News from the Farm January 2025
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- Posted date:
- 10-01-2025

Stories from the farm January 2025
Sabrina and I are fortunate most years to be able to take a trip to the Western Isles, North Uist specifically. It's a place that got entirely under my skin some 25-30 years ago for a suite of impactful reasons. Chief amongst them being the plants and animals that call the island home for a season or for life. From my first visit, a week of gales, rain and enough wind driven sand on beach walks to put a shot blaster out of a job, I was enthralled by the diversity, proximity and above all the abundance of wildlife. It was like coming home, in an entirely new place. Though of course it wasn't really the place, it was the sense of rightness that came with being surrounded by life in abundance. In the years since that sense of a landscape being alive has remained as both a joy and as a vision and informs much of what we do here at the farm. I also happen to believe that keeping the earth earth's ecosystems functioning is in the best interest of our species, not to mention all the others but that's more like a theory. The impulse to be in and attempt to create a place surrounded by life is different. Following the death of singer Sinead O'Connor I read a quote from the band Massive Attack that seemed to comment on such urges, "The fire in her eyes made you understand that her activism was a soulful reflex and not a political gesture". I suspect I'm far from alone amongst our community of customers in feeling something of this for the natural world.
Turning the corner into 2025 we've been firming up on some of the ideas and plans that we hope to implement on the farm this year with the continued aim of enabling greater abundance and diversity of life here. We have some work to do in the hedges to improve structure, deadwood, species range and nesting opportunities. There is a main underground field drain that we would like to bring to the surface in a 'new' burn and connected wet features. There's a, long in the gestation, pond/lochan to hopefully be finally created in the wetland area adding to our existing though limited habitat for species such as little grebe, swans, diving ducks, sedge warblers and the passing ospreys. There is some experimenting to do with new grass seed mixtures to increase summer opportunities for insects and winter opportunities for foraging birds. And some intriguing ideas for oystercatchers. Time and money will have their usual impact on how far we get through our wish list but the impulse is certainly in place! Finally, it's also been some time since we last held a farm walk and talk for our customers and so we shall arrange a day (probably to coincide with orders collection from the farm) in late spring/early summer to remedy that. We will hope to see some of you then and in the meantime we wish you all very best wishes for 2025 from the Wark Farm Team..
UPDATED ORDER FORM ONLINE NOW
The January order form is now updated and online. You can find the link below to the order form with all our different meat cuts available, along with practical info about delivery/collection dates.
Our regular customers already know that it's first come, first serve for our delicious meat cuts that are not only full of flavour due to the breeds we use and their grass/herb diets, but also free of nasties such as pesticides and antibiotics. You can find all the info on the order form, including more info about the specials of the month.