It was a fantastic turnout for the first meeting of our Regenerative Agriculture Group with over 20 farmers braving the snow to look at the bale grazing set up at Poole Hall. Huge thanks goes to Jane Oglesby and her team who hosted the meeting and treated us to a lovely lunch of her pasture fed Dexter beef.
Jane has been establishing herbal lays on what was previously intensive silage ground, let out to a large neighbouring dairy farm, for the past few years. Having established a Cotswold Seed mix on the first few fields, bales are taken in the summer and spread out on less diverse fields for winter grazing. The farm works to a 100 day wintering period from mid December to the end of March. Fields are split into paddocks to last the 100 days with new bales rolled out daily with 15-20 cows per bale. Electric fences are used to control the cattle with moveable water troughs. Back fencing is not currently used so cattle can go back over the ground they have already grazed, although this may change in future. Although early days the system is working well and grassland diversity, soil structure and water retention are all improving.
Jane is part of the Pasture For Life Scheme supplying meat to local butchers and restaurants https://www.pastureforlife.org/ and is happy to chat about her set up in more detail to anyone interested.
Following the meeting we will be setting up a steering group to plan the next year’s events and funding of the group. We are open to any ideas for future visits and welcome any other members, get in touch at info@elmassociates.co.uk