The majority of our countryside is devoted to farming. From the highest peaks where sheep graze, to the lowest valleys where crops are grown, the land is farmed. Farmers have created the countryside we see around us. This means that we have a special responsibility to both the people who love the countryside and the wildlife that lives there.

We take that responsibility seriously. We look after our crops with the utmost care and all decisions are taken with wildlife and the environment in mind, ensuring our products are grown to the highest standards to create the highest quality food.

But then we go one stage further, we select areas of our land and return them to habitats where wildlife can really flourish, such as wild flower meadows, which buzz with bees and butterflies, or seed crops which are left for the birds to harvest. This way we can ensure that wildlife can thrive whilst we produce great food for you.

You only have to walk a short distance on our land to hear the chatter of sparrows or the melody of the skylark, or to see cornflower once again in the cornfields and yellow rattle in the meadows. The cleanliness of the water on the farm also means that the water vole can prosper once again in the farm ponds and streams along with the toads and dragonflies.

The hedgerows are of the utmost importance to us and are looked after with great care; they need to be otherwise we wouldn’t have any sloes (the fruit of the blackthorn shrub) to cover in chocolate! And, there wouldn’t be anywhere for birds to nest and hedgehogs to forage.

We leave wide swathes of wild flowers between the crops and the hedge so that we don’t have to trim them every year. These meadow-like swathes are perfect nesting sites for yellowhammers and partridges and where you are most likely to see the gatekeeper and tortoiseshell butterflies. Because we don’t cut the hedges every year there is always ample fruit in the autumn for us to gather and the birds to harvest, helping them (and us!) to endure the long winter nights.

Our environmental protocol has resulted in over a 30% increase in breeding bird numbers in the last three years (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Monks Wood, Huntingdon).