All change at Deepdale Farm

How catastrophe created a whole new approach to farming

When a layer of top soil poured down the hillside across the road and straight into a neighbour’s house, the Borthwick family who farm Deepdale Farm in North Norfolk, knew they had to make some change to the way they managed their land.

Listen to the podcast here

The field in question had been most recently used to grow potatoes. The crop was nutrient hungry and took every last drop of moisture from the soil. When the rain did come, the soil was so degraded that the moisture caused the soil to compact and so excess rain ran off the slopes, taking the dusty, lifeless soil with it.

While the shifting top soil was a localised catastrophe, it highlighted a pervasive problem on the entire farm. For too long the sandy soils of that area of the North Norfolk coast had been ploughed, drilled, rolled and ploughed again so that any structure to the soil was lost.

Where healthy soil is full of organic matter, which binds soil particles together, this was just dust. Where the structure of the soil should be crumble, with gaps for water and roots to infiltrate deep into the ground, the top layer was hard and impenetrable.

And so the three siblings who had taken on the running of the farm decided to take drastic action. They employed a farm manager with a background in conservation and environment work. They sought help from a number of agencies, particularly the Norfolk Rivers Trust and the Norfolk branch of the Farming Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), to bring about a wholesale change to the farm.

Within three years, the farm at Deepdale has transformed from one which used a lot of inputs – fertiliser, insecticide, pesticides – to one that has successfully transitioned to organic. The process was painful at times. Yields inevitably dropped, some crops were near failures, but the family soldiered on. They diversified into farm-based activities, including rural crafts. They applied for grants to turn farm buildings into visitor centres. Crucially, they handed over a lot of their land to nature.

The podcast, which can be accessed here, tells the full story through the words of Anna Beisty (one of the three family members running the farm) and Sam Hurst, who is the farm advisor from the Norfolk Rivers Trust. The recording took place on a chilly evening in May as more than 65 neighbouring farmers, plus members of conservation and environment groups, did a tour of the farm.

The visitors were able to see the changes for themselves. Wild flower meadows, beetle banks, metre upon metre of newly planted hedgerows, a new pond, restored coppices and a soundtrack produced by nature. As Anna says, it has been a very tough learning curve but when you can listen, see and smell the natural world all around you, then it is worth it.

Listen to the whole interview with Anna and Sam here.

Additional Information:

NRT’s Water Sensitive Farming (WSF) initiative provides free, trusted and confidential farm advice to support the restoration of freshwater environments and nature while improving landscape resilience. Flexible grant support is available for interventions that improve soil health, water management, biodiversity and carbon storage.

This work is supported by corporate, public and conservation partners. Key funding streams include: a partnership with The Coca-Cola Foundation, a partnership between Tesco and WWF-UK, a partnership between Carlsberg and WWF-UK, and via the Courtauld 2030 Commitment.

More information on the work of the Norfolk Rivers Trust and Land management can be found here.