Tag: Dairy

Back to the farm gate – selling fresh, local milk direct to customers

Posted on February 21, 2024 by Earth Cycle - Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm

Back in the Autumn, we launched our Woodhorn Farm organic milk vending venture – known locally as The Oving Cow Shed. Whilst we sell our topsoil and compost products direct to customers under the Earth Cycle brand, most of the sales process is one step removed. The majority of sales are received and processed by an ecommerce website with bulk bags delivered on pallets by contract hauliers. Milk vending took us a step closer to the consumer and needed us to get new systems and processes in place.

Our dairy produces around 5,000 litres of organic milk a day which is conveniently collected by a tanker and taken to our friends at Organic Herd – the cooperative we’re part of – for pasteurising and processing into milks, yoghurts and cheeses. It’s relatively straight forward and happens like clockwork – the ladies even know when it’s time to line up for milking!

Milk vending required a different approach. Our vending machines can hold around 200 litres but unlike our bulk milk, the milk needs to be pasteurised here, by us. We knew we needed to draw down small batches of milk from the holding tanks, pasteurise it and find a way to get it into bottles to sell to the public. When we first explored the idea, it felt a bit overwhelming; we were used to selling directly to another business in big volumes! Thankfully, when we began speaking to other farmers, we were reassured that there was plenty of support and all the machines we needed already existed. Better than that, we were told this is a thriving market with something of a renaissance in buying direct from the producer especially with consumers demanding better quality and understanding and valuing the importance of provenance.

A return to provenance

The last fifty years has seen how we buy food go full circle. In post war Britain we were used to high streets having a butcher, baker, fishmonger, and greengrocer, all of whom could tell you where their produce was from. Many rural communities still bought at the farm gate – fresh milk, eggs and meat direct from the farmer, daily. Then sadly the race to the bottom began with the advent of the supermarket. Price wars and questionable standards followed. Briefly, society took its eye off the ball and forgot about the people, animals and welfare behind the scenes. Homogenisation (the process of dispersing fat within the milk) only exists because of the supermarkets. Farmers feared that society would never get back that focus on provenance, standards and quality. All the time supermarkets controlled the prices, farmers were being pushed into making difficult decisions – either give up or accept prices that meant many rarely broke even. Then thankfully, the dissenting voices got a little louder and the media exposés generated better consumer understanding of what cheap produce really means in terms of quality, working practices and price to the farmer. These bred a degree of value appreciation, a push for better welfare standards and reminded people of the importance of provenance.

The demand for farm fresh food

Whilst we’re not back at that post war stage – and probably never will be – things have improved and there’s now huge demand for farm fresh produce. Farm shops are springing up all over the country and innovation is making it far easier for farmers to sell direct to the public. Food is once again something to be enjoyed. Consumers look for taste, they care about food miles and they’re taking a more active interest in the environment and animal welfare – which is great for us, as all of our milk is produced under the organic standard.

Take the milk vending machines as an example and all the kit that sits behind it. If this didn’t exist, we couldn’t sell milk directly to consumers and if the consumer demand for better produce wasn’t there, the machines wouldn’t have been created. In fact, such is the current level of demand, just for milk vending, the main UK supplier of the vending machines is literally inundated with orders.

Branching out

Now that our milk vending machines are in place, we’re seeing demand for other items including milk, bread, eggs, fruit and even cakes. We’re listening and planning – you should be able to find all of this in our machines in due course! We’re also co-operating with other farms and local producers to see what else we can offer through our machines as well as considering additional local sites for more machines – such is the clammer. It’s lovely to see and we get a little buzz out of every litre we sell. And let’s not forget, a few more pence too! Yes, there is a significantly higher cost of selling one litre in a bottle than shipping five thousand off in a tanker, but there’s equally something rewarding about someone buying a litre of milk from us, in sight of the fields and our cows. That has a real feel-good factor.

Sales in the first few months have been strong and we’re pleased to see that we’ve got a core of regular customers that appear to be buying a couple of times a week – proving it’s not a fad and there is genuine demand for quality local produce. If you’ll excuse the pun, the vending machines have also provided an unexpected third leg to the milking stool with lots of interest coming from other local producers keen to use our milk in their products. These businesses sit between retail and wholesale and they’re willing to pay a small premium for organic, local, quality milk. These companies are looking for us to supply hundreds of litres a day and we’re now seeing an increasing number of enquiries for Woodhorn Farm to appear in ice cream and other dairy foods.

The majority of our milk still goes to our co-op and probably always will. Because we’re part of that business, we get a fair price for our milk. But now there is once again a real chance for locals to buy our milk, back at the farm gate and enjoy the freshest possible produce.

Down on the farm – November 23

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Earth Cycle - Down on the farm, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm

We finally got there and judging by the reactions, it was worth it! The Oving Cow Shed finally opened on September 25^th. A proud moment in the history of our farm thanks to the hard work and tenacity of the team at Woodhorn.

A huge personal thank you to all concerned from me but even more so to the many, many of you that have supported the project so far and for the wonderful feedback given when you have met me or other members of the team or via social media. I would also like to give a special thanks to Anne-Marie Eastwood and the Jubilee Hall Committee for their support and encouragement. Thank you everyone!

It really has been a joy to witness the level of interest in not just the milk vending project itself but the farm in general, and it has been fun answering so many questions whilst we have learned a lot in return.

We don’t homogenise our milk which is a supermarket driven industrial process to prevent the cream rising to the top. I was aware that many have health concerns about homogenisation, but I was surprised to learn from a number of visitors to the cow shed that some people who are lactose intolerant have no problem drinking non homogenised milk. Our milk is also ‘full fat’ and some people are astonished to discover that ‘full fat’ milk is typically 3.6% fat – officially a low fat food. However, I was unaware (until now) that ‘full fat’ milk is much better for us than semi skimmed or skimmed because the body absorbs the many nutrients present much more efficiently when drinking ‘full fat’ milk.

V2 Radio carried out a live tasting of our milkshake flavours

I think both these facts illustrate that, as always, we are better consuming food in its most natural form, as nature intended, without unnecessary processing.

We are now stocking butter, cheese and chocolate and a common question has been ‘who or what is Organic Herd’? Organic Herd is a cooperative of Organic dairy farmers of which we are members. Up to now all of our member’s milk has gone in tankers to the likes of Yeo Valley, but in August this year we launched our own range of dairy products. These will not be available in supermarkets, only in specialist food shops and farmer member’s vending machines!

We are looking forward to organising tractor and trailer rides out to the dairy in the spring and summer of next year.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, please take a trip down to the cow shed and give our milk and/or milk shakes a try. We need to get sales to a certain level (and a % of every sale goes to the Oving Jubilee Hall) to make the project work, so please help us by spreading the word verbally or via social media (You can follow Woodhorn Farm via the website or on Facebook and Instagram) . Thank you again!

Rain, rain and more rain…!

Back ‘down on the farm’ things are a little wet! Cows can’t swim very well and anyway, ours are so soft that they gather at the yard gate at the slightest sign of drizzle. So they are all happy and safe in the real cow shed at Reeds Farm. The fields are totally saturated and though all our autumn crops were successfully sown, I suspect that some will not survive this level of standing water or washed soils. Perhaps I shouldn’t be overly surprised as October is typically our wettest month, as our own Woodhorn rainfall data shows.

Year/Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2019	21.7	47.6	43.3	12.1	18.2	61.2	47	61.2	97.5	100.3	104.7	114
2020	50.3	106.9	41	42.8	2	34.4	20.2	72.6	33	190.2	61.8	110.5
2021	78.5	49.2	24.8	1.4	69.7	44.2	39	54.8	59.8	68.8	4.8	22.6
2022	44.2	34.2	29.2	16	54.2	31.9	5.8	36.2	76.6	35	113.2	64.8
2023	29.3	3.8	89.3	67.3	8.8	26.8	64.2	57.5	57.4	182.2
Monthly Average (mm)	44.8	48.34	45.52	27.92	30.58	39.7	35.24	56.46	64.86	115.3	71.123	77.98

Monthly rainfall in MM at Woodhorn Farm, Oving, Chichester, West Sussex

Thank you again for your support and please follow us on Facebook, Instagram or other social media forums, as we hope this is only the start of things at the Oving Cow Shed!

John Pitts, November 2023

The Belgravia Dairy Company

Posted on July 7, 2023 by Emma Cooper - 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 4^th 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!