Climate change and climate targets are headline news at the moment, and farmers are not always coming out of the media discussions in a favourable light. I've heard a lot of journalists asking farming lobby representatives to specify examples of how farmers can overcome climate change.
With this in mind I wanted to show what we do to try to overcome climate change, here on the Velvet Cloud farm. so I posted a video from one of our fields over the weekend. In the video I was talking about one of the ways we’ve been managing the land for several years now. It’s one of our efforts to be more environmentally friendly and to contribute to overcoming climate change. The video got a reaction so I thought it might be of interest to you here.
Our ewes are grass fed but as well as grass we also sow white clover along with the grass. Clover is what is called a “nitrogen fixer”, the plant has little nodules in its roots which contain bacteria, these clever bacteria are able to convert Nitrogen in the atmosphere into a usable type of nitrogen which can enrich the soil. When this happens the need to spread artificial chemical nitrogen fertilizers on the land is reduced, which is good for everyone. In addition, the girls love the taste of white clover and so eat lots of it and the more they eat the more they produce the fresh creamy sheep’s milk which we all love.
