Welcome to our December newsletter 

Our sheep have been having hay and water delivered to them on these very cold mornings

Turkeys

Well, what a tricky year this has been for our turkey business.

Our turkey year begins in February when we place our order for the poults. We decide how many we want to rear and also predict what sizes people will want to order. The turkeys are all the same bronze breed but are different strains so that they grow to different oven ready sizes at the same age. They arrive in the middle of June at one day old and are cared for by Chris all their lives. They are then processed entirely on the farm in our 5* rated butchery, never having to undergo the stress of travelling or being handled by someone they don’t know.

We always like to keep our newsletters interesting, light-hearted and honest, but unfortunately we, like many other small free-range turkey producers are struggling this year. Sales were really strong when we launched the online ordering on the 1st October, but media coverage suggesting there would be a shortage of fresh turkeys has perhaps led potential customers to buy a frozen turkey from the supermarket to avoid the worry that they wouldn’t get a fresh one. The compulsory housing order from DEFRA was in our opinion needed, but a lack of explanation to the general public hasn’t helped. Our turkeys had to be housed for the final month but from the middle of July until the beginning of November were free ranging in our fruit orchard. Our turkeys are still classed as free-range, as they must have spent at least half their lives outside, which is all that is required to give them the free-range status. Many other turkeys may have only just started to venture out but ours enjoyed ¾ of their lives outdoors before poultry lockdown.

For the first time it’s looking like we will have some turkeys left unsold, which of course won’t be wasted, but if you know anyone who hasn’t yet ordered please send them our way. Also please remember our turkeys for Christmas are fresh (not previously frozen as many supermarket ‘fresh’ ones will be this year) so can be frozen at home, if you would like to order an extra turkey for another occasion please visit the online shop. We will also have turkey legs available at collection on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd December 10am – 6pm. Anyone is more than welcome to pop along to our collection days, even if you haven’t ordered a turkey, as we will have our pop-up farm shop set up in our barn.

We luckily don’t have all our eggs in one basket (pardon the pun!) and turkeys aren’t our sole business. This year we can chalk it up as unfortunate and less than ideal. We do however have one more week until the big day and I do wonder it there’ll be a late surge if the supermarkets struggle with supply.

Pop-up Farm Shop during turkey collection - Thursday 22nd & Friday 23rd December 10am - 6pm

Turkey collection from the farm will again be a drive through event but with the option to pop into the barn for a mulled wine and minced pie and browse our pop-up shop. We will have fresh turkey legs, cheeses, our own beef in the freezer, milk and butter, bakery goods, jams and chutneys and more! Plus Woollen hand knitted hats and gifts made from our own sheep's wool and handmade seaglass jewellery made by our Christmas Elf!

Anyone is welcome to pop-along even if you haven't ordered a turkey, just follow the signs (Strict one way system in place) and let our Christmas Elf know you are just visiting the shop.

Wildlife

Highlights this month have been a regular Snipe visiting a small patch of wet grass where I have encouraged a ditch to contain some standing water, 6 Teal spotted on several occasions in the brook and 2 probable sighting of a Barn Owl around the buildings. I say probable because it’s just been a glimpse of white floating through the edge of the torch beam. After Christmas I’ll reposition one of our security cameras so I can try and spot him. Its 20 years since I last saw the only a Barn Owl I’d ever seen around the buildings so it’s pretty special if we have one about. I had a nest box in stock so last week we fitted one in the top of the barn. Fingers crossed!

I’ll try and do a full write up of the wildlife year for the next newsletter

This year off the farm!

Last January I set myself the goal to visit an inspiring farm each month. I wanted to see what other farmers were doing and what I could learn from each of them.  I didn’t manage every month but 9 out of 12 is ok.

The farms visited ranged from 3500 acres of re-wilding in Sussex to a city farm with barely a couple of acres, in the centre of Bristol. The produce grown on the farms varied too, at Coombshead farm in Devon it was water voles for re-introductions, being farmed very differently from Matt and Laura’s Hereford cattle I saw grazing at Sherborne, and Rob’s Angus cows at Kimerton – although both are herbivorous ecosystem engineers that their owners rely on for a living. At two of the visits it was people being ‘farmed’! Trevayne in Pembrokeshire (my international visit) were farming campers, while in Bristol it was the client’s mental health and other needs which were being nurtured.

I saw also the path farmers had taken to get where they are today. The Knepp Estate had gone from intensive agriculture to wild savannah and scrub. While over in Oxfordshire, the Francis brothers at Paddock Farm had gone from a litter of piglets to a thriving butcher’s shop supplying pork, beef, eggs, tomatoes and anything else they could breed or grow, into London restaurants. 

So this leads me to wondering what all these farms have in common…..

Well, they were all run by, or had a significant number, of young employees and given that the average of a UK farmer is 59 that can only be a good thing.

The other point of note is that all the farms were doing multiple things, all of which would be thought of as somewhere between odd and completely crazy by a conventional or traditional farmer. These farmers are all doing something different, enjoying it and being successful.

The farms I visited were made up as I went through the year, I only had two that I specifically wanted to see - one was Knepp for being the home of re-wilding in England and the other was Woodland Valley Farm in Cornwall, which I failed to get to, but it’s top of the list for 2023 - I can’t wait to get started again!