Speciality Food Feb/March 2024

specialityfoodmagazine.com 45 we’re not depleting the soil in that timeline,” she adds proudly. Quicke’s has permanent pasture across a lot of the farm and that’s “great for developing a really healthy root base in our fields, preventing wash off, and increasing the soil’s organic matter.” In summer months there’s typicallymore grass on the fields than the cows can eat. This is gathered for sileage, reducing feed costs during the cooler months. “There’s a lot of interest in the kinds of cheese you canmake with sileage- fed cows,” says Jane. “What they eat has a huge impact on flavour, and you can notice the difference when cows gain on grass versus hay versus sileage. Having that control across everythingmeans you know exactly what they’ve eaten and can say ‘this is howwe need to make the cheese’.” Cows are rotated every 12 hours in the fields at Quicke’s. This has the dually positive effect of ensuring maximumnutrition for the animals, while leaving enough time for the land to recover and flourish once again. Other sustainability highlights include that half the farm is woodland (with 84% of carbon sequestered here), and that a field’s worth of solar panels have been put in. The Quicke family’s hope is to reach net zero, through the initiatives already in place, and future investment, with investigation going on currently into Bennamann’s methane-capture system. Homegrown food and lower inputs are high on Catherine Temple’s list – but she too is looking to the next phase of her environmental mission. At Copy’s Green Farm cover crops, such as low intervention lucerne and field beans, fix nitrogen in the soil, while providing nutrition for the cows. “A new thing we’re doing,” she says, “is we’re maybe going to start roasting the beans. Someone has done experiments that showed if you roast them, it makes themmore nutritious. It’s a win-win. If the cattle can get more out of the beans, they will need to eat less.” Also, while an anaerobic digestor on the farmhelps manage waste and generate energy, Catherine is researching using leftover whey from cheesemaking to make a spirit – as others (including Isle of Mull Cheese) have done. Not only is it a more profitable way of processing whey, but the waste product from the distilling process makes great fertiliser, she says. “We’re just trying to get the best use out of the farm, and to give back to the land. Since WorldWar II we’ve thrown fertiliser at everything to get as much as possible out of the land. Now we’re reverting to ways where we are encouraging the soil microbiome to give us a share of what it’s got, without stripping it down. Diversity is very important.” David andWilma Finlay of The Ethical Dairy say it took 10 years for them to notice the benefits of going organic and using agroecological practices. But it was worth it to see the marked difference a decade on – particularly regarding soil health and productivity. “It was responding to the lack of pesticides and fertilisers, and we began getting the kind of yields we’d experienced with fertilisers and pesticides previously,” David explains. Their measures are, David says, stacking up. A recent audit found diversity had increased by 50% on the farm, from 150 to more than 230 species – including the discovery of a rare five-eyedmedicinal leech, which caused a stir amongst entomologists. “We’ve got about 88 species of pond life, bugs and beasties, which is quite remarkable,” he adds. One of the most critical revivals is of dung beetles, which David calls the ‘unsung heroes’ of regenerative agriculture. “They came back here because we stopped treatments for parasites in livestockmanagement. We managed the parasites out of the systemby understanding lifecycles and working with nature.” In addition to a gentler way of farming, The Ethical Dairy has an anaerobic digestor, which processes organic farmwaste to produce energy (as well as effective natural fertilisers and soil conditioners), 95% of the cows’ diet is grown on-farm, and over the past two and a half decades the family have planted around 35,000mixed broadleaf trees, which contribute to Rainton Farmbeing recognised as carbon positive. Wyke Farms is also a net positive business, says Richard. All of the 150 farmers it works with are footprinted and incentivised to produce milk in a more sustainable way and, “some of themhave the lowest carbon footprint farms in the world producing milk!” Creating Ivy’s Reserve was, he adds, verymuch about laying down the gauntlet in the industry. A lot of time was spent working with the Carbon Trust on the product. “We learnt just so much from them about emissions, and what we can do to manage them.” We’re reverting to ways where we are encouraging the soil microbiome to give us a share of what it’s got, without stripping it down. Diversity is very important CATHERINE TEMPLE DAVID AND WILMA FINLAY