New Boots at Gambledown to support our farm sustainability and soil regeneration.

We’re thrilled to welcome Hannah Beaton to Gambledown Farm for the next couple of months as our sustainability analyst and agribusiness intern. 

After Tamara, Richard and Hannah attended Groundswell, the regenerative agriculture festival in early July, there is no shortage of ideas and new sustainable farming practices we’re hoping to trial at Gambledown.  

annah was put straight to the task of building Johnson Su bioreactor units (which is a fancy name for a method of creating compost). This method of aerobic compositing hopes to encourage airflow that facilitates a diverse and microbe rich fertiliser. This can then be seeped in water to make compost tea or spread directly on farm to help improve soil health and overall farm resilience. Hannah and Richard are busy tinkering and experimenting in the farm yard with the different ways to start filling the Johnson Su units, however with the dry conditions, we’re lacking vital green organic matter to begin the fertiliser making process.  

Whilst we wait, Richard is excited to trial a new novel seaweed extract as an organic farm fertiliser as well as integrating sainfoin as a soil protective cover crop.  

When not focused on all important farm fertiliser innovations, Hannah and Richard have been spending many an evening pulling out the prolifically pesky weed – Ragwort. Ragwort is toxic to livestock and loves growing on our lovely regenerative fields. So as the cattle are rotated daily to rest and regenerate the soil, Hannah and Richard have been getting ahead and clearing the fields to keep the ragwort at bay.

Hannah’s background in greenhouse gas accounting is also helping us at Gambledown to measure our emissions footprint and establish a baseline for our environmental impact. After collecting detailed farm data, everything from tractor diesel use and livestock management to chicken feed and tonnes of horse manure spread on the fields, Hannah found that Gambledown’s agricultural operations are net positive. * In other words, the farm currently sequesters more carbon in the soil than its operations emit. Understanding our footprint is helping us identify where to focus our efforts, continue reducing our environmental impact and better support sustainable land stewardship and regeneration. 

The first few weeks have already flown by, and we’re excited to have Hannah on board as Gambledown continues to improve its sustainability and regenerative farming practices. 

*We recognise that emissions footprint calculations are an estimate of our impact. Attending Groundswell made it apparent that there is still a lack of cohesion around measuring on-farm emissions, and this is yet to be standardised across the industry. However, we believe that having a baseline understanding of our impact can help us improve our operations and strengthen our overall sustainability.