Author: Emma Cooper

Supporting local businesses

Posted on November 26, 2024 by - Blog

The Woodhorn Business Centre, set in the superb West Sussex countryside, supports a diverse range of businesses. We’re home to more than a dozen companies ranging from management trainers and camper van hire to fabricators and architects.

When our owner John Pitts took over Woodhorn Farm more than 25 years ago, he was keen to explore ways in which to diversify the business. With a set of farm buildings no longer required for agricultural use, the decision was made to convert them, and the business centre was born! We now have over 27,000 square feet of mixed commercial use space, including self-storage units, offices, warehousing and light industrial workshops.

Today we are very proud to be supporting a fantastic group of local companies including:

With easy access to the A27, both Chichester and Bognor Regis nearby and free parking, our commercial spaces offer a stunning rural location with views of the South Downs, plenty of beautiful outside space and our herd of Organic dairy cows often found in nearby fields.

Both of our West Sussex sites in Oving, the Woodhorn Business centre and Ham Farm, are highly sought after but to discuss future availability, please contact Kayleigh Akehurst.

Down On the Farm – November 2024

Posted on November 25, 2024 by - Blog

Reflecting on what’s happening down on the farm, John Pitts, our owner and fourth generation farmer at Woodhorn, shares some thoughts about the farm’s relationship with Organic Herd.

Organic Herd is a farmer owned co-operative of around 100 Organic dairy farmers across the UK and we at Woodhorn have been proud members for the past 25 years. Organic Herd supplies milk to the likes of Yeo Valley, Wyke Farms and Kendal Nutricare baby foods. As well as being the only 100% Organic dairy cooperative in the UK, they are also the only supplier of milk in Europe that come from farms that never use antibiotics.

A year ago Organic Herd launched an own range of speciality cheeses, butters and chocolates. None of these are available in supermarkets simply because the big chains expect to take such a big percentage of the sale price that, after production costs, there would be nothing left to go back to the farmers.

So instead these products are available through delis across the country, stores such as Planet Organic and in our vending machine at Woodhorn Farm!

All products are made by artisan producers that fit Organic Herd’s ethos (“How We Farm Matters”), are made to historical recipes, are additive free and of course are made from milk that is certified Organic and antibiotic free. Cheeses are made using traditional cultures and matured in wooden boxes, whilst butters are cream tumbled in 1960s butter barrels and then hand salted and churned in small batches.

Whilst this might seem an Organic Herd advertisement, it’s simply another part of our story and who we are at Woodhorn, supporting all the things we are trying to achieve.

A day in the life – Morgan Davies, Materials Recycling Director, The Woodhorn Group

Posted on September 10, 2024 by - Uncategorised

Waste management

Morgan Davies is our Materials Recycling Director. As part of our meet the team blog series, Morgan shares more about his role and what a typical working day looks like.

Morgan Davies - Materials Recycling Director

I’m awake just before 6am, and head downstairs with the dog to sort the kitchen out from the night before. With my children old enough to get themselves to school, I’m free to head off to work just after 7am. Depending on the traffic on the A27, I’m usually in the office before 8am, and settle myself with a cup of tea to check emails and our in-house systems to see what activity looked like from the day before.

I’m responsible for our Waste Recycling Enterprise – we have two sites in West Sussex and process up to 100,000 tonnes of green waste each year. We work with a range of organisations, including local authorities, national companies and trade landscapers, processing green waste into compost, topsoil and other garden products. With a move to sustainability and recycling it’s a busy and growing sector. As well as exploring new business opportunities I work closely with our key clients and support our Area Operations Manager in leading our 21 strong Waste Recycling team. We’re proud of our Quality and Environmental ISO standards – and another part of my role is ensuring we remain audit compliant.

The team dynamic

It’s great to work in such a lovely green space – in the Sussex countryside outside Chichester – and I enjoy collaborating with our people and being part a dynamic and successful team. Independence and trust are championed here so it’s great to be able to take full ownership of various projects and tasks – and then cascade that autonomy through the rest of the team.

Typically my time is spent reviewing various health, safety, quality and environmental management documents, updating statistics and KPIs and staying in close contact with our key clients. Alongside this I’ll manage PAS100 and ISO audits through the year, as well as keeping budgets updated and reporting on performance to the rest of the management team and the Board.

It’s been a much more stable few years, especially given the turbulence we saw at the start of the pandemic, and the significant increases in the cost of fuel. The past few years have seen us with a number of challenges including staff shortages and the political and socio-economic impacts faced by many organisations. And with both our compost production and farming operation there have been the inevitable issues caused by more extreme weather events. But we’ve learnt to adapt and overcome, and our strong team culture has certainly helped us navigate through tricky times.

Embracing wider responsibilities

Whilst I head up all things involving waste recycling and mainly focus on that area, as a Director I’m also heavily involved in our business-to-consumer division, called Earth Cycle. I keep a close eye on which products are selling, and quality control of our product range. And while I’m usually at my desk, there are regularly visits to the compost sites for scheduled meetings and catch ups.

Being in the office so much sometimes means it’s tricky to get my steps in every day, so I often run during my lunchbreak, aiming for at least 8km twice a week. With plenty of fields and trails around the office it makes for a good break. If the weather is against me I’ll use the gym!

Afternoons are usually set aside for other meetings, and I’ll thoroughly track and report on our financial and operational performance too. I keep a close eye on our health and safety and it’s also critical to keep up to date with the latest legislation for obvious reasons.

Before finishing I’ll check my calendar to see what’s planned for the next day – and make sure I’m well prepared. Then it’s back in the car and home!

A day in the life – Raimonds Mamonovs, Area Operations Manager, The Woodhorn Group

Posted on August 23, 2024 by - Woodhorn Group

BS3882 Topsoil

Meet Raimonds Mamonovs, our Area Operations Manager. In this meet the team blog series, you can find out more about our team, their roles and a what a typical working day looks like.

I’m awake at 6am, and enjoy a fresh cup of coffee whilst checking the day’s weather forecast to prepare for whatever conditions lie ahead. The past few months have been challenging, with one of the wettest spring’s on record, which has impacted the volume of green waste we’ve received, and our compost production, so the weather is a high priority! I’m at the office around 7.20am, to welcome the team as they arrive. Once we’re all in we gather for our morning meeting, to discuss the day’s agenda and share any updates. It’s a collaborative and energising start and gets us all ready for the day. I also make it a point to conduct a walk around our Tangmere site, inspecting operations, ensuring everything is running smoothly and addressing any issues. I’ll also head to Runcton a few times throughout the week. These visits are essential for making sure all sites are running smoothly and efficiently. During these visits, I also run health and safety checks, and environmental assessments, to maintain all regulations and standards.

Back at my desk I make time to review our procedures, update documentation as needed, and implement improvements – we’re always keen to be efficient and effective.

Composting and Collaborating

As Area Operations Manager I oversee our day-to-day operations and the management of our two licensed composting facilities. I’m responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of our machinery, coordinating staff, ensuring health and safety standards are met, and maintaining consistent standards across our sites.

A key aspect of my role is to manage the composting process efficiently, adhering to all health and safety, environmental, and quality standards. This includes maintaining detailed records and ensuring compliance with relevant protocols and regulations.

As part of the management team I also get involved in strategic planning, decision-making, and making sure our organisational goals and objectives are on track.

The best part of my job is undoubtedly the fact that no two days are ever the same. I thrive on the variety and really enjoy problem-solving, which puts my creativity and analytical skills to the test. With a team of  18 to manage, I find working closely with people is incredibly rewarding. Whether it’s collaborating with colleagues to overcome obstacles or interacting with clients and stakeholders, building relationships and making a positive impact is always fulfilling.



Covid Changed Everything

One of the most challenging moments was navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything shifted overnight – from the way we worked to the way we interacted with customers. As people took to their gardens, our sales surged, so we had to meet increased demand whilst keeping everyone safe. Implementing strict health and safety protocols, such as social distancing and enhanced hygiene, became paramount. And staffing shortages due to self-isolation and ensuring adequate spacing between team members added an extra layer of complexity!

Despite these difficulties, our team rallied together with flexibility and dedication. Strong communication, problem-solving and great teamwork ensured we served our customers effectively during these uncertain times. It was a period that truly tested our mettle but also highlighted the strength of our team and our ability to adapt.

Signing Off

Before heading home, I try to tie up any loose ends and prepare for the next day. As well as checking my emails and calendar for future tasks and meetings, I take a final walk around site to ensure everything’s in order. Finally, I check that all equipment and facilities are securely locked up and put away, ensuring the safety and security of our premises. This always helps my peace of mind, allowing me to switch smoothly from work to home life.

Embracing new environmental schemes

Posted on July 25, 2024 by - Blog

irrigation

Environmental stewardship schemes, which DEFRA manages, aim to encourage farmers to put land aside to improve wildlife and reduce farming’s impact on the environment. As part of our role as custodians of this special area of Sussex farmland, we’ve embraced some of these schemes to help protect the environment. Cameron Lewis, our MD, shares details of some of the environmental schemes we’ve adopted on the Farm and the benefits we’re seeing.

Farming in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way is very important to us. Being part of national environmental schemes matches both our vision and mission as an organisation. There are clear benefits of taking part – for both the land, and our culture as a business. There’s also, it has to be said, an element of income support for the farm – which helps too!

We’re currently signed up to a 5-year Mid-Tier Countryside Stewardship Scheme, which runs until December 2026. We’re also part of a 3-year Sustainable Farming Initiative which runs to the same timeframe.

What’s involved in environmental schemes?

All schemes require a significant amount of additional work. This can range from additional soil testing to measure soil health, to planting specific seed mixes on a specific piece of ground that will feed birds through the winter months. We’ve got a number of measures in place that enhance our natural hedgerows and create wildlife corridors that shelter the smaller birds and mammals on the Farm. Other measures like planting winter cover crops or herbal grass leys help to reduce nutrient leaching into the water courses and lower the risks of soil erosion during heavy rainfall periods. We treat the management of these schemes like any other cash crop to ensure the measures we sign up to are effective and get the right attention through the farming year.

What are the benefits of taking part?

Over the last 25 years of being certified organic and participating in the numerous environmental schemes we’ve seen a huge increase in wildlife diversity. This is across the food chain too – from birds of prey to the insect life and improvements to soil health.

We’re very much in favour of these schemes. They’re always evolving, have generally improved and are easier to tailor. Getting a balance of farms in the UK producing food for the population as well as looking after the environment is challenging, but so important.

We’ve also gone further with some of our own environmental projects too, from installing solar energy for use on Farm, to working to ISO14001 international standards for environmental management. This acts as a framework for the business in setting continuous improvement goals and reducing our impact as a business on the environment we live in.

Hedge Laying

What’s next?

We’re keen to get more involved and sign up to more measures that will help the bio-diversity within the Farm estate. We’re also working on a Group-wide project to set out our longer-term plans around the environment, sustainability and how we govern the business to ensure these areas progress into the future.

Down on the farm – July 23

Posted on July 24, 2023 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

Another year, another drought! Another ‘Down on the Farm’ article, another frustrating delay to our milk vending project!

The latter is down to the continued delay of the supply of our pasteurising equipment. The only manufacture of the particularly specialised kit that we need is in Ireland and they have singularly failed to meet their promised delivery schedule. I sincerely hope by the time I write my next article we will be up and running. In the meantime, please help us choose our first milkshake flavours here.

Weather extremes, a principal feature of climate change, are becoming the norm.

 This year we had the driest February on record when just 3.8mm (0.1 inches) of rain fell. Compare this to our February historical average of 60mm (2.4 ins). Conversely, we had the wettest March and April for many years with a combined total of 148mm (6 ins) compared to an average of 52mm (2.1ins) for the same period. June and July are looking exceptionally dry like last year.

We aim to complete all our spring sowing in March, but the ground was so saturated that much of this was delayed until May. This significantly reduces yield potential and some fields or part of fields never dried out enough to sow at all. The high temperatures and lack of rainfall now is restricting grass and clover growth, both for grazing and to make silage for next winter’s feed reserves.

 Farmers Weekly has just run an in depth article “Dairy Farming in a Drought” which essentially takes the experiences of dairy farmers in New Zealand and Australia where droughts are the norm. My two ‘take aways’ following a bit more personal research, were how New Zealand dairying (one of largest producing countries in the world and the biggest contributor to its economy) manages drought with huge amounts of irrigation. However, this is becoming environmentally unsustainable as natural groundwater supplies are diminishing causing rivers and lakes to dry up, with over 60% severely polluted due to the intense use of artificial nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers which ‘runs off’ the land into the waterways, where the problem is exacerbated by the lack of water to create a dilution effect.

Australia’s farmers tend not to have the same access to irrigation and so the country has a significant and growing shortage of milk and dairy products forcing it to import much of its needs.

We are, as a nation and like Australia, importing more and more food. However, this is not (yet) because of drought but because of the power of the supermarkets and a lack of government interest in a food strategy generally. Like New Zealand, our water supplies are under pressure though but more as a result of our ever increasing population than from the needs of farming. However, as droughts become more common, the demand for scarce water supplies from both farming and people will increase. However, we continue to be blessed by guaranteed and plentiful winter rainfall. If we, as country and as farmers, invest in adequate infrastructure to collect and store that winter rain, we can meet all of our needs. The cost though of such infrastructure is inevitably enormous at both national and farm level.

After last year’s drought, we made some investment to create the ability to irrigate and we will do more over time. It is an expensive and challenging direction of travel, but one I think will be essential if we are to continue to grow food for our nation. Farming Organically (and so we don’t use the polluting fertilisers and chemicals) and if we are able to store winter rainfall, we will not cause the pollution problems seen in New Zealand

Harvest is not far away now and the harvest machinery and grain stores will be getting their final checks. Calving at Reeds farm starts in mid August.  We will be starting the Organic conversion at Madame Green Farm immediately post-harvest and will be sowing a variety of legume (clover and vetch for example) based crops which will start to rebuild the soil’s fertility and organic matter during the statutory conversion period – one can only sow the first organic crop two year’s after the last chemical or artificial fertiliser was applied, which means it will be nearly three years before we will harvest our first Organic crop.

John Pitts

The Belgravia Dairy Company

Posted on July 7, 2023 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

John Pitts is the 4th generation of the Pitts family to farm at Woodhorn. In this article about our company’s history, John provides more background on Fred Pitts, his Great Grandfather, who moved to the area in 1882 to begin farming the Chichester plains. A farmer and a businessman, Fred Pitts was also the Managing Director of the Belgravia Dairy Company. Here John explains more about life on the farm back in those very early days.

The Pitts family were once long established dairy famers in south Devon. In the late 1800s, farming in England was in dire straits due to a flood of cheap imports from throughout the British Empire. Many farms were abandoned, land values declined and the big landowners could not find tenants for their farms. So it was for one of the country’s biggest landlords, The Church of England, who had many vacant farms in Sussex where the soil quality was considerably better than that down in Devon.

My Great Grandfather, Fred Pitts, saw an opportunity and put his cows, horses, carts, ploughs, wife and children on a train and headed east in 1882. The Church gratefully offered him tenancies on Broyle farm outside Chichester (now a housing estate), Houghton Farm near Amberley and Woodhorn Farm in Oving. I am now the 4th generation of the Pitts family to farm at Woodhorn.

In 1889 Fred move his family to ‘Sunnyside’ in Chichester and his eldest son, William, moved in to Woodhorn. Sunnyside was a rather beautiful Georgian townhouse situated next to the equally imposing Chichester Police Station. Both were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the existing Chichester bus station.

Rider Haggard (author of King Solomon’s Mines) tells of a visit to West Broyle Farm in his 1901 book ‘Rural England of 1901’. The farm was ‘mainly dairy with 90 pure and cross bred Guernseys’ and the staff consisted of ’15 men, 2 boys and 3 milkmen along with 12 horses’. He also described how Fred was ‘a good horseman and rode regularly around the 3 farms upon a high and strong horse inspecting with a critical eye and a strong arm’.

 Fred was a businessman as well as a farmer (a relatively rare combination in the 1800s) and was owner and Managing Director of The Belgravia Dairy Company in West Kensington with 26 branches in the West End, including 7 in the Mall. When my Father celebrated the centenary of the move from Devon to Sussex in 1982 , the Chichester Observer ran the story. My Father subsequently received a letter from an aged gentleman who had read the piece and described how his first job ‘as a very young boy’ was helping out on one of the horse and cart milk floats around London.

The Belgravia Dairy Company was sold after Fred’s death in 1924 to United Dairies (later to become Unigate and Dairy Crest). Nearly 100 years later we will be selling milk from Woodhorn Farm direct to the public, but this time via our vending machine in Oving rather than on the streets of London!

Down on the farm – March 2023

Posted on March 6, 2023 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

Woodhorn Group owner and custodian of Woodhorn Farm, John Pitts, shares his regular thoughts from down on the farm.

As I write this (March 6th) it feels like we are in yet another strange spell of weather and 2023 has, thus far, been exceptionally dry. This is not a problem from a farming perspective (except for that niggling feeling that when it does finally rain it will probably not stop for two months and be monsoon like!) but on the composting sites the green waste is very light because it is so lacking in moisture. This means that lorries delivering green waste are underweight because the volume is the same even though the weight is not. This is something we expect in August but not in February!

There is that lovely, positive feeling that spring is on its way, but it remains cold and the grass is not growing. This is becoming a concern as we are desperate to turn the cows out to grass (we are running out of our winter feed stocks due to last year’s drought) but the grass is not yet there for them. On the plus side, we are able to take advantage of the dry weather to crack on with the sowing of spring wheat and barley.

I am delighted to say that we are now on course to launch our vending project this Summer. Our milk will be pasteurised (but not homogenised) in our new plant at the dairy and then available in our vending machine which will be inside ‘The Oving Cow Shed’ outside Oving Jubilee Hall. Aside from making local, fresh, organic milk available, we are seeking to help everyone reduce packaging. So you can come along with your own jug or buy your own glass bottle which you can re-use hundreds of times.

Cheese and butter from our own organic cooperative will also be available, along with organic eggs from Rookery farm near Felpham. Flavoured milk shakes will also feature and there will be separate coffee machine using roasted beans from Edgecumbes in Ford. We harvested our first ever crop of organic oats last year of a variety especially suited to making oat ‘milk’. We are therefore hoping (we are still in ‘development stage’ so it’s an aspiration rather than a guarantee) to offer our home grown organic oat milk too. So, all being well, we will have something for everyone!

The Jubilee Hall will benefit financially from a % of every single purchase.

This is a very exciting project for us and something of a leap in the dark! If you would like to keep in touch with developments and anything and everything that is going on ‘Down on the Farm,’ then please visit our new website www.woodhornfarm.co.uk where you will also find links to our new social media platforms.

One aspect of an Organic farm is that the whole farm becomes a sort of nature reserve. We, of course, plant hedges and trees, sow pollen mixtures for bees and areas that will provide winter seeds for birds and create long grass and wildflower margins around fields. However, the fact that we do not use pesticides means that every field and crop is a conservation area. Weeds (wildflowers in the wrong place!) flourish due to the lack of herbicides and provide a natural habitat for all life. Insects from bees and ladybirds, to aphids and lacewings, are safe from insecticides providing food for those above them in the food chain. By not using chemicals such as glyphosate and artificial fossil fuel based fertilisers our soils are full of worms and the micro organisms that sustain all life.

Birds are significant beneficiaries of this farming system. It was some years ago that we last had a bird survey carried out (then by the RSPB) and then a remarkable ten bird species on the red endangered list were recorded. I would like to monitor bird numbers more regularly and so I wondered whether there might be two or three twitchers in the local community that might like to volunteer and get involved. The only requirement is a comprehensive knowledge of birds and a desire to spend time walking around the farm. Please email me at info@woodhorngroup.co.uk if interested. Thank you.

The vending project has already meant us taking on new skills and ideas, including the need to have a brand and logo for our milk! This is our new logo which will be on our glass bottles – I hope you like it!

John Pitts

Down on the farm – December 2022

Posted on December 24, 2022 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Group

I am asked one question more than any other by my non farming friends these days, and its nothing to do with climate change, Brexit or why I think sheep are pretty but fundamentally stupid. The question it seems on everyone’s lips is “what do I think of Clarkson’s farm”?

I loved it and can’t wait for the second series to start! I’m no petrol head so Top Gear largely passed me by and thus I was never one of Jeremy Clarkson’s acolytes – until now and JC has become universally popular with farmers for many reasons. First, we could laugh at his mistakes and pretend that we never did anything hopeless enough that would have incurred the wrath of a Kaleb equivalent. One of my classics was in the field, now a gravel pit, alongside Drayton House, when I was 16. The night club Martines had just opened, and they had installed a smart new wire fence around the perimeter of the grounds. I was cultivating the field and, being 16, I was far more interested in Radio 1 than what was happening in the field. I came to an end of a ‘run’, lifted the cultivator up, turned the tractor around, dropped the cultivator back in the field, and carried on my merry way. It was only when I was the other end of the field, some 400 metres later, that I bothered to look around and realised that I had hooked the brand new fence with my cultivator and dragged about 100 metres of it up the field. I’m not sure I got paid that week!

As farmers we can also identify with all of JC’s trials and tribulations, but also the passion for the job that gradually takes him over, despite those trials and tribulations, or even maybe because of them.

But I tip my hat to JC primarily because he has brought farming alive to so many people and has done so with humour whilst showing farming ‘warts and all’. Everyone, farming or not, will now know not to buy a tractor too big for their barn (though everyone now also thinks that all farmers have Lamborghini tractors. I have genuinely never seen one on any farm, ever, and if we had that sort of cash to blow on a new tractor then, here at Woodhorn, Sam and Ben would never forgive me if I didn’t buy a John Deere).

JC’s TV series has, perhaps inadvertently, led to a public conversation about every aspect of farming from conservation, soil health and how cows and sheep can jump the highest fences if the mood takes them, to the power of the supermarkets, national food security and why every farm needs a Gerald and a Kaleb. I genuinely overheard a conversation in a cafe about Clarkson’s farm when someone stated that they never understood how much the weather affected farmers until they saw this series. Given how that’s how most of us farmers bore anyone who is listening to death, this was surprising to hear!

You may see some activity along the east side of Colworth lane soon, as we carry out the next phase of our hedge and tree planting plans. Over years we have literally planted thousands of trees and miles of hedgerows. This latest phase will add another mile of hedgerow.

A friend asked me how do we make money from hedges? We don’t of course and it is an expensive hobby which is why we do this in phases. However, it is part of our commitment to the flora and fauna on the farm and is one small but important part of our carbon net zero strategy.

Planting hedges illustrates the irony (some might say lunacy) of how the politics of national food policy has ebbed and flowed over so many years. During WW2 my grandfather (William Pitts) was, like all farmers at the time, visited by the War Agricultural Executive Committee (which came to be known as the ‘War Ags’). The members of the War Ags included civil servants, local farmers and members of the Women’s Institute and had the power to take farms away from farmers who were considered to be farming inefficiently. Grandfather would have been ordered to remove hedges due to the desperate need to increase food production as the whole population faced war time rationing. Food shortages continued into the 1950s and 1960s and farmers were then paid by the government to remove hedges. In the 1970s, after we joined the EEC, policy designed to increase food self-sufficiency was too successful and we ended up with a surplus (grain mountains etc). Over the last 30 years we have, rightly in my opinion, become more aware of the need to protect the environment as part of a sustainable food policy. Planting hedges is back in vogue! But Covid, Ukraine and the fragility of a free trade globalised word, has also made everyone aware of the need to produce more at home of the basics we need to live, especially energy and food. It feels like something of a full circle, and I hope in our small way we can find the right balance at Woodhorn.

As I write, we are approaching Christmas. Our cows are lovely, gentle, and highly educated, but are completely faithless and so do not recognise Christmas. This is a shame given they live in a cow shed, have a manger, and are looked after by three wise men (well two wise men and a wise lady to be precise). The secular stance of the herd means that Graham, Tracy and Tim have to work pretty much as normal through the Christmas and New Year period, which is ‘part of the job’ but a tough call nevertheless.

We all celebrated the first frosts this year in December – about two months late by my reckoning. Frosts are one of nature’s tools that we are reliant upon to kill off bugs and flies that can challenge the cows and see off the aphids that spread a very damaging virus in our autumn sown crops of wheat and oats. Conventional farmers can spray with an insecticide to kill aphids but being Organic, we rely entirely on frosts.

We are now on course (though a year behind schedule) to launch our milk vending project outside Oving Jubilee Hall in 2023. All being well, that will be the subject of my next ‘down on the farm’ article.

By the time you read this Christmas will be a memory, so may I wish everyone a peaceful 2023

John Pitts

Down on the farm February 2022

Posted on February 14, 2022 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

February is often the coldest month of the year here and we valued the frosts, which are increasingly rare these days, we had in January. Hopefully, we will have a few more before spring. One of the biggest benefits of a series of hard frosts is the impact on the fields that have been ploughed and left bare over the winter. In these situations, the ground is ploughed in a way to make it ‘stand up’ and so maximise the surface area subjected to frost. The frost gets into the water molecules in the soil and the resulting freezing/thawing process naturally breaks up the soil. When we come to sow a crop in the spring, this ‘frost shatter’ will enable us to create the perfect fine seedbed required for the small seeds.

Winter ploughing for this reason has been a feature of good farming practice since the plough was first invented (the first evidence of ploughing dates back to c.3800bc on a site in the Czech Republic). But a combination of the quest to address climate change and the demands of our organic farming system, has meant that we only have a couple of fields that are ‘winter ploughed’ this year in favour of growing a winter ‘cover crop.’ Cover crops are not destined for harvest or sale, but they can perform a valuable function as part of a sustainable farming system.

A healthy soil health is critical to the ability to grow anything. One tablespoon of healthy soil has more individual organisms than the total number of humans on earth; but a neglected soil can be almost devoid of life. There are a number of aspects to maintaining soil health and one is maintaining biomass levels which are crucial to maintaining structure and providing the feed for these billions of micro-organisms. Increasing biomass levels is also a way of locking up carbon in the soil and thus balancing the carbon equation. Cover crops can help provide this biomass. We sow our cover crops, ranging from mustard to turnips, in the autumn after harvest and these will be grazed off by sheep before a spring crop (barley, wheat or maize) is sown. These cover crops grow fast over the winter and thus create a lot of biomass. Grazing by sheep returns the biomass to the soil through their poo which is also in a form that increases the benefit to the soil. Sheep don’t run on fossil fuel either!

There is another benefit to cover crops which we, as organic farmers, particularly value. We don’t, of course, use the usual artificial fossil fuel based nitrate fertilisers that provide an instant boost to crop growth. Our fertility comes from our manures, composts, and legumes such as clover. Building fertility takes years but the benefit can be lost quickly if land is left bare too often when rain can wash the nutrients in the soil away. Cover crops take up the soil nutrients into their plant matter, hold them safely for us and then they are returned back to the soil through the back end of a sheep! This is good for the soil, good for our crops, good for ground water quality, good for carbon capture and the sheep seem to be happy with the arrangement too!

You may have heard by now that we are planning on a new project to sell our organic milk through a vending machine in Oving Jubilee Hall car park. Our milk will be pasteurised on the farm but not homogenised i.e. safe, healthy, and still as nature intended.

There are environmental benefits of being able to source local and organic of course, but we also hope to reduce packaging as well as ‘food miles.’ People can bring their own containers or buy their own glass bottles. The real point is zero plastic, but glass bottles also have an indefinite life and can be used repeatedly.

More people want to know where their food is coming from, and we plan to have open days or tractor/trailer tours around the farm and specifically so everyone can meet our cows.

This project is still in the ‘design stage’ and won’t be up and running for some time. But if you’re interested in how this develops, you can receive news as we progress by signing up to receive email updates here: www.woodhornfarm.co.uk

In the meantime, I leave you with a couple of important questions (and answers):

Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?
They lack toes (lactose).

Why was the cow afraid?
She was a cow-herd.

John Pitts