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Our Farm
Our Great Grandad moved to Thorpe Farm as a tenant from as far a field as Thornhill almost 2 miles away, since then it has been passed down through the generations.
It is a great farm with rich soils on the south facing side of the Hope Valley, it really can grow some grass for the cows. Some of our fields have rare wild flowers growing in them, these are carefully managed to give the flowers chance to thrive.
The stream that runs through the farm has water voles living in its banks. It starts under Bamford Edge goes into the River Derwent then the Trent, then in to the North Sea from the Humber Estuary normally it takes 5 days for water from our farm to reach the North Sea.
We have over 4 miles of hedgerows that shelter our cows from the elements and are home to every type of mammal and most of the birds we have in Britain. We put a lot of effort into managing our hedgerows. We never trim them during nesting time and when we do it’s in a 3 year rotation, allowing them to go bushy, making them ideal for bird nesting and letting berries grow for bird feed. When we plough a field we leave a 2 metre strip next to the hedge to protect it. Because of this and the thousands of worms in our rich soils our farm is a home and feeding area for over 74 types of bird including Little Owls, Curlews, Green Woodpeckers, Kestrals and lots of Swifts and House Martins who love the flies.
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