Changing tenants, changing times

Gallows Hill Farm is located on the National Trust’s Wallington Estate in Northumberland. As the National Trust’s largest agricultural estate, Wallington has been a focus for different kinds of nature-friendly schemes, including on its farms. At Gallows Hill Farm, the start of a new tenancy offered the opportunity for a change in its agricultural management and approach. As part of its plans to get new tenants with an interest in nature-friendly farming, the National Trust teamed up with Matt Baker’s television programme ‘Our Dream Farm’. Adam and Jenny Grieve were the lucky couple who won, and are now working on a ten year tenancy at the farm.

In this programme, Rose Ferraby takes a walk around the farm with Adam and Jenny to hear about how they are managing the farm as part of their nature-friendly stewardship schemes, learning about their hay meadows and grazing regimes. Rose is joined by Paul Hewitt, the National Trust’s Countryside Manager at the Wallington Estate to discuss the new approaches. The farm is testing out how farming this upland landscape can encourage greater biodiversity and water flow, and Paul reflects on some of the positive outcomes and ongoing challenges.

Rose also talks to Richard Thompson whose parents and grandparents were tenants at Gallows Hill Farm. He reflects on his memories of the farm, bringing a sense of longer-term change in the landscape. Since Adam and Jenny took over, he has once again been coming to to the farm, this time helping with the ecological surveys down at the beaver enclosures. As the crickets purr in the grass, and butterflies flit by, Rose and Richard discuss the delicate balance that exists between farming and the natural world.

Produced and presented by Rose Ferraby