A Day at Wimpole Farm


On Day Two of our England Trip we started off by touring Wimple Farm which was founded in 1794 and serves as a major tourist attraction for over 750,000 people a year! The farm was very very beautiful and works to conserve and display many rare breeds. One such breed is the bagot goat, white park cattle, and traditional long horn cattle. Wimpole Farm has about 50% of the remaining bagot goats in the world!





Wimpole Farm strives to conserve these rare breeds and save them from extinction. In doing so, they realize that these breeds come in a variety of sizes with little uniformity, are much more primitive, and are slower to mature. With this struggle, they converted their farm to an organic system eight years ago to raise demand for their product and be competitive among commercial products. Throughout those eight years, they have had a variety of high and low points but have finally figured out what works for them. They have created a niche market in which customers can come to the farm and see the live animal which then gets brought to slaughter that same week and is brought back to the farm and sold in the shop. This gives the consumer a real farm to table experience and the whole processes is done less than 20 miles from the farm.

Enjoy pictures of these rare breeds!



Word of the Day: Cow Crusher- another term for a cattle chute.


-Miriah & Madison

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Shakes of a Lamb's Tail

Image
Farming is a hard business and there’s not much worse than low and unsteady prices.   To help supplement & stabilize their finances, some farms have diversified their operations into more than just one or two crops or species.   This is the case with Northfield Farm and Sondes Place.   Inside of the on-farm shop at Northfield Farm, you can find cuts of lamb right alongside their beef offerings that were raised on their farm.   At Sondes Place, the cattle are neighbored by around 300 Highlander ewes.   They have also developed an asparagus field, local school programs, a firewood enterprise, & environmentalism and stewardship schemes.          Whether in the pasture or the display case, beef and lamb at Northfield Farm can be found right alongside each other.   Their beef animals graze in the same paddock as their near 100 breeding ewes with lambs.   This flock contains genetics from a range of breeds including the local Border Leicester as well Scotch Halfbreds, Cheviot
Read more

Mooooore Dairy

Image
Over the past few days we have had the opportunity to visit two different conventional dairy farms. The first one was Southview Farm. Southview is owned by Charlie Hughes, it is family farm that has been in the Hughes family since 1919. Charlie took over the farm in 2008 from his father, and has made several upgrades to the farm to make it as efficient as possible. The farm currently milks 100 head of Holstein-Friesian cattle (the typical breed found in England), but is working towards increasing the herd to 120 head.   Since Charlie has three kids of his own, he wants his farm to run as efficiently as possible, which is why he has adapted several technologies on the farm that are not usually found on a farm of his size. Southview Farms uses robotic milkers, automatic lighting, automatic calf feeders, and automatic feed scrapers. The robotic milkers allow the cows to go in and milk themselves whenever they want to be milked, which Charlie says is a minimum of twice a day. Southview Fa
Read more

Beautiful Beef

Image
The first beef farm we visited earlier in the week was Northfield farm, which is known for their amazing and historical beef that they then sell at Borough market in London! Jan and Tessa first started their farm with one smaller framed Dexter cow and then expanded it to a 250 head herd. Due to the smaller frame of the Dexter breed, they weren't originally a very commercially popular breed. Over the years, Jan and Tessa started to breed in a Native Angus bull with their Dexter cows. This transition then led to the Pedigree Aberdeen Angus, which is known as the Valentine Herd. This pedigree is considered the UK's premier beef breed. To add some diversification to his herd, Jan is currently breeding in Pedigree White Park Cattle, which is a very old, ancestral breed from the UK. These two breeds create what Jan likes to describe as very marbled and flavorful meat. Once the beef is finished, they sell the cuts in their on-farm butcher shop. All of the beef is raised on free range
Read more