Wood Pasture
Before farming reshaped this landscape, it was neither open field nor dense forest.
It was somewhere in between.
Wood pasture, a dynamic combination of open grazing land and wooded areas, is what the world looked like before agriculture took over. The old English use of the word "forest" didn't mean a wall of trees, it meant a place where you'd find deer. That distinction tells you something important about how our ancestors understood the land.
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That landscape wasn't maintained by conservation projects or human management, it was maintained by animals. Wild horses, cattle, bears and beavers shaped the environment through grazing, browsing, rooting and movement, keeping woodland from closing in, spreading seeds, disturbing soil and letting light reach the ground. Large herbivores are not passengers in an ecosystem, they are essential to keeping it alive and balanced.
We now know that closed canopy woodland (trees left entirely to themselves) is one of the least productive ecosystems there is. Competing trees block out the light, ground flora disappears, and biodiversity collapses. It was assumed that nature, left alone, would simply reforest everything.
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Wood pasture is our way of putting that variable back. Our free-ranging highland cattle & mangalitza pigs, managed thoughtfully among trees improving their welfare & farms ecosystem. Our cattle graze the rough ground between woodland and pasture, managing encroaching scrub and bracken, supporting invertebrates, attracting birds, and carrying seeds in their coats from one corner of the farm to another.
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The alternative, draining wetlands, clearing mixed woodland and removing hedgerows to create simplified grassland, was the dominant model for decades and it worked against nature at every turn. No nesting cover for birds, no native flowers for insects, no grazers to keep the balance. A lot of effort invested in making the land less alive.
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The value of wood pasture extends to our animals health, improving welfare in extreme weather conditions alongside helping mitigate flooding and drought risks by improving organic matter naturally within our soils. We feel having wood pasture incorporated within our farming landscape is essential for creating a resilient climate and habitat for those who live amongst it.