Farm

History

Manor Farm was built in 1882 as a model farm by a Major Cross as part of Catthorpe estate.

In those days the whole village and surrounding farms belonged to one estate called the Catthorpe Estate. The large Manor House was called Catthorpe Towers, but is now known as Catthorpe Manor; which is a Latvian Centre.

The Farm was very unusual in those days because it was completely self contained. It had everything from all the rearing houses for the animals to a slaughter house. A miniature railway line ran through the buildings to transport all the heavy goods as mechanisation was very limited in those days. It was designed by Major Cross as to how he thought farms should be, with nothing ever leaving the farm, so it had its own creamy, dairy, sheep dip and many other functions. This has left us with some very beautiful buildings with a few signs and hints as to what the buildings were used for.

Today

The estate has long been spilt up and today Manor Farm is a family run traditional mixed farm, comprising of wheat, barley, oil seed rape, field beans, potatoes, beef cattle and sheep as its main concerns. Each year, we rotate the crops that are grown in each field because it is not possible to keep growing the same year on year without getting a disease build up in the soil and therefore reducing the yield.

The Cattle

We rear cattle for beef which often ends up in Morrisons Supermarket, but we keep the best for our farm shop. Normally there are around 200 cattle on the farm; all of varying ages. We buy them from dairy farms as calves because their mothers are kept for milking, then rear them up and sell them before they get to 30 months old.

They live outside during the summer on grass and then come into the sheds during the winter. If they stayed out in the fields there would be no grass left for them the following year.

When inside, we feed them silage; we have made a food ration based on crops we grow, including potatoes that are not good enough to sell.

They are mostly cross breeds including Limosin and Charolias, but we do have Herefords for the shop sometimes, depending on what we can find to buy at the time, when they are calves.

The Sheep

We have about 250 breeding Ewes on the farm; most are Suffolk Crosses but we also have a few Border Leicester. These live outdoors for most of the year too, but come indoors in January, ready for lambing. There are often a few lambs to be seen from the end of February onwards at the farm. Like the cows, their diet consists mainly of food produced on the farm and they also sleep on the wheat straw from our fields.

Potatoes

The farm grows about 40 acres of potatoes, of which 10 acres are Wilja (white potato) and Desiree (red potato). These are sold in the shop and are excellent all round potatoes; but the red Desiree are better for Mash and the Wilja are better for chips. The remaining 30 acres are grown for the chip trade and are sometimes sold to local merchants who supply all the chips shops locally. The waste potatoes are feed to the cattle and the few pigs we have and if lucky, the horses have a few too!

The Arable

On the arable side, wheat is the main crop. Our wheat goes to all sorts of places but is mainly used for animal feed. Some does head to the weetabix factory down the A14 as well but this depends on the quality, which in turn depends on the weather!

We also grow Oil seed rape, barley and beans. We use all the straw from the barley and wheat for our livestock and then spread the muck on the fields in the spring; saving on fertiliser costs.

Combining of the Oil Seed Rape starts in mid July, followed by the barley, then the wheat throughout August and finishing with the Beans in September. Hopefully we have it all done before October because we pick the potatoes then! In-between all this we have to cart all the bales off the fields and sow them ready for the following year.

We also have two fields which produce strawberries, raspberries, blackberries , gooseberries, cherries, currants, pumpkins, asparagus and many other fruit and vegetables just for the shop. There are also a few pigs that we rear just for the shop; these are crosses of Gloucester Old Spot and Duroc (We do this to keep the flavour of the old breed, but reduce the fat). The pigs live on a very healthy diet of potatoes and cereals.

This is just a little insight into what we do, we participate in Open Farm Sunday where you can come along and see what we do, or feel free to contact us if you would like to know more.