Joe Stradling is one of the landowners signed up for the Development Phase of the ELMS Adapting the Levels Landscape Recovery Project. Thibaud Sulzer is Community Engagement Officer for the Adapting the Levels Landscape Recovery Project.  Find out more about the project here.

TS: How did farming with your family begin?

JS: The family's been here in Cossington at Millmoot farm for 120 odd years. I’m the fifth generation. The sixth is on the way in training and hopefully they’ll want to take over. The family moved up here from Culmstock in Devon, where they were farming before, but I don’t know the reasons why. They spent a couple of years in Burtle before coming here, as tenants to the lord of the manor. And then, in 1917, the last Lord died. All his lands were put up for sale and my great, great granddad bought the farm with his son. Over the years, we've added bits of land to that farm, mainly in a ring-fenced block. And the most recent acquisition was about two years ago.

In 1998 Dad decided to become a certified organic farm. It didn’t require us to make too many changes because we were already largely organic, like many other traditional farms around here, but a certification meant you could get higher milk prices. Dad gave up dairy in around 2000 and focused, primarily on forage sales, with Stewardship options, now the primary earner is organic beef herd, very closely followed by subsidies.  What I do like about our farm is we aren't focused on sole thing. We have the beef sales, we still have the forage sales, we’re lucky enough to have a couple of barn conversions rented out, which are part of the farm businesses, and we have subsidies. So we've got income from a couple of different sources, some of which provide a more consistent income than others, namely the rental properties. On top of that, we’re not big users of electric and we only use our own manure as fertiliser, so we haven’t been financially affected too badly, as some others have been.

TS: What makes your farm unique?

JS: On top of the diversity of income that I’ve mentioned, I think what makes our farm different to other farms on the Somerset Levels is that we have a reasonably large ring-fenced block, whereas a lot of the land around the Somerset levels is a mosaic of landowners who own a field here, a couple of fields there. Having a ring-fenced block makes moving cattle, machinery and equipment extremely advantageous because the distances from one field to another are generally shorter, saving us a lot of time. It also makes it safer because we don’t have to go along public highways, even if the road around us isn’t the busiest.

The ring-fenced block also makes management and installation of water structures much easier because we can isolate ourselves from the wider hydrological block with zero or very little impact on surrounding farms. And that came in useful when in around 2000 when we signed up to Countryside Stewardship, with the main focus in providing the right conditions for wintering and wetland birds. To achieve the right conditions we needed to raise water level to enable us to create splash conditions across the land. I should probably set the record straight that the aim was not flooding. Instead the idea was to create small pools and wet ground that the particular types of wetland birds that overwinter in the area need, like and rely on. We do a bird count monthly and though we’re not necessarily going up anymore, numbers have improved over the years we’ve been doing it. We've got a decent number that fluctuate from year to year, but that's just nature. I think this year, our numbers were a little bit down, but obviously it was wet everywhere all winter, so they weren't so focused on finding the best habitat because there was more of it.

Alongside the stewardship, Dad was largely making hay and whittling down the beef herd that we had left over from the main dairy herd, but we were using those for after grazing, although they were grazing some fields on their own. Hay was the main thing, which we were making forage out and selling it. And then I came along and decided that instead of getting rid of the cattle, we were going to buy a bull and have more cattle. It’s worked very well and we’ve been grazing almost every field, including ones that hadn’t been grazed for 10 years or more due to their wet and remote nature. And the impact has been improved the condition of the ground and our bird numbers have gone up, as our cattle numbers have gone up.

I think we are in a lot of ways quite traditionalist, what will be will be. If some years are wetter then they are wetter, that's what happens and you get on with it. But then that's part of the fun of farming: every day is different. We’re off the back of a couple of decent weeks of weather now, but we still have standing water lying in some of the fields that by now should be dry enough to do something, but next year will be different again, we'll work out what to do, and we'll deal with it. And we know the bad weather will come at some point, that’s the way it is. Nature seems to have a way of evening things out, even if it doesn’t always feel like it!

We feel like we've been doing our bit for nature, we are a low intensity farm, with reasonably extensive grazing for subsidies to pay us. Nevertheless, we feel we're providing habitat and benefit for nature at the same time while still producing food, which I think is very important.

TS: Why did you join Landscape Recovery?

JS: With the best will in the world, I think all farmers want to do the best for nature that they can. But at the same time, we are running businesses and if a business doesn't make profit, it can't survive. And if we're not careful, we are going to lose a lot. So when the new ELM schemes were announced, I thought good - there's going to be lots of opportunities here to do different things, some of which we're already doing and some that require small changes. And we will get some of the costs of that covered - if not make a little bit of profit - but still do great things for nature whilst producing food on the farm. What I found different compared to previous schemes was that Defra seemed interested in what the farmers thought, which led me to sign up to the peatland Tests and Trial SFI scheme – something I’ve been involved in since its inception. Through Test and Trial I was put in touch with Somerset Wildlife Trust, as it was felt that our ring-fenced block with water control management would be a great place to explore the potential of Landscape Recovery. There was also the fact that we've been doing it for a long time now, and it's not that common on the Levels yet to be managing your own water levels independently, without having to invest in expensive infrastructure.

Farming on this landscape can be challenging; I recall a farmer at one of the Test and Trial meetings saying you don't tend to get a lot of farmers moving into this area, whereas you do get farmers move out to other areas. But if farms around here get bought, they tend to get bought by people who have been here and know how it works. All the farms around here are different and I think that has been a problem with the Countryside Stewardship over the last 20 years. Trying to have a blanket option that covers everybody at a more minute level is a real challenge, since what works for us won't work for our neighbour that might work for someone else a bit further away. So when ELMS Landscape Recovery was marketed at the beginning as one of the more lucrative options, with the chance to design semi bespoke agreements from several farmers, that was something that was attractive. The scheme’s aims and outcomes are exciting, and something to look forward to. And some of the numbers that have been touted around for some of the options within it do sound attractive.

As a farmer I still find the timescale on all this frustrating. Lowland beef farmers, which makes up the majority signed up in Landscape Recovery, are the ones that are going to the hardest hit by the reduction in BPS, yet there are very few options that we can sign up to - though that is changing through the countryside stewardship. And again, this is an exciting opportunity to do something bigger and wider and more bespoke. But I find the timescale with which things are done very slow. I do think that some things can’t be rushed and that it’s better to get them right, but somewhere in the middle might be beneficial.

TS: What would you like your land to look like in the future?

JS: I'd like it to look a lot like it looks now. I think all farms always have improvements that they want to make, be it replacing a gateway, upgrading a culvert across a ditch or bridge, or doing things to make your life easier. We are getting there. But actually I like our farm and the variety that it has. We are different in that we have got some land in our ring-fenced block that is just a bit higher than the peat up on the clay. We've got a number of trees, we've got grassland, we've got some ponds. We've got ditches, we've got wildlife. I would like to see more wildlife. That would be brilliant. I love seeing the deer. We haven't got an unmanageable number and the fact that they eat a little bit of grass doesn't bother me too much.

So we do have an abundance of wildlife on the farm and I like that it lives side by side with the animals. I also like that the majority of our animals are born on the farm and spend a good number of hopefully happy years here before they go on to the various destinations. I'd like to see the farm improve in various different ways. I'd like to see healthy grasses and grasslands and plant species and wildlife all go hand in hand.

I do think I have the best job in the world. Every day is different. And it's fun, I enjoy it. Every little boy dreams of driving a tractor, and I quite like driving a tractor now. I like looking after animals. And I also like looking after our farm, it is the family farm and it has been in the family for a long time. I like looking after it in the hope that one of my children will take it on.