Lawns Farm
The planning and installation of new dairy systems
• Milking parlours & parlour updates
• Milk cooling systems
• MIone automatic milking system
• Dairy hygiene solutions
• Servicing & spares
• Farm equipment – including automatic feeding & slurry handling equipment
Call us on 01476 575447( Office) | 07980 584856( Mobile) www. griffinsdairyequipment. co. uk
Griffins Dairy Equipment, Tanglewood, Barrowby Road, Grantham, Lincs. NG31 8NR can’ t compete with 2000-strong cow herds in the US and 1000 cow herds in Australia. We’ ve no chance on the market. We’ re just a small family farm.
‘ What I began to understand through what we’ ve done with the farm shop is that adding value by marketing local fresh produce to local people can give us a better margin – and also works well with local people who are now what we are all about. So we’ re trying our level best to move out of the commodities market and concentrating our efforts on connecting with our consumers, people who live close to us.
‘ We now bottle our own branded milk. It’ s from grass to glass, or maybe plas( plastic)! Our cows are born, reared and milked on the farm and we get that message across every time we can. We’ re offering that most personal of service too, delivery to your door.
‘ It will take us more time before we reach the point where 100 per cent of our milk is delivered or sold direct from the farm but we’ re on our way. Our 65 milkers average 7000 litres per year, which means we’ re producing around 420,000 litres. My initial target is for us to reach 10,000 litres sold from here every month. At present we’ re around 4000 litres but we’ ve only been going for a year. We’ re bottling 1 and 2 litre plastic bottles.
‘ It has been a steep learning curve from quantity surveying to farming, marketing, putting in a bottling plant, learning how to pasteurise, bottle it, branding and set up a milk round from scratch. I milk the cows in the morning, our apprentice milks in the afternoon while I bottle from 5pm. Chris delivers it in the morning so it is milked, bottled and delivered in 24 hours – hence our name, making use of our aptly named hamlet, it’ s Morthen Milk.
‘ The shop already had a good following on social media so we’ ve been able to bounce off the back of that with the milk. We’ ve found that once you get one person in a neighbourhood all of a sudden that can develop into three of four.’
The Ross family sells the lion’ s share of its milk to Buckley Dairies whose price in common with others in the sector has risen steadily since the really dark days of last year. George sees the farm’ s future looking a little healthier, but is confident that their approach to marketing Morthen Milk is the way forward. He would also like to see other improvements made for their dairy herd when cash allows.
‘ Cow welfare is vital, especially when we’ re marketing the way we are. We want people to see that our cows have happy lives. Ideally I’ d like to go to a loose-housed system and with robotic milking; that way we also get real time feedback about the herd too and can act before any problems occur.’
Clover, maize, wheat and barley are all grown for feed and the farm has 50 acres of permanent pasture. The land is largely on clay and coal measures.
Connecting with the public has become not just about selling their wares but also running events on the farm too. They were part of the national Open Farm Sunday in June and also host their own mini- Glastonbury called FARMFEST in August.
‘ We started FARMFEST four years ago and FARMFEST 4 will be held on Sunday 27 August this year when The Chris Berry Band will be playing!’ says George. We had 400 the first year but last year’ s attracted nearly 3000! Come along and see us. There will also be piglet racing, Lewis the Longhorn and Oprah the dairy cow who can be milked by hand.’
68 Summer 2017 www. farmers-mart. co. uk