IN many ways, Mark’s heroic sideburns are a metaphor for his approach to farming; admirably unconventional and defiantly old fashioned.

“I get quite a lot of stick to be fair,” he says, as we walk through one of his fields.

“People think I do things slowly and that I should get up earlier and drive a big tractor.”

However, Mark says he’s no good at mornings and has snubbed modern technology in favour of antiquated equipment, which he uses to cultivate a 31-hectare organic farm in Lower Muckleford near Dorchester.

It’s more laborious, but the 29-year-old believes the environmental pay-off is worth it. Although, admittedly, the government funding he receives for practising wildlife friendly farming makes it financially viable.

“Without the grant we wouldn’t be able to do it,” says Mark, as the sun spills across the Dorset countryside.

“It just wouldn’t be financially possible.”

In a bid to halt the decline in biodiversity, the government is paying farmers to make their land more environmentally friendly – giving grants to those who restore natural hedgerows and leave uncultivated areas in their fields.

“They pay £5 per metre for hedge laying,” says Mark, picking up his axe.

“It’s great because it’s keeping an ancient tradition alive while providing a habitat and food for birds and bees.”

Using the axe and plenty of elbow grease, Mark demonstrates the antiquated art; it looks like hard graft as he transforms a sparse row of trees and bushes into a dense hedgerow suitable for nesting birds.

He’s careful not to sever the branches as he weaves them together, but if he does he’ll use them as fuel to heat the bungalow he shares with girlfriend Freya.

I look at the hedgerows he’s already laid; it must have been laborious.

“It was,” he admits, although fortunately he had some help through a scheme called WWOOFING (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), where volunteers from around the world work in exchange for free food and lodgings.

“We’ve had people from New Zealand, Spain, France, America and even a guy from London,” he says.

“It’s a good way of getting fresh faces on the farm and learning about other cultures; the connections we make and people we meet are very interesting.”

Mark and Freya also get the local community involved through land share projects; offering people plots to grow vegetables on in exchange for some of their crop.

“It’s about farming as a community rather than trying to farm on your own,” says Mark, enthusiastically.

“It’s nice to have other people around.” With a little help from volunteers, Mark replanted the farm’s orchards, which had been cleared to make way for cattle and crops.

It’s a familiar story – in the last half a century more than 60 per cent of Britain’s orchards have vanished.

A haven for wildlife, Mark tells me he replanted the trees to provide food for the bees, although I think he has another motive – cider.

“Mmm, that’s smelling good,” he says, lifting the lid on a barrel of home-made cider.

“It’s still got a long way to go, the cold weather has slowed the fermentation down.”

As you’d expect from the romantic traditionalists, Mark and Freya squeeze the apples on a 17th century press.

“It’s pretty high tech,” he jokes, spinning the wheel on the antiquated instrument.

“People were doing the same thing with this in the 1600s.”

So far Mark has planted 1,000 apple trees, which not only keep him in cider but also provide an organic food supply to his bees.

He has approximately 50 hives in total, which pollinate his crops, provide him with honey and produce bucket loads of beeswax, which Mark sells to his mother.

“She buys the wax and processes it into a range of products,” says Mark, who uses the skin care products to protect him from the elements.

“There’s lip balm, hand salve, cuticle butter and wood care products – the range is expanding.”

Despite being advised not to follow the family vocation, Mark seemed destined to be a farmer; his father and grandfather arrived here in the sixties, leasing the farm from a landlord in Dorchester.

“I remember my dad saying you shouldn’t go into farming,” says Mark, who now works alongside his father.

“It’s not the most profitable thing in the world but it’s a nice way of life – having space and the responsibility to look after the countryside.”

The farm comprises 230 hectares in total but Mark concentrates his efforts on the 31-hectare organic plot and the hedgerows, leaving the rest for contractors to take care of.

“They do the ploughing, cultivating, sowing and crop husbandry but we do the harvest,” he says.

“We come in and steal their thunder at the end.”

So what made Mark go organic?

“Bees,” he says. “Keeping bees led to doing the apples and gradually I just adjusted to the bees’ pace of life.

“There are quicker ways of doing things but it’s not as fun – farming is definitely a craft that’s lost its art.”