Farming by observation: Life below the surface at Lomas Farm
In the fifth instalment of my twelve part Indie Farmer series, supported by the Lund Trust and the High Weald National Landscape, I visited Lomas Farm in Sandhurst, Kent to spend a day with farmer David Cornforth, to understand how his passion for healthy soils and low input farming guides the management on his 120 acre farm.
Lomas Farm sits on the heavy soils of the Kent High Weald, where subtle changes in ground conditions shape how the land is managed. Some fields hold moisture well into the season, while others dry more quickly, and those differences influence everything from grazing decisions to winter housing.
For David Cornforth, understanding these variations has become central to how he farms.
He has worked this land for more than thirty years, though not always in the way he does today.
“We used to milk cows on an intensive system,” he said. “Just expand, expand — that was the theory — but money was never working.”
Like many livestock farmers of that era, the direction of travel was clear: increase scale, push output, improve efficiency. Yet the further that path stretched, the less appealing it became — financially as well as practically.
A period farming in New Zealand provided distance and a chance to reassess. On returning home, he began restocking with beef cattle and gradually reshaping both the farm and his approach to management.
“I just got into the soil and finding out how to farm without spending money, basically. And that’s become a bit of a passion.”
Learning to See Again
Some changes on a farm arrive with machinery. Others begin with noticing something small.
For Cornforth, it started with grass.
Managing a modest number of cattle meant moving fences regularly, and somewhere in that routine he realised the farm was growing more forage than he was using.
“The grass is growing everywhere… and I found I didn’t need to house them anything like the seven months that I was previously doing.”
Curiosity followed. Books were read, ideas tested, mistakes quietly absorbed into the learning. But one moment still stands out — hearing soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham speak at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in 2011.
Until then, soil had largely meant chemistry.
“Get the pH right, get the phosphate levels right, pile on the nitrogen… grow the grass. It’s not like that at all.”
What lay beneath the surface, he realised, was not inert but alive.
The farm began to change accordingly.
Fields Are Never Uniform
Today the grazing platform is divided with electric fencing, allowing cattle to move frequently (often two or three times a day) while giving grass the time it needs to recover. Larger fields have been split into corridors; infrastructure is simple but deliberate.
What becomes obvious, walking the farm with David, is that uniformity is largely an illusion.
“The soil is different everywhere,” he said. “And I think the old boys knew this — that’s when they put the hedges in, where the soil changed.”
Many of those hedges were removed after the war in pursuit of efficiency. Yet their logic still lingers in the land.
Observation, he believes, matters more than prescription.
“It’s all about observation, observation, observation… Why is that doing that today when it didn’t do it yesterday?”
There is no sense of ideology in how he speaks — only attentiveness.
The Spade Matters More Than the Tractor
Ask what advice he would offer farmers curious about this approach and he pauses only briefly.
“Learn to observe… observe your soil and question why it’s doing what it’s doing.”
Then comes a line that feels quietly definitive:
“It’s the most important tool you’ve got on the farm — digging the soil, counting worms, looking at the roots.”
Compaction, he suggests, is often treated as a mechanical problem when it is just as frequently biological — a sign that soil life is no longer performing its work.
Even smell becomes a diagnostic tool.
“If it smells rotten… those compounds in the soil are basically killing everything.”
It is a way of farming that demands presence rather than horsepower.
Grazing, Then Waiting
The system now in place is deceptively simple: graze cattle tightly, move them on, and allow the pasture to recover fully — then keep resting it as long as possible.
If grass appears ready, he often doubles the rest period.
The reasoning lies underground. As plants mature, they release more stable exudates through their roots, feeding microbial communities and improving soil structure.
“The microbes are like us. They need oxygen. They need water.”
These processes are mostly invisible, yet their effects accumulate slowly — better aggregation, improved infiltration, greater resilience in wet and dry periods alike.
It is farming measured less in weeks than in years.
Carrying Grass Into Winter
One of the more noticeable shifts has been the ability to stockpile pasture for the colder months. Mature grass forms a protective mat, allowing fresh growth to push through while helping soils withstand wetter conditions.
“That’s the only way you can cut down costs… cut down your housing costs.”
In favourable seasons, cattle have been housed for as little as six weeks — a significant departure from the longer winters once considered unavoidable on heavy ground.
The economics are straightforward, but the deeper shift is philosophical: working with seasonal growth rather than compensating for it.
Stepping Away from the Machinery Race
Lomas Farm runs around forty-five suckler cows, with total cattle numbers rising to well over a hundred head through the summer before stores are sold.
Yet the striking detail is what is not here.
“I’ve got very little machinery… a tractor that hasn’t turned a wheel for a year.”
Rather than chase higher stocking rates through purchased inputs, the focus remains on keeping costs low enough that the system sustains itself.
“I could probably push it higher… but I wouldn’t be any better off.”
It is a quiet refusal of the idea that productivity must always escalate.
Farming With Nature
Past attempts at arable cropping left their mark. Within two seasons, he believes the soil biology had been badly damaged.
Looking back now, the lesson feels obvious.
“You’ve got to farm with nature, not with what the government pays.”
Signs of Life Returning
Spend enough time focusing on soil and you begin to notice what follows. Birdlife has increased. Invertebrates too. A neighbour keeps informal records from his kitchen window, logging species that might once have passed unseen.
“Yeah, absolutely,” David said when asked whether biodiversity has improved.
Some recent soil surveys taken on his farm revealed a carbon organic matter of over 10 percent.
Even now, decades into this shift, he continues experimenting — recently trialling a biological product to accelerate fungal development.
“I’m impatient,” he admitted with a smile. “I want to see the ground improve more and more.”
Looking Ahead
At sixty-four, retirement is a practical consideration, though not an easy one.
“I couldn’t bear to sell the ground and watch someone just trash it.”
Like many farms, succession remains uncertain. The stresses of conventional systems were visible to the next generation, and perhaps understandably, they chose different paths.
Yet he still believes opportunity exists — particularly for those willing to let go of the idea that bigger automatically means better.
“You’ve got to have a real passion,” he said.
Managing What You Cannot Control
There is a phrase he returns to — that you are not really mastering nature so much as managing its complexity.
It feels an appropriate way to understand Lomas Farm.
Nothing here is especially theatrical. There are no grand claims. Just a steady re-alignment of farming with the living systems beneath it.
Walk the fields long enough and the pattern emerges: graze, rest, watch, adjust.
Pay attention.
Everything else follows.
About the series
This article forms part of a twelve-part Indie Farmer series, supported by the Lund Trust and the High Weald National Landscape, documenting a quiet transformation underway across the region — as farmers adopt regenerative practices, restore habitats and rethink food production for a more resilient future.
