
In June we had the delight of visiting Ivy House Farm in Beckington, Somerset. We have been using Ivy House milk in our shops for over twenty years now and it is always fun to visit the farm and the very friendly and curious cows.
Geoff and Kim Bowles bought Ivy House in 1982. They are both from farming backgrounds and Geoff’s father helped them get started with just over one hundred acres of grazing land. They bought in a flying herd of Friesian cows and started milking. This was a difficult time in farming. The 1980s saw low prices for milk and many farmers sold their herds and land to larger farms which amalgamated into what we would now call industrialised farming. Geoff and Kim wanted something different for themselves, their family, and their herd. They wanted a manageable farm, and to produce good nutritious milk. And in the late 1990s, their opportunity to do something different came in the form of Kim’s Uncle John who introduced them to a small herd of twenty Jersey cows and a cream separator. The Jersey cows and their creamy milk helped to differentiate their product and the cream separator meant they could operate their own creamery. This in turn allowed them to not only sell milk, but also cream and butter.
We met Geoff and Kim through our oldest friends, Neal’s Yard Dairy (NYD). NYD started buying clotted cream from Ivy House at the turn of the millennium and it wasn’t long before Ivy House had a stand in the beginnings of the Farmers’ Market at Borough Market selling their butter, cream and milk. We tried their milk in our coffee and loved it. It was creamy and complemented our roasting style nicely. The milk is pasteurised, but not homogenised, which leads to some lovely globules of cream in our filter coffees. We were also appreciative of their farming style, animal-welfare standards, and regenerative approach. Ivy House committed to organic farming practices in their early days and continue to work with sustainability initiatives.
Time has passed and next year we will have had Ivy House on our counter for 25 years. Time has also passed on the farm, which is now run by Darren Bowles, Geoff and Kim’s son. The farm now has 120 Jersey cows in a closed herd. This means all the milking cows are from the farm, and they are all very much Darren’s. Darren has grown up with the herd, knows them all very well and it is apparent just how much they like him. The farm sits on 120 acres, with another 30 available for grazing.
Darren has come into farming in challenging times, dealing with the increases in costs associated with the last few years, and more extreme weather. He is using a combination of technology, and a return to some ancient methods to deal with some of these challenges. The technology helps assess each cow’s health and means Darren can intervene early at any sign of a problem. The ancient methods include planting more herbal lay and older varietals of grasses which do better in extreme weather.
Keep an eye on the micro-blog on the side of the bottles of milk, and visit the website ivyhousefarmdairy.co.uk for more information about Ivy House.
Sun’s out! Time for an iced latte!
Monmouth x