AN ORGANIC smallholder from Bassingbourn has won a £2,500 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust award to help develop his business. Simon Saggers, 38, has been awarded the scholarship to improve his hurdle-making, hedge-laying, and woodland management skills.
AN ORGANIC smallholder from Bassingbourn has won a £2,500 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust award to help develop his business.
Simon Saggers, 38, has been awarded the scholarship to improve his hurdle-making, hedge-laying, and woodland management skills.
The award will mean he can offer customers a traditional range of woodland services from his Guilden Gate smallholding.
Mr Saggers grew up in Bassingbourn, where his family have farmed since the 1600s.
When his father retired, Mr Saggers set up the Guilden Gate smallholding on five acres of the farm.
Since then it has gone from strength-to-strength, producing a variety of farm and woodland products for customers.
"Generally we have been working to re-establish the type of smallholding that used to be part of life in every village, but that has sadly all but disappeared in south Cambridgeshire," he said.
"It will be wonderful to spend time learning and developing my hedge-laying and hurdle-making skills and I hope in the future this will mean I can go onto explore other woodland management opportunities as the Guilden Gate woodland matures.
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