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We’re getting ourselves ready for the imminent start of Harvest 2023.  In the space of just a few weeks, we need to gather in 100% of the crops that we have worked all farming year to nurture.  This is a crucial activity for our survival as a farm.

 

So, do please bear with us during this busy period. We plan harvest to try to minimise disruption for local people, but it’s always a dusty, noisy activity and comes with an unusually high number of vehicle movements both immediately around the farmland and in getting people and equipment to Knebworth from elsewhere – all in a very narrow window of time.

A lot of people have been saying how much they like the sunflowers on Watton Road opposite the Harwood Park crematorium.

These sunflowers are part of a project within our wider environmental initiative and are designed to progressively release seed for birds from right now through to mid winter when the birds need them most.

The sunflowers are the most obvious part of this project, but actually it’s the other five species that we have mixed them with that provide the bulk of the long term supply of bird seed.  In that one strip, we have established 130,000 square feet of these seed-rich plants, which is an area the size of approximately 60 tennis courts.

Normally this kind of environmental initiative would be tucked away from sight elsewhere on the farm, but we thought people travelling along Watton Rd or visiting Harwood Park might enjoy it.

Thanks for everyone’s positive feedback on this project, we appreciate it.

 

We regularly put in intensive sessions clearing roadside rubbish from the Council’s verges around the farm.  This month we cleared Watton Road.

I know a lot of the local community had noticed that the entire length of Watton Rd west of the crematorium and up to the junction with Old Lane was in a shocking state.  The photo shows the rubbish we picked from just half of the road length that we cleared  – almost all of it was drinks and snack containers lobbed out of car windows on the move as they drove between Knebworth and Bragbury End.

We cleared the rubbish over three days and by the time we had finished at one end, more rubbish had arrived at the other.

As part of our longterm personal project to further increase biodiversity at Swangleys, we have been working this year to qualify to enter Natural England’s Mid Tier Countryside Stewardship scheme.  We have now been confirmed as successful and will start to put into place the first elements of an agreed programme. 

So, over the next few months you might notice hedge and tree planting on the farm along with its associated protective fencing, preparation of wild flower seed beds and a number of other initiatives.  As part of this, we will be planting or in-filling more than a kilometre of native species hedging.  This work forms part of a longer term aim to take an active role in the UK’s forthcoming Environmental Land Management Scheme, once its details are released by Defra.  

On a related theme, Knebworth’s resident ecologist and photographer, Matt Livesey, has been documenting wildlife on the farm since 2018 and in the wider area for far longer. Matt’s latest shot on the farm is these native grey partridges, photographed last month at Swangleys.  You can see more of Matt’s work, and order prints, at https://www.mattliveseyphotography.com/ 

 

At the end of last week, we finally had the chance to bring in our hay from the few grassland acres within the wider Swangleys Farm holding ………… much to the delight of the red kites that took up position hovering over the fields throughout the three days.  It was great to see the land busy with activity again  – with three tractors working the same area at one point in order to get the job done in time. 

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Hay harvest, this year at least, has been a mini warm-up to the main arable grain harvest which – subject to weather – we hope to begin in the next very few days.  That means the inevitable sudden increase in farm vehicle movements both on the land and in the area around the farm, plus dust and noise while we race to get the crops in, so do please bear with us at this important moment in our agricultural year.