Moving on to our land and setting up and running Bulworthy Project has completely transformed our lives and we love to help others to achieve their dreams too. For this reason, where possible, we’ve tried to share the knowledge we’ve gained on our journey.
When we bought our land in 2006, it was a conifer dominated woodland, which had been planted on species-rich culm grassland, with complete disregard for the environment. Since then, we’ve done everything we can to increase it’s value for wildlife and the results have been described as “a mosaic of habitats” by Devon Wildlife Trust. We’ve had the privilege of discussing sustainable land management with dozens of experts in various relevant fields, from office based ecologist specialising in particular aspects of ecology, to hands on farmers and foresters with an interest in maintaining the ecosystems which they work. This has been invaluable for us in developing an understanding of habitat management. During this time, there has been a huge rise in the ownership of small woodlands. We wrote a piece on managing woodlands for wildlife, to help new woodland owners to care for their woods.
We’ve become quite familiar with the planning system, having got permission for temporary residence, to build a house, to build a cabin for tourist accommodation and for forestry/agricultural buildings. We’ve never used a consultant or other agent and have always had our application approved, first time without appeal. We’ve written about our approach to planning, for people who are facing the planning system.
We taught charcoal making for a decade and during this time, set up a website explaining how to make charcoal in a ring kiln, including information about packaging and marketing. That website also has a list of British charcoal makers. We did this to help people find their local charcoal maker.
We hope you find the information we’ve provided useful. Please do share it with other people who you think would be interested.