On Monday evening I attended a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference inManchester, organised by the NFU. A panel of four Owen Paterson (Secretary of State for DEFRA), Justin King (CEO of Sainsbury’s), Peter Kendall (NFU President) and Meurig Raymond (NFU Vice President) set out their vision for the future of the UK…
A week a go I held the first Pasture Promise day at Walk Farm, to give producers, processors, researchers, food writers and other supporters the chance to get together and talk about Free Range Dairy. It was a lovely sunny day and our cows looked a picture. I explained to invited guests the amazing contribution…
I was asked to give my thoughts on organic food and farming on Emma Britton’s programme on BBC Radio Somerset yesterday morning. I hope I gave a fair and balanced view of organic farming versus ‘conventional’ and my rationale for deciding not to convert to organic made some sense. I did ask some questions about…
Many farmers are tired of all the paperwork and farm inspections that are required to enable them to market milk, meat or crops from their farms under some sort of farm assurance scheme. The red tape associated with audits often seems too burdensome when weighed against the returns the producer receives. Ever since I started…
Chief Executive of Tesco, Philip Clarke, indicated in an interview in The Observer that food price inflation is inevitable. “Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food may well be going up,” he said. “Because of growing demand it is going to change. It is the basic…
Next week I am holding an event on our farm for local chefs and food writers, inviting them to come and see how we farm and learn more about what Free Range Dairy is seeking to achieve. We have now set up a new facility on the Pasture Promise page on our website, to allow…
As you are probably aware, Free Range dairy requires producers to graze their cows for a minimum of 180 days a year. Whilst we are striving to give our cows as much freedom as possible, we have to accept that cows will need to be housed in the winter months on most farms, since…
Most of the discussions I have had about Free Range Dairy to date have been with fellow farmers who want achieve recognition and value for the way they farm. But, I am being approached by an increasing number of people who want be able to choose milk and dairy products from free range cows. These…
I have just walked all our grazing block with the Plate Meter again this morning and I think I need to have a bit of a review of where we are at with the grass. I am trying to decide whether I should release six hectares of silage aftermath to the cows to graze.…
Thank you to all who came to visit Walk Farm on Open Farm Sunday. We had a wonderful day and really enjoyed showing everyone around the farm in the sunshine. We laid on tractor and trailer rides, sheep shearing and collection of animals for people to see – piglets, lambs, goats and chickens, as…
Wow! There’s a controversial statement that’s going to annoy a few people. So why say it? A couple of years ago, when I announced the launch of the Free Range Dairy initiative, some people accused me of dividing the dairy industry – pointing out difference between farms that grazed their cows and farms that…
Have you heard milk isn’t just good for building strong bones and teeth, it can actually improve a child’s IQ (even before they’re born). A report in The Telegraph states that women “who consumed lower amounts of iodine, which is absorbed from food and found in milk, dairy products and fish, were more likely to…
Next week I am holding the first in a series of three meetings to bring together Free Range Dairy farmers who have made the Pasture Promise, with two further meetings planned in the Midlands and South West England, where we have the biggest numbers of farmers signed up. I am keen to establish regional groups…
I have to admit getting this grassland management thing right is quiet hard work. I had a few days off last weekend and spent the whole time worrying about how far the electric fence was being moved each day and which field the cows were in. Just yesterday I made a really important decision and…
Whilst visiting Amsterdam with some friends last weekend I came across a crowd of people carrying some interesting placards with images of cows and other farm animals. It turned out that the people taking part were protesting against the growth of intensive livestock farming in The Netherlands and were members of Partij voor De Dieren…
Buoyed up by a recent surge in grass growth I decided I wanted to see how much supplementary food I could remove from our cows’ diets, how much grass they would then eat and what milk yields could be sustained. Determined to make things as simple as possible this summer I am running all of…
Some football clubs get average attendances of around 10,000 spectators to watch them play each week. Not the biggest crowd for a football match, but can you imagine that number of people coming to your farm to watch your cows being turned out to grass? Well that’s what happened on a farm near Gothenburg in…
The recent sunshine has a put a spring in everyone’s step, including our cows. Here are a few top tunes that are on our herds’ playlist this week. Jerusalem – Sir Hubert Parry And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s…
Last week I hosted a ‘Reseeding Day’ at our farm, organised by The British Grassland Society, DairyCo and EBLEX. The event gave farmers a chance to learn about evaluating the productivity of their pasture following one of the wettest years I can remember and provided tips on reseeding grass and variety selection. Soil scientist,…
My thanks to Stephen Lowe for giving me such a great opportunity to explain what Free Range dairy is all about on his BBC Radio Lancashire show on Sunday. We are very lucky to have a number of committed members in the county and today’s exposure for the initiative was down to Free Range Dairy…