Your generous donations have helped buy Speechly’s Farm and we can’t thank you enough.

This crucial purchase will connect Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen Nature Reserves for the first time since the 1850s, helping natural wet fenland and wildlife thrive right across the Great Fen.

What’s next?

As Speechly’s is still a working farm, restoration of the land won’t begin until after the final crop of wheat has been harvested.  After that though, work will begin in earnest. We will drill grass seed into the stubble, to minimise carbon loss and stabilise the soil. When the grass has grown, we will take a hay cut to remove nutrients from the soil. We will install water controls and create a water storage mere - water levels can then gradually be raised. After constructing the wet farming plots, we will sow bulrush and sphagnum and hope to harvest the first crops from 2027.

Buying Speechly’s Farm is just the first step. We hope you will continue to support our work at the Great Fen.

As you can see from our video above, buying Speechly’s Farm will be a landmark moment in the Great Fen vision because it will connect Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen National Nature Reserves. Creating this continuous corridor will help natural wet fenland thrive right across the Great Fen, for the first time since the 1850s.

Bringing life-giving water back will allow amazing wildlife to break out from each nature reserve and spread across the Great Fen.

 It will help lock carbon into the ground in wonderful wet peatlands. And it will scale-up pioneering wet farming techniques that can give fen farming a future.

If you would still like to give, your support will go towards the wider project - developing a model of wet farming to prevent loss of peat soils, while locking in carbon, cleaning water and supporting wildlife.