Our farm stretches around Durweston village, near Blandford, Dorset, in the south of England. We run a mixed arable and stock farm on soils overlying chalk. Ours is a family business, and this website is a small window on what happens on our farm around the year.
We grow crops of wheat, barley, rapeseed, beans, and oats, plus grass and herbal mixtures for our animals, a suckler herd producing prime beef from pasture, and a small sheep flock to entertain visits from schools, who come to the farm to learn about food and how it is produced, as well as to enjoy curriculum linked cookery sessions. Since 2022 we have moved our crop growing in a regenerative direction, which simply means concentrating more on soil health and productivity, with less reliance on artificial fertilisers and chemicals. Sometimes we sow two crops together, for special contracts, and we grow a great many ‘cover crops’ which can protect the soil from rain over winter, and provide late season supplies of food for pollinators. Bird food, flower margins around our arable crops, downland reversion, pollen and nectar mixes and hedge planting or laying are all supported by environmental schemes we have been part of for many years.