For Peat’s Sake! How restoring peatland can help your farm business – A Soil Association event

Practical event looking at the benefits of peatland restoration for upland farms.

Come and find out what funding is available and how restoring peatlands can reduce black loss, make the least accessible areas of the hill more productive, reduce flooding, retain water in dry weather and improve soil.

The Heather Trust will lead a farm visit to upland sheep and livestock farm Edinglassie, near Huntly, where Malcolm Hay has been restoring peatlands with SNH.

Malcolm Hay says: “Where they drained the peatlands in the past we had three miles of 18-inch trenches, eight feet deep in some places. They were death traps for animals which would fall in and we’d never know what happened to them. On top of the hill there was an area where peat had been cut out for fuel – 100 acres where it had been cut down to the bedrock, with nothing on it.”

Hay had applied for a peatland restoration grant and in 2015 Scottish Natural Heritage came in and “did all the work”, he explains. “They went in with diggers, blocked up the gullies, got the vegetation back into the bare ground – they spread brash to reseed with sphagnum moss and heather so the soil wouldn’t blow away. They installed fencing to prevent snowdrifts and stabilise windswept areas. You can’t even see now where the trenches were. We can put the sheep out now and know they won’t disappear.”

As well as offering an opportunity to see peatland restoration in action on farm, the event will cover funding possibilities with the Peatland ACTION scheme, which covers 100 per cent of capital costs, and through AECS, where peatland restoration means increased points weighting.

Speakers are from ScotFWAG, IUCN UK Peatland Programme and SNH Peatland ACTION.

Free of charge to farmers and land managers. Booking is required. 

Book your free place now for Huntly, 29 October, by clicking here.

For more information get in touch with Jane on 0131 666 2474 or email.

Funding is provided through SRDP Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund (which is jointly funded by the Scottish Government and the European Union) with partner funding from Scottish Water, RSPB Scotland and The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. (This event is part of a wider KTIF programme, Farming With Nature.)