Our mission

At its heart, Oxcombe Tree Farm is a conservation project. For us, farming and nature conservation are complimentary systems.

  • We feel passionately that nature friendly farming, alongside conventional farming and full scale re-wilding projects are the way to tackle the nature crisis, the climate crisis and maybe a few others along the way!

Goal One: Nature Friendly Farming

  • We have worked in conservation for most of our lives. Farming for us is an extension of that. Our goal is to create a productive, profitable farming system which creates habitat, boosts nature and stores carbon. We use the phrase ‘nature friendly farming’ to describe what we’re doing.

  • The products we sell are either bi-products of our approach to farming (e.g. hay or coppiced firewood) or are products which will provide habitat and boost nature elsewhere (e.g. our trees).

Goal Two: Habitat Restoration

  • Oxcombe was a pretty good habitat when we took it on in 2018 - having been lightly grazed by cattle for decades. But we’ve improved on that.

  • One of the first things we did was plant up 1.5 acres of traditional apple orchard (large heritage varieties, planted close together in a diamond pattern). We didn’t realise it at the time, but this has become the main enterprise for the farm (trees for sale, propagated from cuttings taken from the orchard). Over time apple juice, cider and vinegar will follow. All we knew when we started was that orchards were ‘good for nature’ - which is our starting point for everything we do.

  • We have since laid 150m of hedges, with at least another 700m to go to connect the existing woodland on site to the extensive, thick and well managed hedgerow systems that neighbouring farmers maintain. We have also begun the process of ‘criss-crossing’ the site with new hedgerows, to create even more habitat for invertebrates, birds and small mammals - ultimately we will double the meterage of hedges on our farm and substantially ‘thicken up’ what was already there.

  • The hay meadows are cut very late in the year every year, to provide maximum habitat for invertebrates, especially butterflies. We don’t spray the fields with any chemicals and don’t apply fertilisers - our aim with the hay cut is to reduce fertility in the hay meadows to encourage more flowering species and less bulky modern varieties of rye grass. The bales that we use on site or sell in Spring are really a bi-product of this.

  • We have introduced ‘swales’ (ponds that are dry for part of the year) to control and slow the flow of surface water drainage (rather than the more modern approach of installing under-ground drainage and ditches). We hope to reintroduce farm ponds in the lower parts of the farm and generally ‘re-wet’ the site in a managed way, i.e. bring the site back to its natural state rather than fight it. All fantastic stuff for nature, not to mention improving local water quality and reducing local flood risk.

  • Whatever works for nature, and the farm, we’ll give it a go!

Goal Three: A sustainable, complementary business.

  • Oxcombe can only continue if it is profitable. We don’t know what the future holds or what will work, but we can’t continue as a business unless we can make this pay.

  • Maybe market gardening salad crops, or bat walks or perhaps underground bunkers growing mushrooms are the future… we don’t know! But if it is consistent with our philosophy of ‘nature friendly farming’ then we will probably give it a go.

  • So buy our products, lots of them!, and know that by doing this you are helping us look after this tiny bit of Somerset for the benefit of nature.