Church Farm Christmas News

Friday 21st December 2012

We All Farm Every Time We Eat

The end of each year is a time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. In February it will be 5 years since we re-started farming here after a 20 year break, by planting the orchards. In March 2008 the Red Poll Cattle came, so it is nearly 5 years of creating the enterprises here and things have blossomed since. Rural Care & Education, running a pub, learning retail, running a butchery, vegetables, fruit, every animal, a lot has happened :) Its been a huge learning curve!

Thank you to all those who have helped us over the past year, especially the great team of 39 full and part time people across the enterprises, dozens of volunteers, intern apprentices, dozens of wonderful Co-farmers, prospective vet students, customers, campers and the local community.

On average customers of the cafe, store and pub live within 4 miles of us here, our furtherest visitors are cyclists who come from as far afield as Bedford for breakfast :) We now deliver approximately 150 meat and vegetable farm food boxes within a 10 mile radius of the farm each Friday and have reached the critical size and over the coming years will consolidate and grow sustainably, but just concentrate on getting better at doing what we do.

Next year MotivAction will vacate offices and storage here, this will enable us to provide more facilities for Rural Care & Education giving Ann and the team to have more room.

Despite the many setbacks, and everything being a financial headache extra-ordinaire, we have kept going day after day for 5 years and have now created enterprises with total annual turnover of £1,300,00, we paid out £400,000 in wages maintaining 39 full and part time jobs, and for the first time from July this year we have moved from making a loss to a (nearly) break even position. We still have challenges but have every chance of achieving a transition to a sustainable future.

Special recognition must go to my partner in all ways, Emma who has risked everything with putting in mostly 7 days a week for no reward and all risk for so long.

Thank you to my father who has put up with, and encouraged, my wild ideas and schemes over the years, taught me every drains whereabouts’, the varying soil conditions and history of each inch of land here, and inspired me to follow in his footsteps and farm in the 70’s and 80’s and now still meticulously records and helps with the breeding of the pigs.

Waving not Drowning

As well as producing real food, we try to farm in a way that enhances the beauty of the country-side and the conservation of wildlife. Red Kites nested at Ardeley Bury and were seen regularly

throughout the summer; snipe, starlings, buzzard - a plethora of bird-life can be seen here.

In the spring, a group of ornithologists spotted over 30 different species in a morning. For seven years in a row now the grey partridges have successfully bred and the local wildfowl population is booming.

The mallard did especially well again this year.

The idea of an ecological approach to farming is to have a wide diversity of all species. This starts with

healthy soil and a vibrant insect population. A positive sign of this in the summer was the

number of butterflies and moths spotted.

Also, we hosted bat walks this year, the farm is alive with bats at night. All of this is down to not us-

ing insecticides, healthy hedges, beetle banks, new woodlands, wildflower mixes, pollen and wild bird seed strips, but most of all, its actually down to you

dear reader.

You make the difference when you buy food from farms that do these things. The truth is that every-one farms every time they eat. Its our customers

who make the difference to the birds and us.

Merry Christmas From Church Farm

Birds seen at

Church Farm 2012 Cormorant

Grey Heron Canada Goose

Mallard Buzzard

Red-legged Partridge Pheasant Moorhen

Wood Pigeon Collared Dove

Green Woodpecker Great Spotted Woodpecker

Pied Wagtail Wren

Dunnock Robin

Blackbird Blackcap Chiffchaff

Long-tailed Tit Blue Tit Great Tit Magpie Jackdaw Rook

Carrion Crow Chaffinch Red Kite Starling

House Sparrow Herring Gull Treecreeper Greenfinch

Lesser Redpoll Yellowhammer

Swallow Fieldfare

Song Thrush Garden Warbler Willow Warbler

Goldcrest Nuthatch Goldfinch

What’s Happening at Church Farm in 2013In the new year we will be changing the status of the Company we have set up to run the Church Farm enterprises; cafe, food, farming, hort, pub, Rural Care, education, butchery, livestock etc as a Community Interest Company. This form of Social Enterprise locks in the asets and secures future profits for re-investment with a divided cap, so surpluses are reinvested for the benefit of people, the land and the wildlife by producing food and providing local services.It has not been an easy year, with more recession, the wettest since Queen Victoria was around and my Grandfather William Waygood was born. So odds on for better weather next year. This time last year there was a shortage of water. Who knows what the future will be. We can only do our best day by day and really every day is a beautiful day

We have held numerous volunteer days on the farm this year with companies such as Glaxo Smith Kline and EBRD bank. They have helped us to paint, repair, build and enhance things all over the farm. Volunteer days are so important to us and we appreciate the companies who spend the time helping with conservation and enhancement projects on the farm. We have had some wonderful groups this year and hope this will continue next year!

We would also like to thank our volunteers who help regularly at Church Farm, your time and input is so appreciated.

A Year For Volunteer daysThis year has seen great success for our online store, we have been delivering Church Farm produce out to customers locally and now nationwide!

We have been sending meat out all over the country via a courier service through our online store.

Our box customers have also been ordering more of our produce than ever.

We provide meat to Peter Bedford Housing Association who provide food to people who have faced social exclusion through homelessness, offending, mental health problems, learning difficulties, drug and alcohol misuse or multiple needs.

Field to Fork

Jolly WaggonerA wonderful year at the Jolly

Waggoner, there have been many fun festivities, guest landlord

evenings and charity fundraisers

We would like to thank all customers for their support this year and hope 2013 is as

prosperous.. Please join us this new years eve

and help bring in 2013 with friends

Adrian & Team.

REAL ALE AND REAL FOOD

www.thejollywaggoner.co.uk

Su our wonderful new cook who started with us this year has been cooking up a storm and has created Church Farms first preserves line. Su uses foraged berries and fruits from around the farm as well as surplus fruit and vegetables. Its a great use for many of our vegetables that grow in abundance.

There has been red onion chutney, beards oak chutney, Strawberry jam, plum jam, clementine marmalade, blackcurrent jam and even pickled onions.

These are our own products which are produced on the farm, unlike many farm shops who market jams and chutneys as their own when in fact they were produced miles away.

The jams and chutneys produced come in a range of sizes and are perfect additions to Christmas hampers and make a wonderful accompanist to a cheese board or Christmas breakfast!

Field To Freezer..Su will also be producing pre-prepared frozen meals using Church Farm produce, these will be hand prepared in our kitchens using Church Farm meat and veg, a fantastic alternative to the supermarket ready meal which are often full of E numbers, preservatives, salt and sugar.

Moroccan Lamb stew and Beef Goulash will be available in the new year, watch in store!

Preserving Church Farm......

course of the year and our wood cabins were all booked out throughout the summer. Here is what one of our campers thought...

“It was actually mine and my partner’s first camping experience since we were kids, so a big risk to go and camp in the woods first go. However, from arrival to departure our experience was fantastic. The service has been exceptional right from when I made my first enquiry. The staff in the Farm Store were so friendly which is rare these days!

We walked into the woods and camped in there, it was a beautiful and clean place whilst still retaining the real feel of being remote!”

Wild Camping & More...Its been Church Farm’s busiest and most successful camping year yet. Wild camping has proved extremely popular and much fun has been had by many. We have had some fantastic feedback from our campers who enjoy the simplicity of the great wild outdoors. We have had hundreds of people camp on the land over the

We have had numerous schools visit the farm, collecting eggs, planting seeds and getting involved in real farming.Earlier in the year we also had a group of young carers spend the day doing activities on the farm giving them a break from their responsibilities at home.

We hosted a beautiful wedding here in the summer with a vintage tea party theme. Luckily it didn’t rain!

We also held a volunteer day for a food cycle project where they built pig pens for the pigs on the village field.

Its been a great year for events at the farm. We are lucky to be able to offer such a diverse range of educational, team buildingand personal experiences in such a beautiful rural setting. We look forward to what next year brings.

Its been a worrying year for our bee’s and we wondered if they

would produce, however they have pulled through and we have had

another bumper harvest. Our Bee Apiary which was built during one of our volunteer days last year has

also been renovated this year.

Don’t Forget The Bee’s

It has been a busy year for us at Rural Care, taking on more Co- farmers than ever before. A lot of the Co- farmers that have been referred in the last year have more complex needs and challenging behaviour. Only 3 years ago we used to have specialist external staff that dealt with this behaviour, whilst now we support these Co- farmers with Rural Care staff. These Co- farmers often don’t display their challenging behaviour here as they are in a completely different environment and are kept busy all of the time.

We work on a regular basis with 3 school groups from Greenside School, Pinewood and Marriots but this year we have also has students come from Brandles and Penn School. For North Hertfordshire college we run a year 1 and 2 animal care course and have 7 students that are on a bespoke timetable for their needs, some only attending Rural Care.

We are running a project for the YMCA around healthy eating with Barcleys school and LEAF (Linking environment and Farming) and the sensory trust funded us to run 5 visits for older people from residential homes.

We have just been reapproved as a day opportunities provider for people with learning difficulties for Hertfordshire County Council after a very thorough inspection and have made great progress around procedures and policies.

Finally, due to the on-going popularity of Rural Care we are looking to recruit a new staff member in the new year and we are always looking for volunteers to help out.

Please contact us at ruralcareinfo@churchfarmardeley.co.uk or call 07507890245 if you are interested.

Welcome and thank you to all of our customers for your support in 2012. A happy and healthy new year to you.

We hope you enjoy this special Christmas newsletter, with its look back over the year just gone, and a preview of what we are looking forward to in 2013.

Best wishes,

Tim, Emma, Adrian & Team.

Rural Care in 2012Where care for land and people meet

Over the year we’ve helped harvest, cared for the animals, collected eggs, painted sheds all over the farm, fed the orphaned lambs, bagged up animals feed, worked in the shop and cafe and ran a couple of pub nights.... and thats not to mention hatching ducklings and chicks, clipping turkeys wings, spreading straw for the pigs, breaking through ice in the drinking troughs and even organising the Rural Care Olympics.

As you can see we haven’t sat still and are not about to!

After lots of demand we will be starting a Care Farm at Aldenham Country Park in spring 2013 and hope to open up Rural Care at Church Farm on Saturdays.

Church Farm, Ardeley, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG2 7AH, T: 01438 861 447E: info@churchfarmardeley.co.uk www.churchfarmardeley.co.uk