We mentioned we'd redesigned @DeepdaleFarm, here's a little more detail.

Farm is 260 hectares of farm land, with some permanent grass & some beautiful woodland.

We realised soil repair had to be key aim in next few years, so talked to anyone who would answer our calls.

From discussions, reading & lots of podcast listening, became clear that we needed regenerative farming practices.

Countryside stewardship & organic practices met those needs, guaranteed income over next 5 years, particularly while farming goes through turmoil post Brexit.

Many farmers we'd spoken to had mentioned issue with rotation & irregular field sizes. Some years they'd have too little grazing & crop to cut for silage, other years they too much, as areas would change with size of the fields.

Our fields are no less irregular in size.

We'd started our plan for stewardship by adding 6 to 10m margins to each field, then we cut out less producive corners of fields, but it all felt very piecemeal rather than proper plan to repair @DeepdaleFarm & embrace conservation.

We looked at fields that needed to rest completely, fields that are unworkable, areas that @WSF_NRT had identified as most at risk of erosion, recommendations from @NorfolkFWAG, such as beatle banks & ponds.

In what appeared as a moment of madness, brought on by frustration about Covid situation, @EarthlyIdeas started drawing on the farm map. He was playing with the idea of having rotating cropping areas that were each the same size.

It became clear we could have 20 plots on farm, each 5 hectares in size. This would allow 5 year rotation, 4 plots in each year of rotation.

Essentially we cut out 20 plots from our fields (pink areas), trying to keep them as rectangular as possible for ease of working.

Everything else goes into countryside stewardship, so 160 hectares - AB8, OP2, GS2, AB11, Beetle Banks ...

Farming would now be 20 hectares of clover year 1, 20 x clover year 2, 20 x winter wheat or oats, 20 x legume & 20 x malting barley.

Quite a change, but it made complete sense to @EarthlyIdeas & @mrnathannelson, was surprise to @NorfolkFWAG & @WSF_NRT but they both seemed to like it a lot, took a while to explain to many others.

But now the general description is 'never seen it before, but it makes sense'.

In 5 years time, when our stewardship scheme ends, we should be in great position for ELMS, whatever that ends up being.

Between now & then, we'll have rebuilt soils, much more protection against erosion & flooding, greater conservation, plus @DeepdaleFarm will look beautiful!