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Friday June 6, 2008, we were able to fly over High Leas in a 4-seater plane and took a couple of new photos of the farm and surroundings from 1700 feet (or thereabouts!).

Here are some pictures of our 2008 lambs. They were taken when the lambs were tiny. All 87 lambs are now out in the fields (May 12). Some of the pictures were taken by Maja Chadwick’s mum Ellen. Maja came to help with the lambing, and we’re glad she did.

On 8th March 2008, the Derwent Valley Orienteers planted trees in Littlemoor Wood, as a thank you for being allowed to use the woodland for their orienteering exploits. We welcome them!

Paul Wright of DVO writes:

“Several species were chosen including oak, beech, purple beech, two species of flowering cherry and scots pine. Some of the oaks supplied had been grown from acorns at the nearby Crich Carr Primary School. Still, the work is not over. Many visits will have to be made over the years to come to ensure that the trees have the best start, removing choking bracken and brambles. It will be many years before the trees reach maturity with only the youngsters in the team perhaps seeing the fruits of the labours.

It is hoped that Littlemoor Wood will be next used again for orienteering on 6 June 2009 when DVO holds its fortieth anniversary event using all the woodlands in the World Heritage Derwent Valley between Ambergate and Cromford. Before that happens there are still more map corrections to be created. Those rocks dug up will make a good cairn and there are plans to build a couple of benches for the weary orienteer/forester to sit and contemplate.”

To get from where we are now, to a state where the property can sustain the number of people - perhaps twenty - who would be involved, and start exporting significant quantities of meat, electricity, or whatever, will need several years of inputs of work, money, support etc.

The money presumably comes from new investors, including the people who are participating. One way or another they will want to be owners, and it will be much better if they are. Money will also be borrowed from banks. So a further considerable challenge is to work out the deal with these new people - the basis on which they live here, how their work, investment and support is to be rewarded, what happens when people want to come into or go out of the project, and so on.

Planning permissions will be needed. There are traditional issues about consents for new houses in rural areas, but there are starting to be new ways of thinking about sustainable communities, and this place is, we think, big enough to think in those terms.

The alternative to a bold development is a series of smaller investments, and that is not going to happen. So much infrastrucure is needed that the first thing would hardly be workable. Who would want to put in the first £100,000?

At least four issues need to be thought about, now.

1. We need to ask the Local Planning Authority how they see the future, and what kind of a project they would support.

2. The land ownership and Capital Gains Tax. There are three owners at present. They may all wish to support the project in different ways. Any reduction in their land ownership share will probably be a taxable disposal, making them liable to Capital Gains Tax. This is, needless to say, actually payable by the new investors, who have to put in so much more money than we could afford to sell for if it were not for the tax. So we need some tax advice.

3. A third big worry at the moment is about the new planning permission tax. The Government wants to snatch a share of the increase in value that comes about by the granting of a planning permission. Previously, Governments largely waited to collect capital taxes until a death or sale transaction, when they took a share of the cash changing hands, but this looks like a tax on the start of development. It was previously going to be called Planning Gain Supplement, but now is being spoken of as a Tariff or as something called Community Infrastructure Levy. The rules are sure to be extremely convoluted and obscure, so if we tried to work out any costings at present, this would be a complete unknown! If this tax is too onerous then it will tend to force the sale and splitting-up of larger properties, even though that will make them less sustainable than they would be if they could be kept in common ownership.

4. Affordable Housing. Here is another trap, unless there is a way round it. If the planning requirements are for a cash contribution towards affordable housing somewhere else, then this is just another tax, and means that the project may only appeal to wealthy incomers. What we would like to do is create affordable housing within the project, but this will mean additional houses in the project and will this be allowed?

If you are interested, or would like to get involved, please get in touch.

One of the reasons for setting up this site was to try to explore the issues about succession. I have been thinking about diversification and what it really means. When farms diversify, are they not using a sound new business idea to prop up a failing old business?

Isn’t it true that many farmers do this more because they want to stay on the land, rather than as a good business model? Perhaps we can think differently, reinventing the farm as a multi activity business, rather than as a bad idea propped up by better ones?

My first idea was all about trying to re-establish a basic farming business here at High Leas Farm, and to build on that, in other words start diversifying it. But that must be the wrong approach. Wouldn’t it be better to leapfrog straight to the next thing?

But what is the next thing? When we show people around the farm and the wood they see lots of potential and opportunity for sympathetic, sustainable development, especially so if Littlemoor Wood and the adjoining property - which is also owned by a member of our family - is included. But the challenges in terms of work and money needed are immense. Most of the people I have spoken to agree that it needs additional people living and working here, working on the project (eg putting up buildings, installing infrastructure, growing biomass or fuel crops, rearing livestock to produce meat, making things or repairing things or providing professional services to generate income, providing facilities for visitors).

Its nice to think about summer, isn’t it?

Is anyone interested in hay-making the old fashioned way, using small old-fashioned machinery, or even scythes? We don’t have any machinery, and we don’t know much about it.

We have a kind of folk-memory that people actually enjoyed the back-breaking midsummer work in the hay-fields. Judging by the number of old beer bottles we still find in the stone walls, it was not all bad.

We are interested in finding out more, as about the hand-tools and the honing and peening or whatever.

Public Footpath 60 enters the farm from Hearthstone and leaves it near Low Leas barns (or vice versa).

At the top end we upgraded the stile in 2007. We had already installed a dog gate and improved the outer steps down into the lane.

At the bottom end we built a new stile and dog gate in 2004.When we sold a small area of land in 2007 this was all rebuilt on the new line.

Derbyshire County Council offered to supply wicket gates for where the path crosses internal boundaries, but has not provided them so far!

Plenty of waymarking arrows have been put up along the route and we would ask you please to look out for them and not to confuse the footpath line with the various sheep tracks or with the wheel lines made by farm vehicles.This is a public footpath only:- no horses, bikes etc without permission. Dogs must be kept to the footpath and under close control. There is no public right of way on any of the farm tracks.