Fidelity Weston is a wonderfully positive and curious farmer, she was previously Chairman of Kent Wildlife Trust and sees farming as a way to work with the natural world around. As with many farmers, she cares about her animals, biodiversity on the land and of course has to make ends meet.
We arrived at Romshed Farm in Kent, where Fidelity has been farming for 30 years, on a chilly November day. We bundled into her kitchen and were promptly offered a tea. To get the lay of the land she rustled up a field map of the farm, and explained how about half the farm has been in Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) programs but will be coming out in 2 years time. With future subsidies very unclear she is experimenting with ways to keep high biodiversity and wildlife on the farm whilst also harnessing profit from those fields. She has one full time farm worker and she needs to make sure she can continue to pay him.
Fidelity has 60 cows (20 suckler cows and all their followers) and 150 ewes that she grazes on the land, all 100% pasture-fed (she is an accredited member of the PFLA). One of the experiments she has just started is mob-grazing her fields: regularly moving cows around small portions of the field, mimicking the movements of a herd on the savannah. There is scientific evidence that this grazing method can help grass grow quicker as well as put more nutrients into the soil. This seems like a great option for Romshed and Fidelity.
She tells us one field, Mud Mead, has always been a poor performing field, but ChurchField 1, right next door, fares much better: the colour of the grass, the forage, everything is just happier. She has no idea why but suspects the soil may hold some clues. We choose 4 fields, including Mud Mead, and one control field to monitor the soils in. Some ‘good’, some ‘bad’, one with particularly good diversity in the ley.
Fidelity is not a tech-lover but knows her phone is vital for her direct sales meat business and running her medium-sized farm. She downloads Soilmentor app on her phone and we head out the door. We work with Fidelity so she is confident about doing soil tests at 5+ sites in each field. Tests include the spade test below ground and then forage tests above ground. Fidelity then enters those results in the app, as well as taking photos as she goes. We go back home and compare above and below ground test results on her computer.
Fidelity keeps telling us “I can’t believe in my whole time farming I have never looked at my soils like this. This is so exciting!”. “I’ve never done it before because it seemed like such a hassle, but with a few simple tools and this app it’s easy.”
For Fidelity monitoring her farmland above and below ground is vital to understand whether the mob grazing is increasing the biodiversity on the land, rebuilding the soils and producing more forage. All these affect her bottom line, some more imminently than others. Ultimately she needs to understand how she can manage more animals, whilst maintaining biodiversity on her land and generate a profit.
Fidelity hopes that as the rest of the land comes out of HLS in 2 years time she will have a better idea of what works on her farm and understand how things change as she works with that land to regenerate soils and cultivate pasture. This is all vital as so many farms are staring into a very uncertain future financially.
“This app is brilliant. In 30 years of farming I have never looked at my soils in this way before and with the app I can easily collect the information and learn from it.”
What are Fidelity’s management objectives?
- Improve grasses and forage for animals, without affecting the current good levels of diversity.
- Understand if mob grazing is effective as a management tool to improve forage and carrying capacity on the land.
- Reduce issue with copper deficiency in cows and sheep.
- Reduce buttercups in the fields.
What is Fidelity measuring?
- % of undesirables
- % of grasses, broadleaves, no. of species of each
- brix % & fuzziness
- plate meter/sward stick (Dry Matter/ha)
- VESS (1-5)
- infiltration rate (mins)
- slake test (1-3)
Interested in using Soilmentor to monitor soil health and manage your farm both above and below ground?
