05 — The Good Stuff
The things we
never mention.
Farms talk a lot about sustainability. Here is what this one actually does — most of it, until now, without telling anyone.
Farms talk a lot about sustainability. Here is what this one actually does — most of it, until now, without telling anyone.
Elston is a registered member of the PFLA, the body behind the Pasture for Life standard for one hundred per cent pasture-fed meat. Cattle and deer here eat grass, herbs and browse — no grain, no shortcuts.
Elston is certified under the RSPB's Fair to Nature scheme — a fixed share of the farm managed for wildlife, audited, not just promised. Whitethroats to grass snakes, on purpose.
Solar and wind have run on this farm since 2012. More than one third of the electricity the farm and butchery use is generated on site.
The trial planting was 5,600 trees; with hedgerows and later plantings the farm has now put more than twelve thousand trees in the ground — and volunteers still come to plant more each winter.
When Covid closed our trade overnight, the butchery supplied 284,000 meals at cost price to the Country Food Trust's appeal — while rebuilding the business in the same weeks.
Whole-carcass butchery means the fifth quarter feeds the family's raw dog-food business instead of the bin — and the site recycles everything except polythene.
A twelve-year Rothamsted Research trial runs through our fields. A thousand soil samples. Bat surveys. Worm counts. When we say the farm is getting better, it's measured.
Because it's farming, not marketing. The hedges get planted whether anyone photographs them or not. But chefs and customers increasingly want to know where the good is actually happening — so this page exists. Every claim on it is measured, certified or on the public record.
“We need good science to help us understand how to produce our food in sympathy with the environment.”
Andy Gray — 2023