The two-sided business that works in synchrony with nature

However, when he met his wife Professor Jane Barker, the pair founded a business which not only produces a sustainable product, but also restores some of the country’s most important wetlands.  

Simon is the fifth generation of his family to farm at Dalefoot, near Penrith, with his father John always teaching him to manage the land in a way which benefited nature.  

“One thing my father always said was ‘If you can help your wildlife it will help your farm’,” he says. 

“He said that you’ve got to farm with nature.” 

Jane - who grew up in the Eden Valley - was a lecturer in environmental science at the University of Bradford before she met Simon and the couple began to think of ways they could go into business together. 

"I met Simon and decided I really wanted to leave academia and come to farm in the Lake District," says Jane.  

"We had to come up with some alternative business plans to enable me to do that and we had to combine our thinking, our practical skills and our science." 

Simon’s family farmed sheep on the 120-acre hill farm but he wanted to find a way to make it self-sustaining, rather than relying on government subsidies to keep it afloat. 

“It was a question of how you take it from a business that is reliant on subsidies to one that’s sustainable in its own right,” he says. 

“I always wanted to carry on farming; farming’s a really important part of who we are. But we want to be able to farm in more of an environmental way.” 

The result was a business with two sides; Dalefoot Composts - which produces peat-free composts - and Barker and Bland, an environmental contracting company focused on peatland restoration.  

“There’s a synergy between the work that we do restoring peat bogs and the processes and the recipes that we use for making a growing medium,” says Simon. 

A keen gardener, Jane recognised there would be a movement towards reducing the amount of peat in compost.  

As well as being a significant component for compost, peat also takes many thousands of years to form as part of bogs and wetlands.  

It is also the Earth’s most valuable soil carbon store.  

Awareness of its value as a habitat and in absorbing carbon has led the UK government to ban the use of peat among amateur gardeners by 2024, as well as to pledge to restore 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025.  

Jane and Simon were well ahead of this curve 25 years ago, when they began developing the idea of harvesting potassium rich bracken from the farm to turn it into compost.  

In the years since they started Dalefoot Composts, they have also begun producing compost made with comfrey, as well as compost containing sheep’s wool, which offers benefits such as the slow release of nitrogen and increased water retention. 

"We've planted several acres of comfrey here at Dalefoot, because comfrey is a very valuable ingredient in gardening and a natural source of potassium, but at the same time, it's a carbon capture crop,” says Jane.  

Barker and Bland works as a specialist contractor restoring peat bogs all over the UK - from Scotland to Dartmoor - either tendering for government-funded initiatives or carrying out work for landowners.  

To date it has stopped the release of 4.3 million tonnes of carbon. 

North of the border the Scottish government has invested more than £30 million in restoring 25,000 hectares of peatland.  

At the same time, the emerging market for carbon credits is also encouraging more landowners to preserve the landscapes.  

Restoration involves reestablishing the hydrology of the bog and then revegetating it with moss. 

“This reduces the release of carbon as it degrades and then also moves it forward into sequestering carbon again through the presence of sphagnum mosses,” says Jane. 

To help carry out this work, the company has had to develop its own machinery, including dumper trucks with wide tracks which allow them to access the bogs without sinking.  

Simon, Jane and their team try to carry out the restorations in the most carbon efficient way, using the dumper trucks to access the bogs rather than helicopters. 

They believe in restoring the bog from within the bog itself and avoid the use of imported materials such as coir, which is derived from coconuts, or wood and quarried granite, which are used to build dams to control runoff. 

Instead, they create bunds on the surface which capture water flowing off the bog and create small pools to help restore the natural hydrology. 

The company is focused on ensuring the restoration lasts for as long as possible, as well as being resilient to the dry, hot summers which are expected as the climate warms.  

On its farm, Dalefoot works with nature through methods such as cutting out ploughing to avoid harming the soil.  

The farm still farms Cheviot and White Faced Woodland sheep, using their wool in its compost. 

"Sustainability is all about being circular,” says Simon.  

“You should have no waste streams and everything should get some benefit from the process. That's everything that we think about. 

"It goes back to the methodology you use and the understanding of the materials that you can use and that goes for making compost as well as restoring a peat bog." 

Next year the company is planning to release a new compost which it has been developing for six years, with the hope it will win the environmental prize at the Chelsea Flower Show, which it was shortlisted for last year. 

The couple’s 18-year-old daughter Arabella is also beginning to study geography at university and is keen on joining the family business to push forward the peatland restoration side of the operation. 

"It's always about looking at the jobs that we've done in the past and what we need to change to get things working better for the future,” says Simon.