The return of lambing…
We are delighted to be able to bring back our much loved lambing festival this year. The impact of Covid forced us to take a 3 year break from the festival. In that time, a lot has changed both internally at Earth Trust as well as in the wider world. So this year’s festival will undoubtedly look and feel a little different to previous years – we hope it will be better than ever – but the focus on family fun remains the same!
Not only is the lambing festival a great event for all the family to enjoy, but it also provides a crucial opportunity for Earth Trust to generate awareness on sustainable food production and consumption. As consumers, the choices we make can support practices that are good for climate, nature and human health. Earth Trust farms in a climate-friendly way, working in partnership with the environment to enhance biodiversity, minimise our carbon emissions and maximise carbon capture, whilst producing quality food. This is what we aim to demonstrate to the 2,000+ new visitors that we expect the event will attract.
Alongside fun, interactive farm-based activities and visits to the lambing barn, we will also be sharing information about the positive impacts of regenerative agriculture and how we look to evolve towards this, helping people to learn more about the role of farming within healthy ecosystems. As farmers within an area of outstanding natural beauty, the way we farm is critically important in terms of how we contribute to our landscapes. The importance of Earth Trust’s role in helping more people to explore, enjoy and understand their local landscape is recognised this year by the support we are receiving for the festival from North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme.
The farm to fork story…
While we are all used to seeing our food in packages on a supermarket shelf, many of us don’t think about where it’s come from, or how it got there. There is a general disconnect from farming, what farmers do and what happens on farming land, not just from a food production perspective, but in terms of how vital farming is for our health and environment.
The food we eat and the biodiversity on our planet, all stems from healthy soils. Livestock play a vital part in soil health and our countryside ecosystem. Using the right animals and right breeds in the right places help us manage the type of grasslands and wildflower grasslands that we have at Earth Trust and the varied habitats that are across the UK. The sheep that graze Earth Trust meadows spend most of their lives outdoors where they are free to roam. Their grazing creates the perfect conditions for plants to thrive in our wildflower meadows (because of the natural recycling process and the management process that they give to those soils, through the urine that they secrete and the way they graze the land), which in turn provides food for pollinators like bees and butterflies, which is essential for growing crops.
By opening up our farm, we can showcase and discuss all of these things, giving people an opportunity to feel more connected with the role that farming plays in supporting climate, biodiversity and health.
As a charity, our lambing event is an important fundraising activity for us – attracting new people and connecting them to our work, helping us to grow our community of champions for accessible natural green spaces.
So that’s why we’re throwing our farm gates wide open for everyone to come in and see, come in and engage with us, have a great time and hopefully to learn something new.