IrelandsFarmers Profile picture
Dec 2, 2021 10 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Afternoon all!

Might talk a little today about @hometree__ , where I work.

We are a small land charity based in Ennistymon, West Clare. Our objective is the creation of permanent native woodlands in Ireland.

Check out our work here hometree.ie/what-we-do
Hometree was concieved at Moyhill Community Supported Agriculture project around five years ago, on the basis that our native woodlands needed support to grow, there was a thirst from the public and businesses learn & engage, and a strong desire to help out Image
Up to three months ago, we were all volunteers. Thankfully, a combination of donations, pledges and project funding from @agriculture_ie allowed us to form a paid team.
Matt - Co-founder & manager
Myself - EIP/Landowners
Mitch - Co-founder & Nursery Manager
Meadhbh- Ecologist ImageImageImageImage
Our base is in Ennistymon where we are turning a sixteen acre site into a demonstration and education hub .
We want this to be a place farmers, community groups, sports clubs, business owners and anyone else interested in creating woodland can come , observe, learn and plan. Image
Still cant afford to get blinds for the windows 😂😂😂 Image
We recently got our Illaun-Farm forest EIP of the ground and will be working with farmers near Miltown Malbay to integrate trees and woodland to their farm systems.

We see farmers as key stakeholders and are really happy to be working closely with them to make change happen. ImageImageImageImage
We started off just wishing to create woodlands, now we realise that's just one part of the solution.

We have three sites now. All very different. Each will require a different approach.

We are committed to doing all our work in line with best ecological practise. ImageImageImage
So that's us. It feels like what (I imagine) a start-up company feels like - exciting and daunting all at the same time.

Hopefully this little seed grows!

If you wish to support, check out the website for options. hometree.ie/support ImageImageImageImage
*to learn and engage
One downside is we are all (coincidentally) surfers which means the office can mysteriously empty out when the wind goes south east!

Matt, Mitch and Meadhbh below! ImageImageImageImage

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More from @IrelandsFarmers

Feb 13, 2022
Good morning all.

Today is my (@IrishRainforest) last day curating this account, and I'm going to use it to talk about the other essential side of the coin in turning around the ongoing death spiral of Irish nature (along with High Nature Value farming):

Rewilding.
You've probably already heard various things about rewilding, some of them true, some less so.

But I want to say straight off that rewilding is NOT anti-people, anti-farmer, anti-rural communities, or any other rubbish of that sort.

Quite the opposite. Let's look deeper...
What is rewilding?

Since the concept was borne in the 1990s, there's been a lot of debate about what it means exactly.

A welcome advance in this respect was the 2021 publication by the @IUCN of @LandEthics et al.'s 'Guiding Principles of Rewilding'
iucn.org/commissions/co…
Read 25 tweets
Feb 12, 2022
On my (@IrishRainforest) second last day on this account, I want to talk about the big lie that is Irish 'forests'.

One of these below is a forest, one of them most definitely is not.

One covers around 1% of Ireland, the other 10%.
It would be easy to think of a forest as a big bunch of trees, but nothing could be further from the truth.

A real forest is instead made up of thousands of different species that coevolved over very long periods of time to function cohesively as an *ecosystem*.
So what do I mean by the big lie that is Irish 'forests'?

Here's a good example: "Irish forest cover at its highest level in 350 years."

Sounds wonderful, except around 90% of that is monoculture plantations, mostly of alien species like sitka spruce.
m.independent.ie/business/farmi…
Read 25 tweets
Feb 11, 2022
Hi everyone, today I'll be talking about something very close to my own heart, as revealed my twitter handle: @IrishRainforest.

It's something many - or even most - people are still totally unaware of: the natural ecosystem of much of Ireland is actually rainforest.
When we first came to the farm in 2009, I was blown away by the wild forest that had developed naturally over much of the land.

The trees were full of plants living on the trunks and branches, like ferns, mosses, and a host of other types of plants.
It soon dawned on me that these were what are called epiphytes: plants that grow on trees without being rooted in the ground, so excluding ivy and honeysuckle, for eg.

They can only live where there are high levels of rainfall and other precipitation. Beara sure fits that bill.
Read 23 tweets
Feb 10, 2022
Good morning folks, it's me @IrishRainforest back again.

Yesterday I talked about the desperate and worsening state of nature in Ireland, and the role the industrialisation of farming is playing.

Today, let's look at one of the solutions: High Nature Value farming (HNVf).
Small numbers of farmers all over Ireland are moving towards HNVfarming, and you can follow @farmfornature to get an idea of who's doing what.

Also, I'd highly recommend reading @isabella_tree's 'Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm'.
bookworm.ie/wilding/
Now I'm going to launch straight into a description of the sort of farming I do myself.

As I said the other day, this farm came with 33 acres of ground, plus 40 of mountain commonage; 21.5 acres (mostly rainforest) of the 33 isn't farmed at all; the other 51.5 is all HNV farmed.
Read 25 tweets
Feb 9, 2022
Morning folks. I'd like to talk about nature today, and how it's doing on our generation's watch.

The answer is unequivocal: it could scarcely be worse. Nature is rapidly blinking out all around us.

And no, that is NOT hyperbole.

All the science confirms it.
There are so many statistics I could hit you with to show how nature is being killed off, but statistics tend to wash over us, so here's just one.

In 1970-2016 alone, global populations of wild vertebrates like mammals and birds plummeted by 68%.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
There are many reasons why we're losing nature at such a catastrophic speed, but the primary one across the world is conversion of natural habitat to farmland.

When this happens, only a small minority of species are able to adapt to the new conditions.
smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/agr…
Read 18 tweets
Feb 8, 2022
Good morning all.

Today I'd like to explore a subject that for me is both fascinating, and deeply relevant to the present.

That is: ecological and human history, how they're interconnected, and how we have so completely transformed or eliminated natural ecosystems over time.
I'll be focusing on what I've been able to learn of this immediate locality, the rest of the Beara Peninsula, and southwest Ireland.

While some of it is area-specific, examining one place in more detail can act as a lens through which to understand a much bigger picture.
In prehistory, like most of Ireland, Beara was covered in thick, extremely species-rich old-growth forest, in this case temperate rainforest.

We know this from pollen analysis of peat cores and other evidence, such as actual remains of ancient trees preserved in the peat.
Read 21 tweets

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