Far Ground Story

The field had no name, just ‘Land in Cranham’. We researched old Tithe maps dating back to 1745 and discovered that it was called ‘ The Far Ground on those maps. It used to be part of Woodside Farm next door, and we presume named because it was the furthest field away from the farmhouse. So we decided to resurrect the old name, and it is now known as Far Ground.

Firstly we want to encourage a wildflower meadow and do some planting of trees and bushes to encourage biodiversity.We did a lot of research and sought advice from all sorts of sources as to how to improve the grass cover, it looked so bare at the end of winter. Farmers suggested harrowing and seeding, conservationists said do nothing and wait …. which is what we did.Our vision is to divide the field into small paddocks which will make rotational grazing easier, and to create wildlife/planted corridors between the paddocks. Also to plant a little orchard up near the stable area.The entrance to the field is horrendous, it is narrow, steep and exits onto the quite fast road blindly just below the brow of the hill. So we need to create a new entrance somewhere.

We want to create a horse track that connects the all paddocks to the stables, which has huge benefits for the horses keeping them moving and giving them choices.But where to start? Walking round the very large field was a bit overwhelming, it seemed hard to know where to start. In the end I downloaded a Google earth image of the field and mapped out a layout on there.

The orchard: An urgent job was to plant 2 apple trees that we had moved from our previous field, they were new in last year so should move well, and also 4 plum trees that I had waiting in pots. It was tricky to work out where to plant them in a big open field, not knowing how large an area we might need for the new yard area. So I just had to take an inspired guess and hope for the best.