Working Farm
Court Farm is a 330 acre working farm, owned and run by the Norris family since 1898. Our two boys are the fifth generation of the Norris family to live in the stone-built Tudor farmhouse. It is a traditional mixed farm with beef, sheep and arable. The farm is run as an integrated system where each enterprise benefits the others and helps sustain the farm.
Arable
Over half of the farm is arable where crops of wheat, barley and oats are grown as part of a rotation. Malting barley is grown on contract for Hobsons Brewery and milling oats are grown for porridge oats produced by Morning Foods. Barley and oats are also used to feed the beef and sheep on the farm and the wheat is sold to feed mills.
The straw from the corn crops is used to bed the animals when they are housed. The manure the stock produce is returned to the arable fields to help build the soil fertility and improve the condition of the soil.
Beef
We usually have 100 cattle which are fed entirely on sileage and cereals grown on our farm. All the cattle are Hereford X and are sold to a leading supermarket as traditional Hereford Beef.
Sheep
We have over 300 breeding ewes which are Suffolk crosses and Welsh Mules bred with Charolais rams. The ewes lamb in late March and produce about 500 lambs which are grown on the farm through the summer, before being finished in the autumn and winter and sold through local markets.
FABBL (Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb) and Stewardship
Court Farm is a member of a farm assurance scheme known as FABBL. Every year the crops and livestock are assessed to ensure that we are producing them to the required standards of health, hygiene, welfare and quality. This allows us to sell our produce with the FABBL mark. The farm also has a Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, a government supported conservation scheme, which encourages wildlife and plant life on the farm by using grass and flower margins around arable fields, having areas of low impact grassland and managing our hedgerows.
