There’s nothing more satisfying then seeing the results of our work! Nature recovery is essential to our future, and our environment depends heavily on our pollinators. Honeybees desperately need good habitats where they can develop strong colonies.

Check out this swarm that scouted one of our hives that we installed on 10th May, and moved in on 11th!

In this video, created by two film makers who recently visited Maple Farm, Jack (one of the Directors from our rewilding partners, Youngwilders, talks openly about the problems facing nature in he UK, and how their organisation is encouraging young people to learn and become directly involved in nature recovery.

He also talks about Youngwilders’ goals and future plan. This is a ‘must watch’ for nature enthusiasts!

It’s here, amidst acres of wild meadows and oak trees, that my journey with bioacoustics and field recordings truly began. The sounds captured within these walls of living history are not just mere recordings; they are fragments of life, the whispers of fallen sticks and rocks, the soft murmur of nesting birds in the oak branches, the intricate hum of ant farms among buttercup fields, and the voices of those gathered around campfires, weaving stories under the wide open sky…

In this month’s update, our Wild Steward, Conor, talks about setting up trail cameras and describes what we are hoping to learn from the results!

Conor McNeil, our Wild Steward, ended 2024’s physical activities at Maple Farm by leading the volunteers in a planting day of Yellow Rattle and hosting a small workshop about the movements of predator-prey populations, and the impact they have on the landscape.

Yellow Rattle is is used to create or help restore wildflower meadows, where it maintains species diversity by suppressing dominant grasses and the recycling of soil nutrients. The seed is sown thinly onto grassland from August to November to germinate the following spring, the seeds need to remain in the soil throughout the winter months.

This is a new blog series by Maple Farm’s Wild Steward, Conor McNeil. The Wild Stewards programme places young people into paid, key decision-making roles in active nature recovery projects for one year, providing them with seminar and training opportunities as well as operational support, and facilitating shared learning between the Wild Stewards and the Youngwilders core team.

Major loss of habitat has led to a sharp decline in the numbers of Great Crested Newts throughout the UK, and we are keen to provide a viable new habitat for them at Maple Farm. Today marks the start of the our project to help save these important amphibians.

The Wayfinders weekends were a series of 3 on-site weekends at Maple Farm, that offered practical, field skills for young people covering grassland and birds, invertebrates and woodland, bats and reptiles

The feedback from these sessions has been amazing, and by the last workshop, we were oversubscribed with a large waiting list!

Part 2 of our project to help our honey bees.

Despite the weather, we had the most successful weekend workshop, making 3 fabulous log hives for wild honey bees. Thank you to everyone who participated. It was so rewarding!

Come and join us at our natural-style, tree hive making weekend workshop on 6th and 7th July 2024.

Pictured here are some of the amazing volunteers that worked tirelessly for two long weekends, helping to create a nature-based learning hub that will provide a wonderful space for future immersion in nature and study for all.