Meet The Team

I have been connected to East Shallowford since Elizabeth Braund raised the funds to purchase it in 1976. I first worked with Elizabeth when I arrived as a volunteer to Providence House Youth and Community Centre in Battersea, south London in 1973. So I was involved at the experimental stage of the ‘Lung for the City’ project, when Elizabeth and Rosemary rented Bag Park Manor, Widecombe, in 1975 to pilot the scheme.

In subsequent years, as the Senior Youth Worker at Providence House, I have played a central part in organising the groups from London that came for residential stays to East Shallowford. I was one of the first trustees of the Shallowford Trust, and during the last few years I have been privileged to play an increasing role in developing the partnership between Providence and Shallowford, between town and country. All my family, Susan, and our three children have enjoyed, helped and ‘farmed’ at ESF.

I have worn down many minibus tyres over thousands of miles down the A303 over the years, and these visits have consistently been one of the most rewarding aspects of our work with young people and families in London. Despite the recent loss of our minibus, by hook or by crook, we will be returning again and again.

Debbie was appointed manager of the Shallowford Trust in February 2014.

Debbie graduated in Environmental Biology in 1979 and started teaching Biology in 1980. In 1989, as a Head of Biology in Plymouth, she left teaching in main stream education, to buy a small farm in Hennock, Devon and there develop Longlands Field Studies Centre, with her husband and parents.

Following this successful venture she established an environmental team at Heatree Activity Centre, Manaton, working as their Lead Instructor in Environmental Education from 2001 until leaving in 2014 to take up her current role.

She has developed many outdoor activities to inspire and educate young people in the exploration and understanding of the outdoors, sharing them with young people of all ages and backgrounds.

She has trained many instructors in Environmental Education activities developing an inspirational team. She is now living at the farm with her husband Alastair, working with the Trustees to direct and manage the future development of the work that Elizabeth Braund and Rosemary Bird began.

Shallowford is just a mile from Widecombe-in-the-Moor with its beautiful granite church, and where I am the Team Vicar. Widecombe is part of the Moorland Team which covers parishes over much of Dartmoor, and includes Ashburton. I met Elizabeth Braund the day I was licensed as Vicar in 2011, and have been inspired by her vision ever since. She invited me to become a Trustee in 2012.

I’ve arrived here after a varied career – spending 17 years working for a forestry and landscaping company – Fountain Forestry – with 8 of those years living on Dartmoor. I then had a second career as a director of a major Internet company (Easynet). Since my ordination in 2001 I have been combining ministry with running my own IT business which is partly involved in charity fund-raising activity.

I love Dartmoor life and am very interested the moorland flora and fauna (flowers, birds and butterflies mostly!), as well as its farming history and archaeology. I enjoy a bit of trout-fishing and gardening and I’m learning bell-ringing. But foremost I love working in the moorland communities.

I am recently retired from teaching in Germany with Service Children’s Education and now live in Wellington, Somerset.

I met Elizabeth Braund through The Braund Society ( a family history group) and was immediately impressed and intrigued with her life story.I offered to help sort and store her huge archive of photographs and ephemera which I have thoroughly enjoyed doing.Beyond that, I am involved in voluntary work – mainly with SSAFA and OXFAM and of course the continued progress and success of East Shallowford Farm.

Serena Walcot works in the office as an administrator and cooks for the groups as well as taking part in most of the activities with the visitors.  She first came to Shallowford in 1992 when she joined Elizabeth Braund’s weekly Bible study group. She helped out with groups from time to time when ever possible and eventually came to work for Elizabeth in 2005.

Prior to this Serena has worked as the matron and manager of a Care Home for the elderly, cooked in a restaurant  and worked as a physio assistant in a special needs school.

have lived at Broadaford, the neighbouring farm to East Shallowford, since I was six months old, and knew Elizabeth Braund and Rosemary Bird since their arrival in the mid 1970’s.

I worked on the family farm for 10 years after leaving school, and for the last 25 years have worked off the farm in the red meat industry, whilst maintaining a practical and strategic involvement at Broadaford. My family has always supported Shallowford and I had the good fortune of sharing many conversations with Elizabeth during the later stages of her life, which enabled me to develop an understanding of her vision for Shallowford, and her determination that it should continue beyond her lifetime. As such I was delighted to be asked to become a Trustee in 2015, and hope that my local agricultural experience, combined with a very commercial day job, will bring an objective view combined with a very specific dynamic to the trust.

I have lived at Broadaford all my life, and after completing my education at Widecombe Primary School and South Dartmoor Community College, I studied an Agriculture Apprenticeship at Bicton Agricultural College. I have now worked on the family farm for 7 years where I am constantly striving to improve our technical efficiency through enhanced grassland management and livestock genetics, whilst further developing the management of our species rich wetlands. I have participated in the South West Healthy Livestock Initiative, sit on the steering group of the Dartmoor Hill Farm Project, and am involved with Widecombe Fair.

When not farming I am a very enthusiastic Young Farmer. I am currently a County Officer for Devon YFC, and for the last 4 years I have organised a group of about 70 Devon Young Farmers to share my other passion of skiing.

I feel that Shallowford has so much to offer in demonstrating where food originates from and how it is produced, and I look forward to sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm with the visiting groups.

My name is Johnny Walker.  I live in Bovey Tracey, approx 30 minutes from East Shallowford Farm. I live with my wife, Sally, and 2 teenagers, Seb and Olivia.

I work in the law courts in Exeter as the county court manager, but have also a background in primary school teaching.

I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm in my teenage years and loved the outdoor life it provided.

We have had connections with the ESF since 2015, volunteering, farm sitting, and involvement at various fundraising events

Involvement with ESF brings together many aspects of my background and experience. It is an honour to not only be close at hand, to roll my sleeves up and help practically, but also to be involved in decision making, to ensure ESF provides the greatest of opportunities for youngsters to appreciate all aspects of life in a living and outdoor environment.

I first went to East Shallowford via Providence House around 1982, ended up staying at the farm for about 6weeks, that was Elizabeth and Rosemary’s open house style, back then!. I was able to help on the farm using my carpentry skills, I felt I had found a place and people I wanted to work with, they were visionary and were really doing something. Not long after, I went to Providence House and worked with Robert and the team for about 12 years, developing a carpentry workshop and training scheme,and kept working on the Farm throughout ,on various projects.

It is now a great privilege to be part of the Trust, helping to guide and lead this very valuable work .

On a serious note:

For the last twenty four years, I have worked overseas starting as a barefoot community worker covering several hundred miles on a bicycle, then moving to places as diverse as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Sudan, the Balkans and Zambia to manage large complex teams in war torn Iraq and Syria. Always working with local teams at community level we aimed to identify and articulate the root causes of problems and implement innovative solutions. With years of strategic planning experience, advocacy, donor liaison and fund raising including representation and advocacy, lobbying at local and central government, EU, UN and charity sector level, I have enjoyed the challenges of leadership. Inspiring and motivating teams, finding resourceful solutions to ensure the development of collaborative partnerships, programming and community based development projects enabled me to learn skills to develop essential monitoring and evaluation tools and improve internal organisational systems.

On a friendly note:

Having been born onto a mixed farm where a very generous, placatory cat served as my scarf and protected me from a highly peck-ish cockerel, I was able to travel around the world, coming home as a contract shepherd and lamber to save enough money for the next adventure. Finishing a masters in Political Ecology I gained a job as a volunteer in an area of intense insecurity in North East Uganda, where the local community taught me how to survive only on locally grown food, whilst we experimented with new vegetables, rabbits, tree nurseries and mud stoves to reduce the amount of wood needed for cooking.

Living on the very edge of the moors, we were introduced to Debbie and Shallowford in 2014, when my son’s three India Runner ducklings needed a home before we headed off to Iraq. We met at church many times and were asked to look after the pigs for a weekend, bumping into many of the locals who we discovered we already knew or ‘nearly knew’ through shared friends.

Listening to the stories people share on the wild moorland walks or around the hot crackling fire, watching people’s delight as the wriggly piglet is finally weighed and another pile of dung is thrown on the heap, will be a privilege. Exploring, learning and sharing with the team to bring together all the experiences of modern production on the ancient farm will be fun!

I look forward to meeting you all and leading the Shallowford Team as it ventures into the next phase.

I come to the role of Warden / Housekeeper with a huge variety of experience gained over a long life lived in Devon. My initial training after school was a Diploma in Institutional Management (now retitled a degree in Hospitality !). After a brief experience of marriage I brought up my two children as a single parent – a really good training for the rest of my life. As the children were coming to the end of their schooling I felt called to do a B.Ed. with a view to teaching children with special needs. God had other plans and I became the Young Families Worker at St Thomas Methodist Church in Exeter which led rather neatly into my becoming a Methodist Local Preacher – yet another traning! One of my earliest memories is of Christmas with the grandparents who lived at Haytor, so Dartmoor really is in my blood.  I hadn’t realised just how privileged I was to live in this part of the country until I met a Mum from Providence House. I’ve been a volunteer at Shallowford for the past three years helping mostly in the kitchen but now …  God has great plans and it is wonderful to be able to play a small part in them.