Managing tenants and coexisting with wildlife – The Property Chronicle
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Managing tenants and coexisting with wildlife The beetles and the birds of farmyard living

The Farmer

This article was originally published on 11 April 2018.

I received a text message recently from the tenant of our converted granary. It requested that I telephone her immediately, there was a problem requiring my urgent attention. On calling, she relayed that in the middle of the night she had lain in bed listening to a gentle tapping noise, which she had quite correctly identified as a Deathwatch beetle. Most buildings over 150 years old have them, I explained, and we shouldn’t panic. They eat the rotten outside of the wood, so the ceiling should not fall in (yet). All the buildings on the farm are home to them, I said, in a show of comradeship.






The Farmer

About Martin Hole

Martin Hole

Martin Hole farms at Montague on the wetlands of the Pevensey Levels in East Sussex. Part family-owned and part rented, the 300ha organic enterprise provides a home to about 150 cattle and nearly 2,000 head of sheep, with a small diversification into residential property and a fledgling green tourism business. A former RSPB UK Lapwing Champion, Martin remains fascinated by the provision of wilderness whilst trying to keep the farm intact for three daughters.

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