Highlands

if I was to think about the last five years and if I was to review it personally I think I wouldn't do anything differently you know I think I kind of came into this way of living with this kind of you know this real Reliance on on money for for everything you know if you have more money you're safe you're secure you know and and actually since being here what I'm starting to learn and transition into is actually security is wood in the Woodshed security is food in the kitchen Garden you know security is a healthy land around us security is a good is a healthy Community around me and I think it's a process I think personally I'm still really working through but I'm starting to really genuinely feel that transition into what is a value to me is not something that I hold in my hand in coins or paper notes it's actually you know what's in my heart what's uh what what the air that I breathe the water that I drink and the food that I eat and that's a really lovely transition to make my name is Lynn and this is my partner Sandra and we are living at limbreck Croft which is a a small agricultural holding of about 150 acres and we are in the cairngorms national park in the highlands of Scotland and we've got the beautiful kangaroo mountains behind us here so I always describe limbreck as being somewhere that's kind of quintessentially Scottish so you have all of kind of the elements of Scotland in one here so we have a mixture of lovely pasture fields we have heathery Hill ground we have some nice native Scottish Woodland and then we have a big big piece of Scottish bog so it's a little bit of Scotland in a little corner of the kangorms we noticed quite soon after meeting that we shared this dream of of living closer to the land and at the time we were working in the southeast of England as Rangers and so it was kind of too contrasting kind of ways of living and one was being out in the natural environment working outside most of the time and the other was being in a quite a busy part of the country quite heavily populated um and we just knew that one day we wanted to have our own bit of land where we could grow our own food where we could just kind of step away from the rat race as well and we recognized it was probably going to be Scotland because that's where my family's from and I've just always felt that natural draw and well there's the search started then really for for the ideal bit of land which was always going to be a few Acres we just thought you know just enough for a few hens in the veg garden and well ended up with 150 and everything changed we came here on a day like today and limbreck was kind of showcasing itself and all its glory and it was really difficult to not fall in love with somewhere like this um we we didn't have the money at the time we had absolutely zero intention of going into farming but it was one of those decisions that you very much make with your heart and your head just has to catch up and that's the situation we found ourselves in the first few months here were actually it's a really interesting time to reflect on because on the one hand you're going look at us we've done it you know we've kind of followed our dreams we said we were going to do it and we're doing it and then on the other hand you're going I have no idea what I'm doing and so we spent quite a few days you know those early days just sort of wandering around desperately trying to find what our purpose was here on this land and you know we'd have days where we'd have the highest highs followed by the lowest lows so it was a real period of transition and one that we had to just allow to develop organically I suppose as well is that originally we were not going to be farmers and we realized very quickly obviously when we bought the place you have to scale up when you've got 150 acres and we wanted to do something with the land we didn't just want to set it aside we wanted to produce food for ourselves but then we realized with 150 acres you can produce food for your community as well and that aspect was really important to us is to be able to reach out to the area around us and provide really good food but if you've not got a farming background where do you start that was the big question and so that was on top of everything else we had that to kind of contend with as well how do you start a business from scratch and how do you start a farm basically from scratch when you don't have the infrastructure or the money I think when we realized that we were going to have to kind of become Farmers um the that we were going to have to but also wanted to I think that's really important point to make we wanted to become Farmers when we saw what the potential of the land was um you know the realistic the point is is that we have to find money from somewhere because we didn't have any that's the thing I mean we actually had a debt to pay off so um we just started looking in the most obvious place which is trolling through grant funding you know in in the UK and in Scotland you know the government offers different sort of streams of funding that you know you can access and I guess we got into it at the right time so we were able to see what was available and then write a business plan so we had just a few months to do that and we wrote a five-year business plan based on No Ex real experience and no knowledge just trying to kind of get something from everywhere wrote A business plan submitted for a an initial Grant got the Grant and that basically started the ball rolling and that's the kind of path that we've gone on from there on so I I would say that our vision here at limbreck is is to create a small farming business that completely Works in harmony with nature we want to farm in a way that um enhances nature we want to work with the land we want to work with natural processes and we don't just want to say the words we don't want to use the kind of the buzzling go we actually want to do it and and I would say that as part of our work is is to actually redefine what nature means you know so it's really interesting if you look in the in in the dictionary the word nature does not include the word people so we've effectively defined ourselves out of Nature and we want to farm in a way that defines people back into nature in a way in which we're part of a holistic system where we give and we take we don't continually extract and and we offer the work that we do as a way of showcasing what's possible and a way of reconnecting people with the land you know reconnecting people with places like this the food that you know that they buy uh the very kind of land they walk on I would say that's our ultimate big picture vision for limbreck we live in a very exposed location um we live in a in a place where gets hot weather trees give us shade they give a shelter they give us additional feed for our animals they give us incredible habitat for the nature that we you know the wildlife that we share a limbreck with and I think you know we all accept um that the climate is changing that that's that's simply fact and what we're facing are more extremes so more extreme winds more extreme temperatures and one of the best ways that we can prepare ourselves and our land holding and our future animals for is more trees I guess trees are so important to us that we've really focused on planting here at limbrex so we've planted just under 30 000 trees here within the last five years and we've set aside over half the Croft to Woodland so that's either new Woodland planting so we've planted a forest of 17 and a half thousand trees on our Hill ground we've allowed 18 acres to just naturally regenerate itself we've planted over a kilometer and a half of hedgerows and we've planted copses of trees that will provide shade and shelter but will actually provide a source of food for our animals so really we're kind of trying to find as many ways as possible to integrate trees into our landscape and we've got more to come there will be more trees there will be more trees the next trees are going to be the kind that will private provide us with food um so far we've done a lot of native tree planting and that's for the environment and for our animals and obviously we benefit through that as well um but we'd like to see some agroforestry happening in the form of fruit and nut trees in the fields so that's a future project to look out for vegetables were the very first thing we focused on when we came to the craft we arrived here um in March which is quite a sort of a bleak time up here everything's quite washed out and winter is often still got its grip um on the craft everything's brown but we thought we want to grow our own food so we put in a kitchen Garden five raised beds um put up a bit of shelter and then just started to grow things uh just hoping they would want to live and it all took off and it turns out at 350 meters above sea level facing the cairngorms which has got an Arctic plateau and gets some Fierce weather coming across it you can actually grow a lot of food who would have thought so we now grow about 70 of our sort of annual vegetables um outside and now a lot more in our poly crab as well so we chose the animals that we work with on the craft quite carefully uh we wanted something that was going to be fairly low input that wasn't going to need loads of input and work to just keep it alive in a fairly challenging climate so the obvious thing to start with where it were cows cattle for the the work that they can do for the environment and to get our pastures into kind of a more species-rich State again after not having been grazed for several decades so we chose Highland cattle because they are the obvious choice for this kind of climate um they're native they're very Hardy they thrive on fairly poor vegetation which we do have as well in rough grazings in our bog um and they can they can cope with being outside in winter too throughout blizzards and everything they're great to work with we we graze them in a way that allows the the pasture a lot of rest so we we move them every day throughout the growing season which means they get the freshest of grass every single day and the grass gets loads of rest afterwards and we've seen you know loads and loads of improvement in species diversity we're starting to build soil and we have a lovely product to sell afterwards in the form of you know pasture-fed beef Island beef we wanted loads and loads of cow poo we need cow poo cow poo is cow poo is gold and it it's it helps to improve the fertility of the soil which helps the grassland you know to sequester more carbon right in there so it's all about you know as the kind of famous American um Farmer Joe salatin would say it's all about the animals of the animals working with the animals of the animal we try and do that with our cows uh same with our pigs so you know this is a landscape that would have had you know thousands of years ago would have had you know a very different kind of range of species wandering around so you would have had your you know your large herbivores like your oryx who would have been here that they're they're like a Highland cows now you'd also have had wild boar that would have kind of been rooting and tootling through the landscape so we work with our pigs to be like wild boar so they're they're function their role here is to kind of just be pegs so they they get their Snipes in the ground they break up the kind of dense amount of vegetation and by exposing that little bit of bare soil it allows two things to happen so either new seeds that are in the seed bank already give a chance to pop up and grow or a tree seedling could fall into that bare patch of soil and and set and grow so we use our pigs in in different places in Woodlands we've used them in grasslands we we use them on our bog we use them in our rough grazings and it's basically utilizing what is their superpower for nature and helping us to build biodiversity back into the craft what we get out of that is obviously the joy of working with these incredible animals we get this phenomenal produce to sell it's the kind of produce that I say you know almost money can't buy although it can it's it's from pigs that are that are grazing natural forage they do get an organic feed alongside that but you know they're grazing grasses they're grazing rushes they're active they're fit they're healthy they're they're lean you know they're lean means nothing machines they're incredible animals so we work with the pigness of the pig in that situation and then we've got this crew behind us you know our our Motley Crew of of ladies who lay they're the hens they're the hens they're the wild birds uh who follow the the the kind of the large herbivores in the landscape so they kind of go through the fields they scatter cow Parts helping to break that down uh they eat the grubs they eat the fly larvae um they scratch out the Moss they have their own fertility you know hinpoo is is is is is incredible for the soil um and then we move them on so again like the cows like the pigs everything's always moving because in nature nothing stays static and that includes the animals that and the insects that live part of it so ours do the same and they provide us with these incredible little little bombs of of you know eggy goodness uh that that just sell and sell and sell we wanted bees because as obvious they're pollinators and they've got a wonderful role to play in the natural environment so getting into beekeeping has been a wonderful learning curve there's so much to to learn about these creatures and the role they play and just their their their life cycle as well it all happens in a hive very hidden away so until we started kind of handling them more we had no clue what what really goes on and of course they produce honey as well we have up to 10 hives it can kind of vary um throughout the season but we've also learned that as well as having our bees as pollinators we need to um appreciate the rule that all the native pollinators that were already here before that they play because they get on with it without our help we don't Farm them so we've actually capped the number of hives of our honeybees to to give the native pollinators a chance as well you know we go through a kind of a hung a so-called hunger Gap in in June when there's not a lot of forage around for them and we think if our bees are struggling native pollinators might be struggling too so we don't want our bees to take away any of the the forage so we're finding a balance there with our bees and and and all the other life around us so we moved to limbreck and we knew no buddy um you know my family on Ireland Sanders family are in Switzerland you know we've got a few other kind of bits and family you know dotted around the UK but we knew nobody in this area so obviously we're moving up here for a way of life but we're also now moving up here because we're starting to run a new business so how do you how do you kind of start to create those foundations and really um I guess initially it was just you know we gotta met the neighbors you know Neighbors in that direction Neighbors in that direction got to know people locally that way um whenever we moved here initially we both worked part-time so again that helped to build connections uh and then it was getting into social media so creating a Facebook page creating an Instagram page then creating a website getting a mailing list and it was just really kind of slowly slowly building it up the first produce that we had to sell was in fairly low quantities which was which was ideal really on reflection because it was like a way of just kind of getting a little bit out there it gave us a confidence boost because we managed to sell it all and that's basically what we've built on from there on so in terms of farm tours I I always say you know we have nothing to hide here you know so what we say we do is is what we actually do and I think um offering your kind of land up to actually showcase that is a really really positive thing to do because it turns those words it turns those images that you see you know on a screen into actual real life so you can stand in front of the hens and say you know look look at look at look at the way these hands live and the kind of eggs they produce you know we take them down to the pigs and everybody loves the pigs the pigs are all you know full of joy de Vive and then you say would you eat them do you want to eat them you know we have these really hard-hitting conversations but equally I think I always get the impression that people leave the farm tours feeling really positive and that's ultimately what we want them to go away feeling we want them to feel like this is a nice way to produce food like this is a nice way to live and it's not just a nice idea it's actually a nice reality and that it's not just about us doing it it's a collective effort so you know we can we can start we can sit here and talk all we want about what we do if people didn't buy our produce we wouldn't be able to do that so as much as you know somebody in a city or somewhere else might not feel connected to this the power that you have through the produce that you purchase is massive so opening up your farm to place is such a positive positive experience if you're truthful and honest I think that animals are an integral part of every ecosystem you know somebody I can't remember who it was but somebody once said there's no such thing as a vegetarian ecosystem and that's what we're working with and I think I think where we've maybe kind of gone off track is our relationship with the animals that we live and work alongside with and how we treat them and how that impacts on the environment I think that's what we need to be looking at the end of the day you know what are we you know we we are we are omnivores you know we have um we have had a mixed diet for Millennia of of Scavenging of you know of eating meat of eating you know fruits of eating all sorts of things um I don't have a I don't think that that is fundamentally wrong but I think how we do it now to how we did it a long time ago is probably where the problems have come in but for a regenerative future animals are key well and seeing as well as when you're doing regenerative farming or just living regeneratively in in general you're sort of copying a natural system and the natural system very much only functions because it's all based on a cycle of life and death things have to die for other things to be alive and whether that's vegetation or or animals or fungi we all have to live off of something and so it's to see ourselves and everything around us as part of that cycle um which very much involves animals and and plants and what you want to do is make sure that everything that you impact on is impacted on as positively as possible and that you you pay it the respect it deserves we're at the end of The First Five-Year Plan and where it looks now versus where it was supposed to look is very very different in some ways it's very similar but the the detail has changed a lot um the next five years I think will look very different again so we now um we now have a new business we have customers uh you know we have regular produce for sale I think the next five years is going to have two main strands of focus one is is more kind of Outreach and education so we really enjoy we love having people here you know we love talking about what we do uh we love we love we love being challenged on what we do you know stimulating that really good debate and sharing our knowledge that's something that we just really enjoy doing so there's that one side I think the other side is actually going to be focusing more on on our life here so spending more time in the kitchen Garden spending more time in the polycrop uh spending more time having day trips you know I guess think taking time out for ourselves to enjoy limbreck for what it is but actually also have some time out as well and I would say all of that is parceled up into the general kind of route that we're on which is continuing to feed people in our community you know getting our meat produce out getting our eggs out you know every week going and chatting to our customers um you know that that for me is what the future of limbreck looks like when we worked as Rangers we we kind of acquired a basic understanding and knowledge of ecology and how the natural systems work and just identifying things and so that that kind of sparked an interest definitely when it comes to farming and combining the two we kind of jumped in at the deep end a little bit because we bought the place and in a way it happened fairly quickly and there wasn't that much time to start preparing ourselves so we did a lot of it when we were here we we did read a lot of books you know watch things watch films and try to kind of be like sponges and soak up as much as possible but I would say just as much as that we've actually just learned by doing you can read so much and then you just have to go out and you have to give it a go and then you have to observe and see did that work if it didn't why not um what changes are there now and trying to understand why these things happen and it takes time but I think yeah a lot of it is just learning by doing which is a scary thought when you don't really have much experience but you come out of it after a year and you look back and you think wow all those firsts they'll never be first again we did them all on well we learned various things from them and it's it's quite empowering that way so if there's somebody looking to get into regenerative farming in the UK I think the opportunities that there are now are so much greater than what they were five years ago I mean what we've seen develop in the last five years is just Bonkers you know when we started looking five years ago there was one place in Scotland that we found now you know there's got to be at least a hundred or more so we wanted to kind of contribute to that kind of growing movement so we've we've written our own uh course here so it's called how to farm it's inspired by the book called you can Farm by Joel Salat who's a big kind of influencer in what we do and it was basically the course that we wish it existed five years ago when we were starting out so it covers everything from you know what kind of quality of life do you want uh that's something that we often forget about because we think how much money am I going to earn actually what kind of quality of life do you really want and then it starts to get into the nitty-gritty of it so it gets into things like our cattle system our Pig system our hens you know we've got spreadsheets how much does it cost what's your setup costs we look at beekeeping we look at butchering we look at all the finance elements but we we still parcel all of that up into the overwhelm over over overarching umbrella of what kind of Life do you want and so so we're really excited to be running those courses this year and then next year we're planning to continue those courses but also a lot offer a lot of kind of half day courses on on different regenerative principles on each of the things that we do so to me regenerative agriculture is is a way of producing food by regenerating everything around you as you go so it's a way of you know working with animals to to to build soil organic matter to produce an incredible quality beef it's using pigs to restore native Woodlands to then produce this incredible Rare Breed pork it's using hands on pasture to create new diversity and you're producing eggs as you go it's all about continually giving back um all the time with everything that you do and I think we have to be realistic in that you know we are this is a very busy planet and what we're doing as humans is impacting on it in all sorts of ways and I think if we're if we're going to kind of continue on living in the planet how we like it we need to address how we produce our food because that's going to be a fundamental Factor as to how much longer we're going to be around for I think you know there's that saying about leaving the land in a better State than when you found it and obviously the term better is quite quite loose but um if we see it maybe if we say resilient more resilient because the land itself resilient in the terms of it can look after itself it's it's got a balance again and we're producing food as part of that balance and we're not we're not tipping it in any which way so there's that resilience to to to the land there's a resilience to your own life you know also deciding how much do I actually need to to to be content to be happy and part of all of this uh resilience in your your local food system you know Supply chains should be getting much much shorter than what they are if you can play a part of that and set up a system to get that going um that that's that's huge as well so I think regenerative also means resilient I think that every decision that we've made we've made with our gut and with our hearts um but equally we've learned that we have to run a business with that it's okay to make mistakes and it's it's okay to change things when you realize it doesn't work like that for us we need to we need to do it differently definitely and you know we have done things where we've sort of stuck to our guns for as long as possible thinking well we'll work through it and then our guts think and said just Just Let It Drop speaking for myself it's it's um made myself a lot less perfectionist I used to love having things exactly the way I wanted it and since working with as part of a natural system where you can't and you shouldn't be wanting to control everything all the time it's really taught me to just stand back and just let things happen they might not always happen the way I imagined it and actually it's made me really appreciate the unpredictability of things and just standing back and not getting too wound up about it and it helps you kind of ground yourself and feel part of it a lot more [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Regenerative Films

Views: 128,407

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Id: p0XyGNLMyoY

Length: 28min 24sec (1704 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023