If you’ve been up to the farm shop over the last few weeks, you’ll see the calves at Hartley Farm have been the main focus of attention for us on the farm. Our calving season has now finished on the farm and the next big job is silage making. We’ve had near-perfect spring weather with a few wet days and lots of warm sunny days. The grass has grown well and the big task now is to mow, dry and bale all our grass to make silage for this winter’s feed. The herd will then be moving around the farm, from paddock to paddock, grazing for as long as the weather holds into the winter. It’s all our cows ever eat, either fresh grass direct from the fields or hay and silage that has been cut in the summer. This means happy cows, living their most natural life and happy, healthy soil for our farm. You can read a bit more about our approach to raising livestock and our meat on my journal from earlier this year here.
In April we were so happy to reopen the farm shop and have been open ever since with a few additional measures in place to ensure a safe shopping environment. We’re back up to full speed in the shop and now open from Monday – Saturday from 9 am until 4 pm. We are hoping we can reopen our gift shop soon with more plants and flowers available albeit in the safest possible way.
Our farm kitchen maybe a little further down the line and we’re working on reopening at some point over the summer when we are allowed to do so. We may have a different format than normal but we’re excited about firing up the stoves again and cooking some delicious food for you again as soon as possible!
One of our plans at the start of the year was to launch an online shop with a local delivery service for our favourite home-produced and locally sourced produce. This plan was brought forward for obvious reasons and we’ve been working really hard on making it even better and ensuring it’s here to stay! Sign up to our newsletter online for all our new product information and offers. Click and collect is available every day we are open and local delivery is available on Thursday and Friday every week. There’s more information about how to get started with our online shop here.
Thanks for reading!
Tom