Welcome to our September newsletter 

Turkeys

It’s been an excellent season for the turkeys so far, the dry weather has meant they are outside lots. In particular first thing in the morning and late afternoon normally every single turkey is outside. During the middle of the day or if it’s hot they tend to drift in and out of the shed. I feel very satisfied if I walk past and they’re all in the paddock, if the habitat wasn’t right for them, they’d stay in. They need plenty of cover and foraging opportunities to encourage an outdoor life – letting them out from a very early age also helps I’m sure.

Never before has the end of hay making and the start of turkey season (which is mid-September) joined together! Lindsay has been flat out working on website revisions so the online shop once again works seamlessly. The last thing to be finalised is always the prices and it’s a very hard decision to make. I’m well aware our turkeys aren’t cheap – that has never been the aim. The aim has always been to produce a turkey with the highest possible eating qualities and best welfare standards but in an ecologically and financially sustainable way. However, I don’t want our turkeys to be too costly and therefore not accessible, quality food should be affordable to everyone.

I’m expecting most of our costs to go up by more than 10% (wages, packaging, chicks…) but the scary one is the feed which makes up nearly half the total cost, this has gone up to me by almost 50%. Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom, with 600 turkeys we are just at the scale where we can invest in things that may keep costs down. Last year we added a bulk feed bin which means 4 tonnes a time is delivered. This saves £50 a tonne over the bagged feed cost and my back also appreciates it! The year before we added a wax tank to help with plucking, this speeds up plucking and keeps our wage bill down but it is hungry for electric.

This year we hope to invest in a gadget to remove the large flight feathers during plucking, again it will speed us up but it’s mainly to mechanise this part of the job which is very skilful and physically demanding. The gadget to do this is the wrong side of £3000 last time I checked but I have to invest if I want to slowly expand and I'm sure our wonderful staff will be grateful to not have such sore fingers from manual pulling! All things considered, the price of our turkeys will probably have to go up by around 15% and I hope most of our customers will still feel it represents value for money for a quality Christmas treat.

Turkeys will once again be going on sale on the 1st of October on our website. We will send out an email as soon as we release them for sale so no need to be glued to the website and also don't panic! It is highly unlikely we will be selling out within the first weeks but ordering early will ensure we still have all sizes available and you can tick the most important thing off the Christmas jobs list!

The last Days of Summer

I must admit I’d never heard of Moredon Meadows but we are now well acquainted. The first I knew of it was when I had a call from Andy, CEO of North Central Swindon Parish Council. He had seen the hay making work we undertake for West Swindon Parish Council and wondered if I would take a look at this site. Soon after, I visited the meadows which are made up of 3 fields squeezed in between Nova Hreod School, Akers Way and the old Moredon power station. On the first trip I walked around with Neil Pullen of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, he told me of all the amazing plants and animals which thrive on the meadow, the problem was that neither he or the Parish Council could find anyone to cut hay on the area and as a result the grass had remained uncut for at least 6 years. In this time the wildflowers were starting to get choked out by vigorous grasses and Meadow Sweet, Bramble, Blackthorn and Hawthorn were moving in – scrub was taking over. Scrub is a fantastic habitat but since 97% of hay meadows have been lost in the last 80 years and the site has brilliant hedges and scrub thickets, maintaining the fields as meadows was the target. Just one problem, over the years all the vehicle access points into, and between the fields had completely grown over and if we were ever going to squeeze the large kit needed to bale the 14 acre site in some scrub and tree cutting was going to be needed!

As soon as an entry point had been cut through and a window of fine weather had been spotted we got ready and mowed. It was already well into September and combined with the fact that it hadn’t been mown for 6 years, meant the grass was very strawy and course, it was never going to make good hay but since we had already fed plenty of our winter reserves due to the drought it was worth trying.

We had one irritating un-forecast shower after mowing but a week of dry breezy weather with some glimpses of the sun allowed us to turn it 3 times to get it bone dry before rowing up and baling. The end result was 121 (7 wagon loads) of round bales and given the time of year and quality of grass we were all pleasantly pleased with the end product.

As with all of these types of projects the first year is the hardest, but now we have access sorted out I hope we can work with the Parish Council again, I’m sure Wiltshire Wildlife Trust will advise on the optimum date to cut. Cutting sometime in late July gives the flowers time to set seed and produces a better quality of hay. 

One thing we can’t change unfortunately is the 11 round-a-bouts each way on the short route between the farm and the meadow and given that operation involved 15 return trips I’ve now had quite enough tractor and round-a-bout fun to last me a long time!

Lindsay’s Shepherds update

You may remember last month Graham the teaser (vasectomised ram) was put in with the ewes to get them in the mood for love. After 2 weeks his work was done and he was replaced by the breeding rams to start producing next year’s lamb crop. We are now 14 days into the first cycle, which is on average 17 days, and have 2 left to tup out of 37 ewes. Fingers crossed they all hold and I shall have a very busy couple of weeks at the beginning of February. I know who has been tupped as the rams wear a thick, coloured, oily paste on their chests and when they mount the ewe they leave the colour on her rump. The colour used in the first cycle is yellow, and after the first cycle I will change it to orange, so I can see if any have repeated. The ram will only re-mount the non-pregnant ewes so I can accurately work out who is going to lamb and when. The rams are in with the ewes for 28 days in total and then go back together for their 11 month holiday!

By using a teaser ram all the ewes should be in the peak of their oestrus cycle and this will mean a much more compact lambing period. Sheep are seasonal breeders, meaning they aren’t in season throughout the year and usually breed when the day length shortens. A few breeds will take the ram earlier including the Oxford and Dorsets. Having a shorter lambing period is much more efficient in terms of feeding, vaccinating and time management and will mean the lambs should all be similar in growth rates by being close in age. It also means Colin (my dog) and I don’t spend too many weeks sleeping in the campervan in the lambing shed although it is my favourite time of the year.

Wildlife

Lots of autumn migrants have been moving through including Yellow Wagtails, Redstarts, Stone Chat, Wheatear and Meadow Pipits. Early September saw our Swallows depart but these were followed by migrants heading through and feasting on the crane flies emerging from the grass. We’ve also had a fantastic flock of 200+ Goldfinch which are glorious to watch in morning or evening light, they’re feasting on the Chicory seed heads which were a bit to stalky for the cows to eat last time they grazed those fields.

In non-bird news I found a Grass Snake skin the other day so it’s great to know they’re around.

This month off the farm

This month I left the farm, not to visit another farm, but to see an exhibition at the London Design Festival. It’s a long story but several years ago 2 fashion experts were trying to source leather with a known provenance and they discovered there is virtually no traceability in the leather industry. Top brands buy leather but know nothing about the cows or the system in which they’re produced. For Sarah Grady and Alice Robinson this wasn’t good enough so they set about working out a traceable supply chain with animals from certified Pasture for Life farms like ours. It turned out to be surprisingly difficult because none of the parties in the supply chain are used to identifying and keeping any hides separate. Farmers, abattoirs, hide collectors and tanneries all have to be on board with the project to ensure traceability. The first hides for the project were from our cows and other Pasture for Life farms who use Broomhalls abattoir at Eastington and were collected and salted by us (a job that is not as bad as it sounds). The salt preserves the hide until enough are accumulated for the tannery. Once we had enough, they were taken to Thomas ware & Sons Tannery in Bristol, one of the last commercial bark tanneries in the country. Most other tanneries use a horrible cocktail of nasty chemicals to tan quickly but oak tanning is a very slow and more natural process. Once tanned and sorted the leather was sold to various businesses from small artisans to large fashion companies. The culmination of this project was a display of magnificent items made from fully traceable leather. Items on show included handmade leather chairs and boots, as well as a Mullbery handbag and a selection of New Balance trainers. I’m sure more hides will enter this project enabling manufacturers to begin using traceable leather from sustainable farming systems.

Andy and I travelled to Shoreditch with Rob, the slaughterman from the abattoir, on a mixture of bikes and trains. It’s been a long time since I’d cycled in London, the cycle super highway was an astonishing experience – I’d never seen so many bikes, it felt like bikes are driving the cars out of central London. It was fun mixing with the fashion designers, I’m not sure many had met a farmer and none had met a slaughterman before!            

Pop-up farm shop - Saturday 1st October 10am - noon

The next Pop-up Shop is this Saturday the 1st of October, it’s going to be particularly exciting because as well as all our normal amazing produce we’ll have honey from our own on farm beehives and we’ll be celebrating apples! I’m going to try and round up/scrump some interesting varieties from local trees that you’ll never find in any supermarket. If you have or know of a tasty tree do get in touch. Lindsay will also be test driving our new till system which she’s very excited about!

This month, the shop fits in with our beef butchery which means if you pre-order one of our beef boxes from www.andyrummingsbeef.co.uk you can pick it up at the shop.

We will also have the last batch of our Oxford Down lamb and mutton as well as individual beef cuts in the chill counter.

Plus, an exciting range of hand knitted items made from our own Oxford Down wool, balls of yarn and woolly hat kits - Perfect for pressies!

As the shop coincides with the launch of online turkey sales for the year, one of the shop staff will also be wearing our turkey costume. If you’ve not seen this, it alone is worth coming to the shop to see. We’ll draw straws to see who gets to sweat for 2 hours!