Susan's Farm believes in farming to support wildlife and wildflowers, clean water, flood mitigation and to enhance the stunning Cumbrian landscape. This is called Stewardship.

We are supported in this work through Natural England's Countryside Stewardship Scheme - Higher Tier. This enables and encourages us to farm with nature and also look after the woodland areas on the farm such as the coppiced woodland along the River Eden and the grazed wetland areas. The Stewardship Scheme also supports our education work both through the classroom Natural England funded at Houghton and the annual payments for our educational and care farming visits. More information on Natural England's work can found here.  One of our Trustees, Julia Aglionby,  was a Board Member of Natural England from 2014-2019.

We are particularly proud of the increase in floral diversity in our meadows with orchids, cowslips, vetches and yellow rattle all being commonly seen in our grazed pastures and Globe Flower in our grazed bog. In our woodlands, we have seen an increase in diversity since we reintroduced coppicing that allows light into the understory with primroses, bluebells, anemones being common. We also have Yellow Star of Bethlehem, which is now rarely found in Cumbria (pictured above).