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The Love Windermere partnership has appointed a farm liaison officer

The Love Windermere partnership has appointed a farm liaison officer to work closely with the farming community around the Windermere catchment area. Hannah Towers (pictured left) grew up on a dairy farm near Kirkby Lonsdale and qualified as a land agent. She and her family now farm cattle and sheep on a farm at Troutbeck.

I was born and brought up on a dairy farm in the Lune Valley before going to university where I qualified as a land agent and have worked locally as an agent since then.

It’s all about trust and relationships; you have to get to know your clients and get to know their aims to see what will work for them.

10 years ago I met my partner and moved to Troutbeck near Windermere where we have a beef and sheep farm and I’m quite heavily involved with the farm.

We want to work with nature on our farm. We’re now in year 4 of the Higher Tier Countryside Stewardship scheme, which we decided to go into for several reasons. One was financial, but also a desire to farm with the land with a low input, low output system and we have had to make some quite significant changes. We halved our sheep numbers and increased our cattle numbers so we’re doing a lot of cattle grazing on the fell. Also, we’ve planted a lot of trees. We’re learning as we go but it seems to work for us.

When it came to accessing grants, my experience as a land agent helped. Some of the mid-tier agreements are easier to access directly. With the higher tier they can be harder – you have to have direct involvement from Natural England – but they’re generally helpful and it’s worked well for us.

Obviously I live within the Windermere catchment so I have a vested interest in Windermere itself. I’m keen to work constructively to keep improving the water quality by finding solutions that work for everybody.

The basic payment scheme is coming to an end and farmers are having to look for alternative sources of funding so it’s not an easy time for farmers.

Love Windermere may well be lower down the list for some, but I think you can make a reasonably big change with quite small actions. If I can help point farmers in the right direction to gain some funding which might help them focus on water quality and the wider environment, so much the better.

The key point is that we’re here to help and if we can point people in the right direction for grants that might help the farming business then that has got to be a good thing.

My aim is to establish constructive and open relationships between Love Windermere and farmers to get good routes of communication and be able to work together.

I’m looking forward to getting involved and making a difference with Love Windermere.

 

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