Heartwood CIC is embedded within High Leas Farm and Littlemoor Wood, in the Derbyshire Dales on the edge of the Peak District. Its 160 acres sit encircled by woodland on the eastern slope of a hill with views down the Derwent Valley to the south. In many ways the farm has changed very little since the end of the 1700’s with its small fields surrounded by dry stone walls and mature hedgerows.
We grow heritage, open pollinated vegetables alongside heritage wheats and an ancient naked oat called Pill Corn. The grain and vegetable seeds are harvested and resown each year, supporting the land, farmers and plants to evolve to suit each other's needs. The vegetables and grains need open soil in which to grow and we carefully manage how much bare soil we create each year. Bare soil is a very important habitat in its own right, giving homes to many creatures such as ground nesting bees and wasps, but too much can risk soil erosion and increase rain water runoff. Our vegetable and grain beds are carefully laid out on contour, with mature vegetation surrounding them, to provide this specialist habitat whilst minimising any risk of soil erosion.
The surrounding grassland, woodland and scrubland holds a wealth of wildlife with over 200 species of moth and over 25 species of breeding birds as well as harvest mice, stoats, weasels, smooth newts, grass snakes, slow worms and common lizards. This abundance of wildlife keeps itself in balance meaning that we have naturally healthy vegetables and fruit trees. We also keep native Shetland cattle, pilgrim geese and a flock of Shetland and Icelandic sheep. All of our livestock live outdoors year round, foraging on the 300 plus species of plant that live on the farm and helping to keep the landscape structurally diverse by grazing some areas more than others resulting in scrub and tussocky grassland as well as areas of shorter grass. The livestock live long lives with their social groups kept intact wherever possible allowing them to learn how to graze this complex and shifting landscape and to pass that information down to the next generations. We draw from wilding principles in our land stewardship, seeing our grazers as filling in for missing wild herbivores and supporting them to interact with land from this perspective. We also draw from wilding principles by allowing the ecosystems of the farm to evolve and shift, our own farming actions sitting within and being guided by natural processes. The mosaic of scrub and grassland supported by our livestock's grazing is supplemented by our own tree planting and vegetation clearing. To date we have planted over 80 productive fruit and nut trees including apples, pears, plums, hazels, walnuts and sweet chestnuts. We have also planted over 400 native trees, some of which like willow, lime, spindle and cherry, are for craft use. We have also reintroduced over 30 species of wildflower, some grassland species and some wetland species, carefully tended in nursery systems to produce seed to resow across the farm. Our tree planting has all been carried out within an overall Natural Flood Management framework with tree strips planted on contour to slow the over-land flow of water and direct it instead into the ground. We have also created many ponds and scrapes to retain rain water in wetlands supporting more water-loving wildlife. We hope that in time the farm becomes a shifting mosaic of grassland, wetland, scrub and woodland with native plants and animals living alongside tended foodscapes of perennial and annual crops.
