I prefer to keep my animals as naturally as possible to allow them to express their natural behaviour and reduce stress, so I have always kept a rooster with my hens. It is true that you do not need a cockerel or a rooster in your flock for your hens to lay eggs. So why… Continue reading Should you keep a rooster with your hens? (and how to deal with a problem rooster) Read more

Are you eating GM food? The fact that you are mostly* not is down to 20 years of inspiring direct action and pressure by anti-GM activists. Read more

Lowimpact.org’s Sophie Paterson meets hydroponics convert James Brand to hear about his experiences of hydroponics in action at a 13th century free house, the family-run award-winning Journey’s End Inn on the South Devon coast. Read more

When an idea grows far beyond its original conception, develops its own culture, factions & internal dynamics, and through implementation compromises with the real world, it can become the very enemy of what it first espoused. Read more

Something special is happening in Wales. The country is using legislation to shift itself into a very different direction from England. It wants to be more sustainable. It wants to reduce its ‘ecological footprint’ to a level that’s fair compared to the rest of the planet’s population and resources. Read more

In a post kindly shared from the Native Hands blog, our basketry specialist Ruby Taylor recounts a recent trip to the woods to make a beautiful ash pack basket. Read more

We’re excited to introduce our new Facebook group Living Low Impact – and you’re invited! Read more

This is where we get to the nitty-gritty of cow-calf dairying, looking at creating a bond and the first milking; but it’s important that you have understood the whole series so far (see right or click here) before reading on, as much of what is covered here relates to points made before. Read more

This is a question asked in an interesting debate on Facebook along the lines of uplands and their appropriate maintenance with regards to grazing. There are several fascinating projects and opinion pieces that were linked to Read more

These are cheap (£30) mini computers that run Linux and will make a good second computer for children (for example), a media player in another room, or a data server. It might save people buying another laptop and it means you can reuse the peripherals of older PCs (screen, mouse etc). Read more

Sorry for the ridiculously short notice, but if you’re interested in land issues, and have nothing on this weeked, this is really worth getting yourself to. Read more

Walking is as old as the hills, and yet so many aren’t getting out in their local areas. On a sunny October afternoon, with the backdrop of birdsong, I spoke to walking guide Emma Cunis about her story with walking and what she offers as Dartmoor’s Daughter; where she runs walks and nature connection events… Continue reading Why I walk: a conversation with a walking guide Read more

Welcome to part 4 of this series on cow-calf dairying, focusing on udder development. By now you will be starting to understand that keeping calves on dairy cows is a fine art; that it is a case of balancing the emotional and physical needs of both cow and calf; and why there are no set… Continue reading Cow-calf dairying part 4: udder development Read more

With winter on the way and inspired by a recent visit to the Weald & Downland Museum, Sophie Paterson explores a selection of historical personal heating methods. Could they be adopted in homes today? Read more

At this year’s Scottish Smallholder Festival  I attended a fascinating talk by Jack Flusk and Katie Swift of Conservation Pigs about their pioneering use of pigs for woodland conservation work. With benefits to the pigs, the pig keeper and the woodland this is a practice which could become far more widespread. Read more