Late last year a farmer who has been experimenting with different ways of re-establishing hay meadows won Natural England’s inaugural Future of Farming award.

The award aims to show that first rate environmental land management and sound farm businesses can go hand in hand.

Keith Datchler, 59, has changed the intensive dairy and arable farm he has worked on for the past 37 years to a profitable business that is also a haven for wildlife.

The farm is in the High Weald, a classified Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Area in southern England, with some of the most ancient hay meadows in the country.

Hay meadows have existed since mediaeval times.

They are grasslands that are closed to livestock in the spring before cutting for hay in late June or July.

Such grassland tend to be species rich, supporting diverse flora and fauna, but since the 1950s they have been in decline.

There is now a movement to restore hay meadows and integrate them into farm systems because they are so important in providing habitat for a huge range of plant and insect species.

However, it is not easy to take improved pasture and return it to meadow, and over the past years, Keith Datchler has been involved in developing seed collection and sowing systems to enable farmers to resow meadows.

There are three options: hand collection, brush harvesting and combine harvesting.

The brush harvester brushes ripe seeds from plants, leaving a standing crop for haymaking.

This machine allows insects to pass through the machine unharmed and is useful on sites where there is a variety in sward height and uneven ground.

Seeds and chaff are deposited from the brush harvester on to a large tarpaulin in the meadow.

The stalks are separated out and the seed is left to dry in the sun and checked over carefully by hand.

Seed is bagged or wrapped at the end of the harvest, dried on racks, cleaned, stored and blended as required.

The combine harvester collects more grass and wildflower seed at all grass heights but doesn’t leave any standing grasses for haymaking.

Hay from this harvest is strewn on sites that need restoration.

Both methods are effective in improving the diversity of plants, but hay strewing results in a wider range of plants in the new meadows, because it includes seeds from low growing plants and a range of seed ripeness.

If you’d like to know more about Keith Datchler and hay meadows go to www.highweald.org/ and click on Landowners.