Muxbeare Orchard • foreword

A foreword by Dinah & Stig...

"We had a choice of squandering our lives stagnating on a council estate in the suburbs of London, or taking a leap of faith and moving our family somewhere to get in touch with nature and the rhythms of the seasons.

"We want a healthy lifestyle for ourselves and our children, giving them the best start we can offer. Building our own home, working with the land to run an organic smallholding that gives back to the community of which it is part, we feel is the better of the two lives.

“We are restoring a traditional orchard, hay meadows, and hedgerows to restore the special landscape and celebrate the rich working history of the ancient veteran trees rich in wildlife and wild flowers.

“The restoration of the orchard apples will produce fruit for ourselves and the local community and will serve as example to other landowners in our area who might wish to restore their orchards. The remaining few trees of our traditional orchards will be land managed. We wish to create a wildlife enhancement scheme ensuring the long-term social and environmental and economical sustainability of Muxbeare Orchard."

Focus

“Our focus will be to take care of our orchard and land; this will benefit the species of wildlife that we find in the orchard and ancient hedgerows.

“We are very concerned that the value of traditional orchards to wildlife is threatened by clearances and unsympathetic management. Too much tidying up of dead wood removes the habitat of rare species indigenous to that region. We will be taking a sympathetic management approach that concentrates on replanting to provide continuity of habitat, prolongs the live of old trees and may even prolong fruiting life.

"Key species that thrive in traditional orchards include the Lesser-Spotted Woodpecker, bats and insects. In particular, the larvae of the Noble Chafer Beetle lies on the dead wood of fruit trees. The Noble Chafer is a rare species listed in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, which gives management targets for the country’s most endangered wildlife.

“Rejuvenating Traditional Ancient Special Orchards aims to raise awareness about the importance our and other orchards in Devon and Willand area, to encourage the reporting of findings and to demonstrate best practice in the management of difference species with the replanting of old orchards, renovating the orchard in the landscape surroundings. The Muxbeare Orchard will encourage healthy local food, with apples and apple juice making.

“Muxbeare Orchard is all that has survived, making it a unique rare place with rare plants and animals.

"Agriculture in the 21st Century has been subsidised by a mixture of price-fixing, tariffs, and import quotas due to the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) of the European Union."

Our farm is a micro-service which will encourage a local food economy

"It is our intention to preserve the orchard and the countryside. Most people who do work on the land cannot afford to live there since the commuters have driven the price of housing up, and there is now a reverse commute situation with farmers and labourers living in cheap lodgings in the towns and driving out to their place of work.

"This means that the old local economy, in which those who lived on the land also worked there and vice-versa, has been severely damaged, and with it the system of mutual support and commitments to the locality that was so vital in making the countryside what it is.

"Local shops and pubs expire, young people leave for the towns, and old people become increasingly isolated, deprived of services, transport and the means of survival."

Encouraging the small and local – family farms vs agribusiness

"The family farm is the backbone of the rural economy, and the most important generator of the distinctive British landscapes. Fiscal policy must be designed in order to make the family farm once again viable. This means abolishing the regulations that make it unprofitable, and encouraging the local food economy, local slaughterhouses and farmers’ markets. Many of these regulations proceed from the EU.

"Each out-of-town superstore cuts the market share of in-town food shops by up to 50%, and means an average loss of 276 full-time jobs in towns and high streets."

via muxbeareorchard.com