Growing our own materials from our very own willow beds on our farm in Cornwall

Our small holding, Treovis Cross Farm, consists of 24 acres of mixed pasture and woodland. We have a long list of things that we want to do and so far we have planted a mixed fruit orchard and set up several wildlife areas with tree planting schemes.

One of the first things we did was to establish willow beds in which we have planted a range of different willows. We have expanded these each year so that they will eventually give us a good supply of willow which is used in both our furniture and baskets. Many of the basket making willows we have are not available from commercial willow growers and give a lovely range of coloured barks

We have our own herd of pedigree Dexter cattle and a small mixed flock of Welsummer and Indian Game chickens. In the future we plan to run a herd of free range pigs in the woods and keep sheep in the orchard to keep the grass in check.

Our woods consist of a mixed conifer plantation which we are gradually converting to deciduous woodland as the conifer is thinned out and extracted on maturity.

We also have two horses and plan to start up a horse logging service in conjunction with a woodland management business which will include Coppice Management and other services such as traditional hedge laying.