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Mechanisation on the farm enables a relatively small team to produce a wide variety of crops using a number of tractor-mounted machines to help with preparing the land, planting and then weed control during the growing season. Green manures are used to maintain and improve the fertility of the land: Red Clover provides nitrogen fixation in the soil and is used in the cropping rotation; Phacelia is also used as a weed suppressor with the benefit of its flowers providing abunda

Photographs from the Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show, held on 19th and 20th August 2026.

Open Farm Sunday at Coombe House School, 6th June 2026. The write-up of the day appeared in the July newsletter. The Orchard Cluckingham Palace Chicken House Growing plots

"A nut in the hand is worth two in the bush" During the early hours of August 19th I awoke to the sound of light rain and just couldn’t get back to sleep. It seemed to take ages before there was a proper fall, enough to exercise the gutters and trickle down. Later that morning I walked on Castle Hill with the dogs in glorious sunshine - glorious because it wasn’t burning hot and glorious because everything was mercifully damp. The dogs sniffed. We meandered slowly across the

At the time of writing we’ve just entered the last month of summer. Please don’t tell me it’s been wonderful - it has not! The natural world is struggling desperately without any meaningful raindrops for months and burning temperatures are causing absolute chaos for the rhythms and cycles of life which we might normally expect. Although “normal” isn’t any longer the right word. I mean, it’s not like we can pretend that nobody saw this coming. So here we are, 2026, and climate

Catch up with our newsletters here. Newsletters are sent to people who've added their email address to our list of subscribers through the website. Occasionally things go wrong: emails can be bounced or messages incorrectly identified as spam. Just follow the link for the relevant month: 2026 September Newsletter (3rd September 2026) https://www.planetshaftesbury.org/so/caQ1elzoF?languageTag=en 2026 August Newsletter (1st August 2026) https://www.planetshaftesbury.org/so/1f