The Blog

This month has seen more vigorous signs of new growth at Cefn Garthenor. Daffodils and snow drops were out in March, but now we have a...

When I first visited Cefn Garthenor, while I was on the hunt for a great location for this project, we saw a bird box on a beautiful old...

The day of storm Eunice was probably not the ideal time to start digging a series of ponds and scrapes, but the digger had been delivered...

Dazzle and net … Woodcock ringing I have had fleeting glimpses of Woodcock on the land here (scared off as I’ve clomped by, rising from...

Very excited to get a call from Julia, who, with her husband Robert, checks up on the Galloways when I’m not around. She gave me the...

Having sewn the wild flower seed in mid-December, we spend an afternoon over Christmas planting, err, wooden lapwings. Hmmm. Why? I...

Above: mowing the field ready for wild flower seed Robert, my farming neighbour and big helper, had called me during the week to say he...

The trees that came down do bring benefits ... Friday evening and overnight to Saturday morning saw winds resulting from storm Arwen come...

Re video above: a polecat in woodland bordering a stream at Cefn Garthenor ... worried it might have been mink, but a still photo shows...

Cefn Garthenor, like many of the farms in this part of Ceredigion, has a lot of soft rush. It loves wet, marshy conditions which are...

On Saturday I set up a new virtual pasture on Nofence which incorporates a good chunk of the SSSI (the Site of Special Scientific...

We are trialling the Nofence system (Nofence - World’s first virtual fence for livestock) at Cefn Garthenor. It strikes me as a bit of a...

What have we inherited? Following my earlier blog post on 3 July 2021, Rob Parry of INCCymru (Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru...

A big day at Cefn Garthenor with the arrival of ten beautiful Galloway cattle. They will do a huge amount of good to the land and help...

Wales is wet, and Cefn Garthernor does have a fair bit of water running through it, but if I want the Galloways to “work” particular...

The idea is simple. Large herbivores shaped the environment here in Wales long before humans became a major factor. Aurochs, the extinct...

Cefn Garthenor, like I suspect many farms, is littered with plastic. Around the tracks and old quarry, where silage and hay bales were...

Around 20 of the fields at Cefn Garthenor are what might be called “semi-improved”. That means they contain not much more than bright...

After getting the sheep off the land, the next most important thing is to work out what we have at Cefn Garthenor in terms of habitat. ...

Rob Parry of INCCymru (Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru www.natureconservation.wales) and Derek Gow (known for his work on...