Jill & Richard Burston
Ashridge Farm
Sandford
Crediton
Devon
Tel 01363774292
Mobile 07813653222
jill@ashridgefarm.co.uk

The Farm

We purchased Ashridge in 1976. The year of the drought. It is 197 acres (79 ha) of grade 3 land. It was run at that time as a mainly arable farm with the hedges trimmed every year very flat and very square.

We continued to farm the arable land to grow cereals and started a small sheep flock along with a herd of beef cattle. By 1986 the price we received for our cereals had fallen so we reared a lot more cattle to feed the cereals to. Then along came BSE and there was no market for our beef cattle because the public lost confidence in eating beef and the Spanish market to which we were selling our beef also collapse.

We then decided to increase the number of sheep and took them up to 650 ewes. This was followed by a collapse in the lamb market and then Foot and Mouth came along and stopped us from selling any lambs for 5 months.

In the mean time we had made the very big decision to run the farm organically This was in 1999. This meant that we had to reduce the numbers of cattle and sheep which was not a bad thing, and a year later started producing poultry for meat.

We now have 20 cattle, 50 ewes, 60 acres of cereals, chicken and a few pigs.

All the time that these changes were taking place we have done a considerable amount of work to enhance the wildlife habitat. The hedges are cut on a three year rotation and some have been left all together. In 1992 we planted 12 acres of woods replacing an ancient wood that was felled in 1970 and created a pond on some land that had been drained many time over the hundreds of years that man has farmed Ashridge, and was still too wet to farm. We are now in a government backed Stewardship Scheme where we are paid to manage the farm with wildlife very much in mind. Under this scheme we have replaced nearly a mile of hedge and we leave winter stubble for the Finch flock and skylark to over winter.