“The biggest change that is going to happen in our landscape is regenerative agriculture. It makes complete sense Charlie Burrellīurrell believes that if they had been farming regeneratively all along they may not have been saddled with the debt that forced them to take the decision to rewild in the first place. The biggest change that is going to happen in our landscape is regenerative agriculture. Burrell and Tree are fortunate in that revenue from rewilding will help to finance this relatively risky project. The money will buy cattle, a cattle crush (which holds the animals still while they are examined), a cow brush (which allows them to scratch themselves), hurdles and gates, fencing, polytunnels and a caravan for interns.īy year five, Carrington hopes to start turning a profit, although this is difficult to predict when the future of post-Brexit government farming grants remains uncertain. The couple have injected £250,000 into the project, which their farm manager, Russ Carrington, expects to pay back over 20 years. Making their vision a reality requires a sizeable investment.

It’s not your typical bucolic scene, but removing obsolete tangles of wire and beefing up hedgerows is part of bringing nature back to this farm.Ĭharlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, owners of the Knepp estate, stand by old barbed wire fencing pulled out of hedgerows around the farm. Today, their backdrop is a mess of barbed wire, some old fenceposts and a barn full of hay. The “king and queen of rewilding”, as Burrell and Tree have been labelled, are normally photographed in front of a piece of scrub, standing in long grass or caressing an old oak tree. One of the cows – an unplanned pregnancy – gave birth in the barn just after I left. The barns are likely to house cattle over the winter months, when the clay fields become too wet underfoot. They already have 40 Sussex cattle in their regenerative farming herd, rising to 130 over the next 12 months. At the moment it’s a big empty yard but it won’t be quiet for long. I meet the couple in a farmyard which, until 2000, had been a commercial dairy for a century. Knepp visitors will be able to go on farm safaris, just like they do on the rewilding project. They are also opening a market garden, which will make use of manure from the cows. But the farmer has left and it is being scruffed up and transformed into the Knepp estate regenerative farm, which will supply local food to a new farm shop and cafe, due to open later this year. For decades, land scattered around the villages of Shipley and Dial Post was run by a tenant farmer who used it for grazing sheep. Now, another chapter is being added to the Knepp story, as the last 150 hectares of land is amalgamated into the project.

Rewilding book knepp