It’s over a year since Storm Arwen swept through the valley leaving a trail of destruction, and we are still tidying up after it. The top two-thirds of the giant ash tree we are bringing back to the farm today was blown off by that storm. The recent frozen weather allowed us to get to the remote location without the tractor getting bogged in peaty soil, and now the trunk is to be taken to our local sawmill to be dried, and eventually made into floorboards for our farmhouse renovation. The tree stood in a “relic” or “ghost” hedgerow at our abandoned farm, Low Park. These wispy relics of hedgerows with overgrown trees show where field boundaries used to be, before the farm was abandoned 50 years ago when the M6 was built. Now the trunk has been moved, the relic hedgerow can be double fenced and planted up with tree whips this winter. One by one, these tiny whips are reviving the landscape. The hedgerows will provide wildlife habitat, sequester carbon, and enable us to rotationally graze the area more efficiently with our sheep and cows. Regularly moving the animals and allowing the field to rest helps to build soils. Eventually, all our fields at Low Park will be surrounded by thick hedges or strips of woodland. The fields themselves will be like woodland clearings. Already we are seeing more frequent wildlife visitors, including red squirrels, hares and deer. Nearby, our newly engineered “suite of ponds” is full of water, and cascading from one pond to another down the hillside. These were put in with the help of Ullswater Community Interest Company, a not-for-profit organisation that helps local farmers provide flood mitigation and improve habitats. Farmers all over Cumbria are benefiting from organisations like this, or from local rivers trusts, to make small changes on their farms that add up to landscape scale change. I’d like to do more, to move faster, to put in more wetland areas and hedgerows, but work like this is expensive for a small farm, even with help. As I drive home on the quad bike, following the tractor, great walls of rain blow through the valley and into my face. I am soaked to the skin, but feel alive and rejuvenated as the landscape comes slowly back to life.