Oakbrook Community Farm - Agroforestry Open Weekend 2024

We are delighted to be offering a tour of our new agroforestry plantings on Sunday 19th May as part of Agroforestry Open Weekend 2024.

Our farm

Oakbrook Farm is 40 acres of community owned land just outside Stroud. The farm is home to multiple independent social enterprises and between us we grow veg, milk cows, plant trees and offer education and community access. We are organic and biodynamic certified.

The land was bought in 2015 by the Biodynamic Land Trust, who hold the land in trust. It’s leased to Oakbrook Community Benefit Society, who sub-lease to the farming tenants, facilitate infrastructure on the farm, including our new barn and compost toilet, run the Bee Observatory, and manage the Haven Field and Secret Field for community access.

Stroud Micro Dairy are a cooperative running a calf-at-foot dairy. Raw milk, yoghurt and kefir is sold through a CSA system. The cattle live outdoors year round.

ZeroDig has developed a unique vegetable growing system that works with soil biology to produce high volumes of nutrient dense food.

Oakbrook Orchard is an experimental agroforestry system aiming to grow fruit, flowers and community and supply to a CSA membership.

Stroud Community Agriculture is one of the UK’s longest established CSAs, growing vegetables on three different sites around Stroud.

Our agroforestry

Oakbrook is home to many veteran oaks, so there is an element of wood pasture on the land. And over the past four years we’ve been steadily increasing the number of trees on the farm.

In 2020 we put in a pilot agroforestry planting of two rows of apple trees in a formerly arable field. Since then we’ve planted around another 150 apples, pears and plums, so that we now have 9 rows of fruit trees across the whole field. The dairy cows graze between the tree rows. We grafted most of our own trees, and have had many adventures with tree guards.

Last year we were grateful for support from the Tree Council, which enabled us to put in a line of willow and poplar for tree hay along one of the farm tracks, the beginnings of a basketry willow plantation in the Haven Field, a new hazel coppice to be managed for woodchip production, and a diverse shelterbelt at the southern end of the orchard field.

This year we’ve had more support from the Tree Council and we’re working on expanding and diversifying the hazel coppice, completing the basket willow plantation, and putting in an additional mixed shelterbelt along a contour line across the valley.

Here are some photos of what we do:

how to find us

You will find us at Oakbrook Farm, Painswick Old Road, Stroud, GL6 7QN

agroforestry open weekend 2024

We are offering a farm tour on Sunday 19th May at 3pm. We can show you our new plantings, explain our journey with guarding fruit trees, discuss the benefits of woodchip, and share our plans for harvesting tree hay.

Please book a free place so that we can manage numbers. If this tour books up fast we’ll offer another at a different time over the weekend.

There is a public footpath through the farm, so you are also welcome walk through the farm at any time.

please BOOK A PLACE IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE TOUR

Book a free place via eventbrite here

facilities/refreshments

We have a smart new compost toilet on site with level access, and indoor space for shelter in case of bad weather. We hope to be able to offer tea and cake for a small charge – to be confirmed!

parking/access

The farm is walkable from Stroud town centre, with a footpath leading up from Beeches Green, and another from Uplands.

There is parking on site.

Bear in mind that our friends and neighbours at Good Small Farms, literally just over the road, are also open for Agroforestry Open Weekend on Sunday 19th.