Very exciting to be here. But im trying to understand what has happened to this land of yours, because when you arrived here, this was an intensively farmed land, wasnt it . It was. My husband, charlie, inherited it from his grandparents when he was in his early 20s, and this was back in the 1980s. And every inch of the land was ploughed, it was producing arable crops and dairy. And we fully expected to be farmers for the rest of our lives. Mm. 17 years on, we were £1. 5 million in debt, tearing our hair out and realised that, you know, this is very marginal land. Were walking on 320 metres of clay, over a bedrock of limestone, and its an absolute pig to farm. So you were literally close to going out of business . Yeah, the farm was a failing business. And we did everything we could. We diversified, we tried different crops, we tried different cows. We sold ice cream. We did everything we could. But always it was this clay that was against us. So lets just stop for a second and look a
ah, well, it s actually still, for me, very exciting to be here. but i m trying to understand what has happened to this land of yours, because when you arrived here, this was an intensively farmed land, wasn t it? it was. my husband, charlie, inherited it from his grandparents when he was in his early 20s, and this was back in the 1980s. and every inch of the land was ploughed, it was producing arable crops and dairy. and we fully expected to be farmers for the rest of our lives. mm. 17 years on, we were £1.5 million in debt, tearing our hair out, and realised that, you know, this is very marginal land. we re walking on 320 metres of clay, over a bedrock of limestone, and it s an absolute pig to farm. so you were literally close to going out of business? yeah, the farm was a failing business. and we did everything we could. we diversified, we tried different crops, we tried different cows. we sold ice cream. we did everything we could. but always it was this clay that was ag
it s considered good for nothing. but it s one of the most biodiverse habitats we have. thorny scrub is just amazing for wildlife. i know you had cattle as part of your intensive farming. you ve kept some cattle. not the dairy cows we had, because they probably wouldn t be able to survive out here now. they re such a modern breed. so what we ve chosen is old english longhorns we might see some of them but they re amazing. and they look very much like their extinct ancestor, the aurochs, with these great sweeping horns. we needed to have an old breed that could sort of remember, as it were you know, genetically remember how to browse as well as graze. they eat vegetation as well. so all these sort of browse lines that you can see, you know, the cattle will be eating this kind of thing in the winter. and it s notjust cattle, is it? you ve got wild ponies here. you ve got deer. you ve got wild pigs. and there are no fences any more. so these animals are
and rootle and disturb the soil creates niches for other life. the way their dung and their urine actually infiltrates the ground, thanks to dung beetles and all the other microbes that are helping the microbiotic species that are helping to bring those nutrients back into the soil is restoring the soil, which also helps the soil store carbon. so they re part of the whole nutrient carbon cycle. you can t divorce large herbivores from the nutrient system. do you eat meat? i do, but i m very careful about the meat that i eat. i eat much less meat than i ever used to. i think we ve all got to eat far less meat, but we ve got to be very careful of where that meat comes from. and would you eat all the meat that is available on this particular estate? because it s notjust the longhorn cattle that we ve seen. there are wild pigs here. there are even wild ponies here.- would you eat them all?
it s notjust people who have thousands of hectares that rewilding can affect. rewilding really is on a spectrum. so you have the wildest lands, the yellowstone national parks at one end, where you don t need so much intervention. you have the knepp in the middle. but you can also rewild your garden, your window box, your roadside verges. all of us have a part to play in restoring nature across the landscape, and we have to connect, too. you ve just written a new book, a sort of practical guide to rewilding. it s upset some people because your message is that everybody sort of has a responsibility to engage in this notion of rewilding, of sort of rebuilding ecosystems. and some who garden, who love gardening, who think that the human intervention in their little green space is what makes it beautiful, have said that your notion of letting it all go wild runs contrary to