Hay's Way: Scottish Borders farm that purifies public water supply to give soil the bacteria it needs

Sprawling across 2,500 acres of land around Peebles in the Borders, a farm is well into its journey undoing intensive farming practices with high input costs to letting nature do its work to help boost profit.

Neidpath Farm, a collection of four farms, is managed by Matthew Griffin, with the support of the owner Matthew Benson.

The pair has been publicly posting updates about their relentless pursuit of an upland hill farm that can survive without the need for government subsidies since Mr Griffin took up his role four years ago.

I dropped in to see how the transition is going while walking in the area as part of Hay’s Way.

“We have made many mistakes,” said Mr Griffin. “Pages of them,” Mr Benson added.

Owner Matthew Benson with farm manager Matt Griffin | Katharine Hay

But the duo said the already “dramatic results” from letting nature do its thing, from better soil health to less water running off the hill into the river during flooding, is keeping them going.

As with other farms taking the regenerative farming step, Neidpath has planted more hedgerows between fields for livestock health and biodiversity, and made changes to the way their sheep and cattle graze. 

But one practice in their transition that particularly stood out for me was the fact they purify water from the public mains source before watering their compost, which is then spread on the land to boost soil health. 

To flourish, compost needs to be moist, which is facilitated by a sprinkler system on the farm site. But this country's drinking water contains a myriad of chemicals, including chlorine, which kills the very bacteria the farm needs to propagate to improve the soil conditions, which crops and animals then feed off, Mr Benson said.

“We’re after the life in that,” he said, pointing to the crates of compost lined up on the farm. “The nematodes, the protozoa, the fungi, the bacteria.”

The organic matter sits for about three weeks during which it goes through a preliminary "cooking" phase before cooling down. Worms from a worm farm on site are then fed into it to start breaking the organic matter down.

There are special air tubes dotted throughout the piles of compost to allow it to breathe as turning it would break up the developing fungal structures.

The compost system at Neidpath which follows the Johnson Su method | Katharine Hay

“The longer you leave it, the more diverse the species that develop and the better that is for the soil,” Mr Benson said.

“There’s something between 15,000 and 25,000 different species in that compost alone. It’s incredibly alive. And the idea is to get as much of that out onto the fields as possible. Then nature will figure out which species of those are useful.”

The compost is made from material on the farm so the genetics of all the species are from this part of the world. Woodchip from timber on the land, farmyard manure and wool are all used in it. Waste from the kitchen goes in the worm farm.

Some Aberdeen Angus at Neidpath Farm | Katharine Hay

Once ready, it is turned into a manure to spray on fields. Because it is rich in fungi, the spray boosts the redevelopment of fungi structures and improves the organic matter in the ground which has, over the years, been destroyed due to intensive farming practices, Mr Griffin said.

Observing Neidpath’s compost ritual to protect the healthy bacteria that it needs for the ground for healthy crops and livestock got me thinking about our own bodies. With a surge in “modern” illnesses stemming from malfunctioning guts, from depression to lactose intolerance, I’ve been left wondering what the heavily-chlorinated water is doing to our own gut biome.

The worms from the worm farm break down the compost once it has cooled after 'cooking' for a few weeks before it is then spread onto fields | Katharine Hay

But anyway, back to the farm. While improving soil health is good environment practice and helps the business become more financially viable by improving grass growth for livestock, Mr Griffin said the transition was improving the land's resilience in dry summers and wet winters.

This winter, according to some farmers, was the “worst in living memory” because of the level of rainfall leaving fields flooded for months on end. Some harvests were ruined and crops could not be planted.

A lot of farms across Scotland have experienced bad flooding over winter, with some farmers saying it was the worst winter in living memory | Supplied

While it was not the wettest winter on record for Scotland, according to Met Office figures - this occurred in 2016 - farmers said the persistent number of storms over the past few months made it more challenging than previous years.

Several farmers have said they are expecting weather patterns to become more extreme in the years to come.

At Neidpath, the team said the ground was very wet and muddy in the winter and difficult to farm and keep livestock on, but it also dried out significantly in the summer.

With practices to improve soil structures, research and examples over the years have shown fields drain water better during floods and retain it for crops for when there are periods of dry weather.

Mr Griffin said he was already witnessing improvements in just the four years he had been making changes at Neidpath. While on a tour of the farm, I was shown fields that had been more intensively farmed on the lower ground that had about 4 per cent organic matter and sat flooded for days.

But slightly higher up, Mr Griffin pointed to a field that was 17 per cent organic matter because it had not been intensively farmed for 30 or 40 years.

“Its ability to hold water with that difference in organic matter and better soil structure is phenomenal,” he said. “If there was half a million acres, and we lifted the organic matter in half of that by just 3 per cent, that would be billions of litres of water that we could hold back in the landscape.

“We don’t need to spend millions of pounds on concrete flood defences in towns. We need to spend it on supporting farmers to mitigate flood by improving soil structures across fields, fixing that broken water cycle.”