Recent content by NLF

Definitely contact the local ramblers and explain what you want to do. Best to get them onside first or at worse discover if they are likely to object before you spend any money. We have moved footpaths and usually found the ramblers supportive. The problem in our area has been an organisation...

They appear to have removed them. Perhaps eight years ago, the RSPB Swindale website had a link to a couple of years of summary accounts which may have been a couple of years old. They weren't proper audited accounts, but showed the headline figures of the profit and loss. From memory they...

Was he the fellow who had trouble with his shotgun certificate - the police arbitrarily decided not to renew and he had to take them to court? Its a nice looking farm. He's put a lot of work and money into it. I presume it was formerly owned by Lowthers. Isn't part of the difficulty that when...

NE have encouraged and funded a lot of tree planting in this area but refuse to fund proper deer fencing (i.e. sufficient to keep red deer out). Hence the deer eat the trees and you are left with large numbers of discarded plastic cones which never get cleared up. I asked NE why they refuse to...

It sounds like I was just lucky then which is fortunate as I was trying to target a March start date for reasons discussed elsewhere. As I noted on another discussion, this is my only first hand experience with the RPA and I have been pleasantly surprised. Good luck. I hope you get it sorted...

Hmmm.... I didn't say every lowland farm was planted with trees. I said every hill farm I looked at. By that I meant every farm I looked at that was for sale. I probably visited about half a dozen farms over three years, all in the hillier bits of the lowlands (Tweedsmuir, Pentlands etc). All...

Ouch. I have been properly put in my place. Would that be your version of the truth? Well, I'm off out into the real world. Enjoy your evening online.

Ha ha... you won't drop the bone will you!

So why are the Scottish lowlands slowly getting covered in pine trees at the expense of farmers? Every hill farm I looked at in the lowlands was bought for forestry.

I followed their instructions. I filled out the NE consent form, printed it off, signed it, scanned it and emailed it to NE along with the parcel maps. I described my situation (exactly the same as others on here - applying for SFI options on land adjacent to an SSSI) and my proposed options on...

I'm hesitant to point you in the direction of any individuals, but if you take a post code from the centre of an upland national park and enter it into Defra's cap-payments website you can see that there are some chunky environmental payments made to some upland farmers. Of course, these...

What do they mean by "directly linked to production"? Does that mean headage payments, subsidy per tonne? I think the problem with the Scottish environmental schemes in the past was that they were poorly funded because all that pot of money got syphoned off to fund forestry planting. If you...

You may be right though I hope not. On the arable side they have done a good job pricing options to compete with the most marginal crops. e.g. a bad crop of OSR, a good crop of beans. However, wheat and spring barley should comfortably beat anything on offer under SFI. My impression is its...

You'd be much better off south of the border. Upper tier stewardship is designed for hill farmers. You can check the Cap Payments website and find upland farmers in the Lakes or Dales making very good money from stewardship schemes. And some of them still produce a lot of food as well. In my...

I found the opposite. I have a bit of permanent pasture (no temporary grass though). I struggled to come up with suitable options for the grass. Low inputs doesn't pay a great deal and reduces productivity. Some grass options seem to pay less for the same thing e.g. (from memory) grassland field...