Tag: Organic

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

Posted on February 21, 2024 by - 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.

The journey to becoming Organic

Posted on November 13, 2023 by - Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Farm, Woodhorn Group

We’ve been farming at Woodhorn Farm since 1882 and during that time there have been some key milestones. Some of these came from technical advances, some were driven by the need for diversification, but some were key decisions about the direction we wanted to take the business in and the role we have as custodians of the land.

Probably the biggest decision was the move to becoming a fully organic farming operation in 1998. Looking back there’s little else that would have such a fundamental impact on the way we operate as a business – even Brexit.  So whilst we continue to diversify, like with the launch of our milk vending operation recently, and continue to reach key milestones in our business growth, the decision John Pitts took 25 years ago was a significant one and dictates almost everything else we do today. As a result the markets we now sell into are more limited than if we weren’t organic and we have to achieve a slight premium to cover the increased costs of production. On the flip side, the success of our milk vending operation is in part due to the benefit of being able to offer organic whole milk direct from the dairy – rather than just fresh milk.

The other consideration in choosing to farm organically is that it’s not an overnight process. It’s certainly not as simple as wanting to become organic tomorrow! Our farm, like many others, had been farmed traditionally for generations with an impact on the soil quality that needed to work its way through. Today we’ve developed ways of working and our own supply chains of fertiliser and humus that support us in being organic, but these didn’t exist on day one. So, we had to work through a transition period, set up new relationships and fundamentally alter our way of working and thinking! And this is a key point. Organic is not just a way of working – it’s also a thought process and a way of life.

Protecting and encouraging wildlife

From a farming perspective organic means farming in a way that protects and encourages wildlife whilst looking after the health of the soil. So, instead of relying on chemicals, we strive to work with nature to feed the soil and control pests. We use crop rotations, legumes, clover and vetches along with our own composted cow manure to build fertility in the soil.

There are plenty of benefits of organic farming, though most people think of the absence of pesticide and/or antibiotic residues first. For us it is also about the environment as a whole; by not using pesticides we’ve seen a transformation of the flora and fauna on the farm. No herbicide usage means that all our crops have varying levels of weeds and wildflowers in them. These act as a habitat for a wide range of insects, small mammals and ground living birds.

Animal welfare

Where animals are concerned, organic is about maximising their welfare, concentrating on the principle of prevention rather than cure. Organic means free-range and all our animals are grazed on fresh grass throughout the spring, summer and autumn period and fed home grown forage through the winter. All our feeds are, of course, GM free. We proudly antibiotic free across the herd now, with herbal and homeopathic remedies the preferred options for dealing with health related issues.

We’re not leaving it there

Once we’d made the decision to become an organic farming operation, there’s little else that can be changed in agricultural terms that has as big an impact. There are no ‘levels’ when it comes to organic and it’s impossible to become more organic…! So, anything we do now concerns better land management and increasing the positive impact of our work on the soil, wildlife and our animals. Here’s what we’re planning or already underway:

Land management – we now have a zero bare soil policy. This means there is always something in the ground, so as we finish cropping and harvesting, we immediately replant with a different crop or natural green fertiliser. Rather than being classed as intensive farming, this process is referred to as a ‘green bridge’ helping hold nutrients in the soil, limiting erosion and reducing run off into rivers and ditches.

Land management – we’re working towards minimum tillage. Each time the soil is disturbed, nutrients escape and the structure is broken down a little more. This also releases carbon that would otherwise be sequestered in the soil. Ploughing and tilling the fields can have a detrimental impact on soil health as well as releasing carbon into the atmosphere. We’re therefore looking at how we can minimise surface and ground disturbance. It is a bit of a trade off as to use our own green fertilisers (vetch, legumes, clover etc.) to maximum effect, they need to be ploughed back into the ground to encourage them to break down and release nutrients at root level. At present, we plough ahead of our main crops, but our cover crops and fertilisers are drilled directly into the soil. It’s an area whereby there is currently a lot of research and innovation taking place and so we’ll continue to adapt as soon as we can.

A bold move that has paid off

Back in 1998, John’s decision was still something of a bold move. Other farmers were moving to partial organic farming but John felt it needed to become a wholesale change across the entire farm. Today our organic farming activities extend to 1,500 acres on the Chichester Plain and the South Downs. We have a 250 head of organic dairy cows and sell our milk, some 5,000+ litres a day, through our organic co-operative, Organic Herd, and directly to the public via our Woodhorn Farm milk vending machines. Our crops go to organic producers manufacturing a range of foods and drinks, like our barley which is used by a European organic brewery.

We understand what it takes to be an organic farm and actively embrace it. We also have plans to do more. It’s not necessarily been easy; organic farms are often more at the mercy of nature than non-organic farms and major diseases or extremes of weather can, and have, impacted us more than other farmers over the years. But organic remains a philosophy we’re committed to, ultimately we believe that how we farm matters.