About the Farm
The farm, based at Wytham in Oxfordshire, has recently won awards from the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group.
FAI Farms Oxford. Northfield Farm is a 1200 acre mixed livestock farm owned by Oxford University and managed by the team of FAI Farms Ltd.
The farm has been certified organic since 2002 and has recently decided to take things to a new level by transitioning to regenerative agriculture.
In my capacity as a regenerative agriculture consultant, I have been working with Clare Hill and the farm team for the last couple of years to train and support in their transition.
The farming system.
The farm rears 90 cattle which are a cross between Saler, Aberdeen Angus and Stabiliser. The farm is transitioning to an outwintering system where there are areas of the farm that rest in late summer and ‘bank’ deferred forage for the animals to eat in winter. This approach reduces the amount of hay that needs to be cut and therefore saves money and fossil fuels as well as helps to pump more carbon into the soil from increasing the photosynthesis happening in the fields throughout the year.
Outwintering allows cattle to behave more naturally and alleviates the potential disease and stress associated with housing cattle in a shed. The out wintering also saves the farm money in straw, the labour of feeding and mucking out and the environmental costs of storing and transporting manure.
Listen to a podcast of Clare and myself talking about the farm transition.
The breeding program is focusing on breeding a ‘type’ that is a perfect fit for their unique regenerative system rather than focusing on a specific breed. This approach to breeding helps the farm select animals that are least likely to get sick and need intervention and is an important part of the proactive approach we take on regenerative farms.
The farm also has a flock of three hundred crossbred breeding ewes once again selected for proactive health and management reasons to fit the new regenerative low input system.
The farm includes a large area of species-rich meadows including SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) floodplain meadows. Hay from these meadows is strategically used in the outwintering bale grazing plan to add carbon to the soil and naturally transplant the wildflowers and supportive soil microbes to the less diverse areas of the farm.
The farm is now PFLA approved and certified and the livestock have been on a 100% grass-fed diet for between 1-2 years. The products currently available from the farm can not yet be officially sold with the PFLA label as they are required to be born under the certification to do so.
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