The Grazing School

In mid December we went back to Cumbria to attend the rescheduled Grazing School workshop.   

Caroline Grindrod from Roots of Nature/Wilderculture runs the Grazing School and works with James and Helen Rebanks who hosted this workshop on their farm.   There were about 30 attendees - farmers, smallholders, vets, RSPB staff, accountants, land agents - all interested to learn more about the benefits and methods of regenerative grazing.  

Caroline is an excellent and articulate teacher of the theory of Regenerative Grazing as well as having a lot of hands on experience, and coupled with James' practical experiences from his farm, it was an interesting and informative couple of days.  

What was unexpected was the almost tangible and inspiring enthusiasm from everyone there, most of them a couple of decades younger than us (!) and we came away feeling that there was hope in the air -that farming can change and in doing so can help mitigate climate change.  

We were wonderfully looked after by Helen, hers and James's daughters and both their mothers, who provided delicious lunches and an evening meal on the Monday evening - after which we listened to Alex Brewster from near Dunkeld who was talked about his experience of converting a Highland farm to a regenerative system.  

The two days gave us plenty of food for thought as to what we could do here to improve our soil structure through grazing and how that would benefit carbon capture, whilst still allowing us to grow nutritious and healthy food.  

Racy Ghyll Farm has similarities to here, as there are traditional hay meadows which are florally diverse  as most of our in-bye ground is, as well as less diverse areas which James has already adopted in to regenerative grazing blocks.