About

This will be a two-hour tour, partly on foot but also on tractor and seated trailer. Parking will be at the NT Devil’s Dyke car park with transport to the farm. We'd like to meet at 10:00 for a 10:15 start. Lunch after the visit can be taken at the nearby pubs, the Wildflower café on site or perhaps bring your picnic if the weather is kind.

There is currently much emphasis and enthusiasm to increase biodiversity and to restore nature and tackle climate change. This visit will provide participants with an opportunity to see this at first hand at a very practical (grass roots!) level.

Saddlescombe Farm is a 450-acre (180 Hectares) farm with a herd of Sussex cattle with a very strong emphasis on environmental management. The buzz word now is ‘regenerative farming’, recognizing the carbon captured by the plants and soil, all helping in some small way to tackle climate change.

Roly and his late wife Camilla Puzey have been farming with nature at Saddlescombe Farm for more than 10 years. For info about the farming business visit them here. Their farm is in the heart of the South Downs, being part of the Devil's Dyke Estate owned by the National Trust. There is archaeological evidence of the land being farmed since the Bronze Age with burial mounds and ancient trackways. Many of the farm buildings date from the 17th Century.

Saddlescombe is home to lots of wonderful wildlife and, to maintain their habitat, grazing is carefully managed to encourage the wildflowers on the precious chalk grassland. This involves moving the cattle every few days to allow the grasses to recover and so prevent overgrazing and the loss of the more tender grass/herb species.

The cows also graze herbal leys which are a mixture of herbs and legumes. Hares enjoy the different ‘sward’ heights of these herbal leys. The chalk downland banks are a precious habitat for Orchids, Cowslips and possibly our own Round Headed Rampion. Hedges have been laid in a traditional way to create wildlife corridors perfect for nesting birds like Chaffinches, Yellowhammers, Wrens, Robins and Blackbirds.