FARM NAME: Rose Dale’s Organic Farm, Buckinghamshire
FARM SIZE: 90 ha
DESCRIPTION: Rose Dale’s Organic Farm has been farmed by her family for over 50 years. When Rose took over the farm in 2019, she was determined to produce healthy, nutritious food in a way that is nature-friendly and truly regenerative and sustainable, looking after soil, water and air for future generations. She has since built a business committed to these values, direct-selling her quality meat to local customers.
All Rose’s meat is organic and 100% grass-fed and is produced from diverse long-term pastures including permanent pasture flood meadows, herbal lays, rich wildflower meadows and old ridge and furrow. The farm is certified organic and pure grass-fed by the Soil Association and Pasture for Life.
Rose’s farm is also a good example of an average-sized UK farm.
THEIR APPROACH TO FEEDING THE SOIL:
Rose is working on a holistic, closed system where she has the right number of ruminant livestock that her farm can support and, importantly, her aim is to run the farm with minimal external inputs.
Rose’s small flock of Gotland sheep and herd of 25 breeding Longhorns and their followers, spend their lives on her land, eating only leafy plants. They are never fed grain or grain-based foods. They are nearly always outdoors where they naturally fertilise the soil and increase soil health and biodiversity.
The livestock are all paddock-grazed, meaning they are regularly moved to fresh blocks of pasture, afterwards allowing a sufficient rest period for full plant recovery before the pasture is grazed again. This supports strong plant growth, maximising photosynthesis and increasing productivity and soil health. A win-win farming system. It also prevents soil compaction during wet weather as the animals are moved on before damage can occur. In addition, the natural fertility from animal manure means fertility is provided without the use of chemicals.
They are now working to make more out of their farmyard manure. Prior to calving, the breeding cows and their un-weaned calves come in for the end of winter, creating farmyard manure. The ewes also come in for lambing. In spring, this manure was cleared from the barns, piled up in windrows, 2.5m-3.5m high and treated with microbes.
The farm is also looking at spraying microbes onto bedding and into animal feed when their livestock come into the barns in the winter to kick-start the fermentation process. The manure will then be treated again with microbes when it is are piled up in windrows and left to mature for use in 8 –10 weeks.
Rose is part of a biodiversity net gain scheme which involves management of a floodplain mosaic for freshwater species and is planting trees and hedgerows to increase wildlife habitat and to provide her livestock with both shelter and tree and hedge forage.
She also intends to add chickens to the farm in the future which could then be integrated onto livestock rotations after the cattle.
CHALLENGES:
The challenge for Rose and her team is how to use their farmyard manure more effectively and how to reduce compaction on her land when livestock are outwintered.
Rose is exploring how to use microbes more widely at each stage: Microbe misting in the barns is a possibility. The challenge is to manage this as Rose’s barns are high with open sides.
Mixing and treating the waste is also a challenge. They are looking at running their outputs through a muck spreader with a 3-nozzle rail spraying microbes throughout. This mix can then be reassembled into windrows.
Reducing historic compaction is also a challenge. Rose is working with Microbz to insert microbes into the soil with a subsoiler and is currently running a small on-farm trial.
TOP TIPS:
Think creatively about ways to integrate microbes into your farm system whether it is directly on the land, into bedding inputs or livestock feed.
You can spray microbes onto barn bedding with a backpack or a fogger.
If you build windrows inside it is important to ensure they don’t dry out.
Sell directly to consumers who value the holistic work and nutritional value of her produce.
If rotating livestock, don’t have a fixed trough to avoid poaching and churning up of the land around it.