roving studio presents....

...the ART of WESTLEY FARMING

Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st June 2009     10am till sundown

A collective cross-pollination celebrating ecological and creative diversity

Artists
The Cotswolds are classified as an "area of outstanding natural beauty" and offer a rich tapestry of green rolling hills studded with picture-postcard villages

You can just hear the distant bells of Oakridge church and see the houses peep out of the canopy of trees on the other side of the valley. The village of Chalford is a mile away with its jumble of cottages and tortuous donkey tracks.  Cirencester and Stroud are fifteen minutes drive, while Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bristol and Bath can be reached within an hour.

Our traditional stone cottages are spread over the farm and have rural views as good as any in England.

This year we have put up two Turkoman style yurts for rent in 'the diddlydumps'. Each yurt sits to the edge of it's own secluded glade, on a wooden platform  with room enough to sit out on the deck watching the wildlife or gazing out across the Golden Valley.
 
We offer a private compost loo per yurt with shared kitchen and showers, and lifts to and from local stations. You are able to pick up /drop off hired bikes at the farm.

 
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Our orchard may not be big (only 21 trees) but it is old, appearing on the very earliest Ordnance Survey maps of the farm.  Acting on advice from Natural England, and the Gloucestershire Orchard Group, we have had the trees pruned to keep them going another century or two - we can but hope! Some of the trees produce very small gnarly apples that may be old cider apples, but we're not sure. They may just be crab apples! We do know that the mix of trees in the orchard produces excellent juice and we hope to have enough to sell in coming years.

We have put up bat boxes to encourage the pipistrelle bats currently living in the house to multiply. You will see them diving low on summer evenings, coming out as the swallows retire.
Julian's daughter Anna keeps 2 donkeys Chester and Teddy (pictured) on the farm. They deliver groceries up the steep narrow lanes of Chalford from the village shop every Saturday morning.

We use no fertilizers or pesticides on the farm and limit the use of weed control to spot treatment when unavoidable. The varied habitats of traditional hay meadows, ancient woodland, regenerating coppice and species rich limestone grassland on the farm have ensured our acceptance onto the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme (HLS). This means we can get help, advice and some funding towards creating and maintaining wildlife habitats. We are currently working to promote the habitat of the endangered Marsh Fritillary butterfly, whose only known breeding site in Gloucestershire is nearby.