Tag: Farming

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

Down on the farm – May 2021

Posted on May 13, 2021 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Woodhorn Group

The coldest and driest April on record followed last year’s drought, which itself was the most extreme in all my years of farming. Extremes in weather really do seem to be the trend now and it inevitably forces us to ask many challenging questions which start (and almost end) with ‘how do we produce food without water?’

It has now rained and doesn’t look like stopping any time soon! So is this just normal ‘British weather’ or are we looking at genuine changes in weather patterns? I think the latter and without debating the causes, we must adapt because the answer to my question is: ‘you can’t produce food without water’!

All the land in Oving parish sits over chalk that acts as a natural underground aquifer. Fissures in the chalk store winter rainfall water that can be extracted in the spring/summer via boreholes. However, as the population increases in the region and more houses are built every year, the competition for this finite water resource increases. Naturally, the demand from the water companies take precedent over the needs of farming and the Environment agency will not allow farms to sink new bore holes. At the same time, a combination of climate change and demand from the water companies is already reducing water levels in our stream and rivers with serious knock on effects to these important wildlife habitats.

However, we have plenty of water in the winter (winters seems to be getting wetter annually so no concerns there!) when of course we don’t need it. The solution is to capture the winter rainfall and store it in reservoirs for spring/summer use. This is what we are looking at now, but the cost is extremely high. The reality is that the total value of an acre of wheat or barley is less than the cost of storing water, let alone applying it and paying the Environment Agency a fee for the privilege of being allowed to do it in the first place. High value intensive crops such as vegetables can absorb this cost but not traditional arable crops or grassland.

This poses some interesting questions, including whether we will see a significant change in what is grown in our region’s fields? Vineyards are already popping up everywhere and salad and vegetables are already widely grown. But the latter crops need to be part of a long term rotation with the likes of wheat or grass to prevent disease and maintain soil health. How will we achieve this without water? (Off topic but extremely relevant, is the question of who is going to pick the veg?). Organically, we also need to maintain our dairy herd to create fertility and enable a balanced environmentally sound rotation. No water means no grass and again, irrigation is prohibitively expensive.

So we have some challenges ahead but somewhere in the mix is an opportunity that we will find and embrace. Perhaps the holy grail is being able to enjoy a summer BBQ whilst knowing that our crops aren’t going thirsty -if that’s not a challenge worth taking up, I don’t know what is!

All our spring crops have now been sown and the last of these, maize, is just poking out the ground. We have a few more weeks before the rooks and crows will leave it alone. The cows have been out at grass since early March but are only now getting to enjoy some warmth and sun on their backs. This is important as our cows are extremely soft and pampered. So whilst some of their brethren in Scotland and Cumbria would find the coldest day in Oving a delight, the bovine residents at Reeds Farm would happily take a flight to Spain for some extra sun whether they had to quarantine on their return or not!

John Pitts

Down on the farm – February 2021

Posted on February 23, 2021 by - Blog, Down on the farm, Environmental Management, Farming and Dairy, Soils and Composting, Woodhorn Group

Overall organic food and drink sales in the UK increased by 12.6% in 2020, the highest growth in 15 years. Farm shops have thrived and there are positive signs that people are becoming more interested in provenance and even seasonality. Dairy and meat sales have also increased over the last year. Until the pandemic I thought it was farmers that fed the nation, but I have since learned it is Sainsburys and Tesco. But regardless, all of you, our customers, place a great deal of trust in us as farmers to not only deliver food that is safe, tastes good and is priced fairly, but is produced to the highest standards in terms of animal welfare and care for the environment. Thank you.

Whilst I may not be inclined to praise the major multiples, I was pleasantly surprised to have my suspicion of large food and retail businesses challenged, even if for a rather unfortunate reason. Covid inevitably caused significant challenges across the fresh food sector, including temporary drops in demand for milk as the ‘service sector’ (you would be amazed to know how much milk is sold daily through the nation’s coffee shops!) was forced to shut down. The impact was felt acutely by Organic farmers too, but for the surprising reason that it turns out that McDonald’s and Pret a Manger are the biggest buyers of organic milk in the hospitality industry, but of course they were hit extremely hard by lockdown. Thankfully, organic milk sales to the public eventually boomed and Yeo Valley (100% organic yoghurts and butter) have had a record year.

The combination of global pandemic and Brexit was never going to be a good news story. Our organic dairy cooperative exports to Europe and the USA and this activity now ranges from extremely difficult to impossible, despite the much heralded (and greatly welcomed) Brexit deal. We also export organic barley to Europe to make organic beer. Brexit destroyed this market pre-deal and then the pandemic has finished it off due to the collapse of beers sales because bar closures across Europe.

Probably the most unexpected consequence of Covid, for us, was the uplift in online sales of our Earth Cycle products last spring when garden centres were closed. An ‘ill wind’ I guess, but one we were grateful for.

Of course, almost every business has its Covid and Brexit challenges and we are lucky and far more fortunate than many, and few have open fields and countryside to enjoy at work. I must pay tribute also to the Woodhorn Team and all key workers who have been incredible in their determination to work through this most challenging of times with diligence, dedication, and good humour.

We have been enormously saddened and shocked at the (non Covid related but completely unexpected) passing of Richard Cousins who had led the arable farm team for the last ten years at Woodhorn. Many of you will have known him or seen him ploughing his furrow (literally) and no doubt some of your children will remember him from the visits to the farm by the March school which were hosted by Richard. He is, and will continue to be, sorely missed.

Spring in its on its way and it is the time I must apologise in advance for any inconvenience caused by muck spreading and rook scaring. Both are essential functions of producing Organic crops, but we always recognise our duty to minimise the impact on our community as much as possible. We take this seriously but thank you in advance for your understanding when needed.

Our focus on carbon reduction and the potential impacts of climate change is proving time (a scarce resource at the moment!) consuming and challenging, but also fascinating. Bit by bit we are creating a comprehensive plan to take what I hope has been a positive eco strategy for the past 20 + years, to the next stage. Carbon management will focus on building soil organic matter (removing carbon from the atmosphere and ‘storing’ it in the soil), dairy nutrition and renewable energy. Water resource management (driven by increasing water scarcity during drier summers and flooding concerns due to wetter winters) will look at storing winter rainfall for summer use. We are also in the process of creating a new scheme to benefit our flora and fauna by the creation of new and improved areas to support pollinators and birds (for example). We are learning all the time. For example, a bat has been discovered on the farm (the Barbastelle bat) that I had not only never heard of but is under serious threat, being one of the rarest mammals in the UK. Only this week I learned of the advantages of planting small strategically sited groups of trees to disrupt the movement of harmful particles in the air emanating from road traffic. Something else we will look at with interest.

John Pitts