About
Sustainable living at Rails Farm smallholding in rural Dorset near Sherborne
Welcome to our sustainable smallholding and education hub. My name is Christoph and my wife’s name is Gaby. The logo on the left summarises what we believe in, i.e. sustainable living. The world will be a better place for us, our children and all the next generations when we live sustainably in harmony with our planet.
We have only one planet needing our protection from exploitation, and would like our farm to play a supporting role.
Our Past
My wife and I started working in small local environmental groups forty years ago back in Germany to support sustainability. We planted trees, built bat boxes and helped toads, salamanders and newts to safely cross roads to their breeding ponds and back. Back then we were already very conscious about the environment and tried to live in the most sustainable way possible. Both of us went through many years of academic life at Universities in Germany and in this country searching for the meaning of life.
My wife was doing research work in botany, biochemistry and immunology. I worked in aeronautical research, blood flow modelling and cloud physics before I trained to become a teacher in Science and Maths.
Now
This is our lovely 18th century farm cottage. Among many other skills Gaby can paint really well – as you can see. I wish I could do that.
In August 2013, in a different country, we were lucky enough to buy our smallholding. Now we could finally put all our ideas of sustainable living into practice. Living sustainably according to organic principles and returning our land to nature without pesticides or herbicides or any artificial fertilisers. Only the good stuff will touch our soil.
Rails Farm Ethos – LebensZiel – Sustainable living
What is most important in life? To be happy and healthy, coming back to the logo on top of the page. Hence our Rails Farm Ethos or in German ‘LebensZiel’ is to pursue this principle. However, happiness mustn’t be selfish, it should rather be a positive and sustainable contribution to our society. As a small scale farmer, I mean respecting the land and the livestock on our smallholding.
We want our sheep to have a good quality of life. They can grow slowly without being pushed by hormones or other drugs. Obviously we give them medical help if necessary but only to ensure they are healthy and happy.
We have stopped breeding Shetlands but keep our flock for the wool. And of course because they are so lovely and tame.
From the sustainability point of view breeding animals is a very questionable thing to do. The amount of land required for our 22 sheep and 4 alpacas is enormous. We need about 5 acres. How many hundreds of kilos of potatoes, cauliflowers or other vegetables could we grow on that space instead? The proportion of required land for meat production compared to vegetable growth in kilocalories is almost 100:1. Please see the article of ‘our world in data‘. The impact of feeding animals for our mass consumption of meat is obvious.
Sheep are, after beef, the second highest waste of land. Sheep farming never was and will never be an economically sensible business. It only survived due to heavy subsidies. One can only wonder, why it is still happening. Maybe because that is how everyone expects the countryside to look, or because so many farmers’ livelihood depends on it. Of course this needs to be considered. The government needs to help to make these changes. We cannot and must not continue with this land wasting procedure. We are not the only creatures on this planet. The others have been on this planet far longer than us. They have a far stronger right to live and prosper.
Returning land to a sustainable condition
It is a no brainer to move in another direction. To repair nature and to return land to its natural state. We planted hundreds of trees, established new hedges, laid old hedges to increase their density, planted flowers for pollinators, established fruit bushes and trees and dug a natural pond. All of this to hopefully help insects, birds and other wildlife to come back. We are seeing an increase in butterflies, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, moths, dragon flies and other insects on our land. This means much more food for birds. We had two clutches of swallows last year in our barn, plenty of robins, more and more sparrows, blackbirds, wrens, all sorts of tits and wagtails and gold finches. Read all about this in our regular blog.
Gaby has massively increased our vegetable production. Now we can not only fill our three chest freezers for our winter food supply but also sell a surplus on a weekly country market in Sturminster Newton. What a good life!
University lecturer
As mentioned above, I worked in research. I tutored and lectured first year undergraduates at City University in London. During my PhD research work in Mechanical Engineering between 1995 and 2000. For the next three years I worked as a post doc research fellow at Reading University in Cloud Physics. 2003 was the year for planning family and future and a full time permanent position was necessary.
Retrained to a Maths and Science teacher
Hence, I trained as a Science/Maths teacher at Henrietta Barnett Girls School in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London. Since then I worked as a Maths/Science teacher and a Head of Physics for twenty years at several schools. I am currently teaching Maths at a local school in Dorchester. I love Maths and Science and enjoy teaching and tutoring at all levels, primary school to A-levels and degree level, as a Maths, Science and Physics Tutor.