Doesn’t time fly….I can’t believe we haven’t sent out a newsletter since Christmas!! Thanks to everyone that continues to support us by buying our beef, we’ve managed to have fresh supplies this year in February, May and now July. We started to deliver July orders last week with local deliveries on Friday mornings and then we plan one delivery day to Norwich and one to Ipswich in the next couple of weeks – if you are en-route to either of these destinations we can fit you in, and of course a courier is still available if you are further afield. Further fresh stocks are planned for late September / early October.

We have stocked up the two farm shops at Clinks Care Farm, Toft Monks and also Hillfield Nursery, Haddiscoe and have also supplied beef to The Angel Inn at Loddon for their fabulous burgers – so if you fancy a treat pop in for one of the beltie burgers with all the trimmings and some lovely local ales. Our website is updated with individual cuts and boxes, there is one Share available – if you don’t see what you want please let me know at nicola@carrfarm.org.

“Old Cow” Sirloin Steaks

For anyone that fancies trying something different we have a few sirloins available from one of our older girls. They are dry-aged for 45 rather than 30 days and have a more intense flavour, nice fat cover and good marbling. They are smaller steaks priced the same as our standard sirloins but a different eating experience…give one a try!

Our friends at Truly Traceable won two gold stars with the Beef and Ale pies in the Great Taste awards – so congratulations to them – we will have them back in stock in the autumn.

 At Christmas we were feeling positive having come through winter with our rather meagre hay stocks after last summers dry spring. However another dry spring has followed suit, with just a week of meaningful rain in early June, and our hay crop is less than last year. One of our neighbours kindly offered us a marsh to cut and we were pleased to get a few extra bales and initially it looked like we would have enough for the winter. Fast forward another month and still no rain. For the first time ever we are now feeding our winter hay stocks to the cattle…and still nothing meaningful forecast on the horizon…perhaps we should all do a little rain dance!

Of course we can’t magic up extra fodder at this stage in the summer, so we have had to cut cattle numbers instead to ensure that those we do keep can be fed over the remaining summer and winter. We have started this process by selling some pedigree heifers we were hoping to keep and breed from, the good news is they all went together to a lovely family farm in Essex. We have also agreed to sell all our 2025 steer calves, at the time of writing these will be off next week to do conservation grazing in the Surrey Hills. Lastly we will have to part company with our some of older girls, normally we keep our girls after they’ve had their last calf for a couple of years of retirement, they’ve earnt it! Some will then go as beef, and some favourites end their days on the farm and don’t go into the food chain. Last months “old cow” beef was from one of these….sometimes tough decisions must be made for the good of the rest.

We are lucky that most but not all of our grazing has natural shade, but we are considering putting up man made shades on a couple of sites in the future. Another issue arising from the drought is low water levels in the ditches on the marshes. The ditches act as both a water source for the cattle and a barrier to keep different herds of cattle apart. When the water levels get low the cattle are more likely to both fall in the water and need “rescuing” and cross the water to mix with other farmers herds…these have both been common scenarios this summer!

Anyone following our facebook or Instagram account will have seen that last Tuesday a small group of cattle walked through a boundary ditch that was totally dry and travelled the 1.5 miles home on their own along the lanes. Imagine my surprise when they greeted me outside the farmgate... I was chuffed that they found their way safely home though!

The cattle are all doing as well as can be expected given the conditions. We have nearly finished calving just a couple of stragglers to go, a hangover from the Blue Tongue troubles a couple of years ago. We have attended a couple of shows, and it was good to see some of you at Suffolk and Norfolk Shows, always a good day out and the girls and boys did us proud. The shows were both on extremely hot days but I think the show cattle were happier in the show barns with fans then they would have been on the marshes. We have two “visiting” bulls here this year – a fine Galloway bull for the white cattle called Bomber, and a nice Beltie bull called Clifton Sword with the beltie ladies. They will stay with us for a couple of months before returning to their respective owners.

We’ve currently got 3 owlets in our barn owl box in the hay barn growing well and looking like they will fledge in the next few days…it seems that the dry weather has suited barn owls. The swallows have also been amazing this year, a few years we had just one pair but this year at least 8 and now on their second or third broods, they seem to like catching flies around the cows and I’m sure the cows appreciate this.

Whilst turning and baling hay on the marshes we enjoyed the company of red kites, marsh harriers and kestrels as well at some more unusual guests golden plover, black cormorants and a Curlew, all good to see.

As well as the grassland burning off, the hedges and trees are also suffering. Hedges planted two years ago look in a very poor way and we have even lost some trees in our new woodlands planted 13 years ago. However we are still carrying on with our plans to add to both the hedgerows and woodlands this winter and also do some more hedge laying on the farm.

Thanks for all your support – we really appreciate it – don’t forget to give us a google review if you have a minute and/or follow our journey on Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok!
Nicola & David Chapman…and the Galloways!