We would like to introduce our most recent Ambassador, Bridget Murphy from Co.Sligo. We are delighted to include Bridget in our network of Farming For Nature Ambassadors. These individuals have been chosen in acknowledgement of their long-standing commitment and contribution to farming for nature on their land and in their community
Bridget has been living on and farming mountain land for nearly 20 years. She would be the 8th generation she knows farming the land. She prefers to practice agroecology over agriculture or agribusiness and uses her farm as a case study on issues ranging from governance of the commons, to using native ponies and bees to diversify grazing / forage regimes on the hills. She keeps a flock of Cheviot sheep, four hill ponies and an apiary of native black bees, plants in copses of native woodlands and maintains watercourses and streams. She builds dry stone walls and keeps a few acres under traditional hay meadow. Her land has a healthy wildlife population that includes pine marten, badgers, foxes and lots of hares. The birdlife is prolific and there are small trout in the streams. Heath and blanket bog characterise the higher land parcels, and for the last decade she has been working on rewetting sections of the land; she sees the value in the allowing the natural habitat to return and recognises the need to keep the carbon stores locked in the ground. She is a long time land rights activist from her early days fighting the Apartheid system in South Africa and claiming land back for rural black communities, she is also a long time ecofeminist.
Bridget was nominated in 2019 and given the role of ambassador in July 2020. More information on Bridget’s farm can be seen here. Listen to Bridget Ask the Farmer Q&A session earlier this month here.
[Due to travel restrictions her plaque will be delivered to her in due course]
