Life on the farm REGENERATIVE FARMING in practice

Written by - Mark Lee (above right) Torpenhow Farmhouse Dairy

Facing the Climate Crisis

Living on the northern edge of the Lake District, we expect a good deal of rain, but this year it has been relentless.

When I look at the conditions right across the country, wheat fields are under water in the bread basket of England, crops are ruined in Lincolnshire, and thousands of hectares will not deliver income for farms or produce for the public—it is devastating.

We are in the grip of a climate crisis where once in a century events seem commonplace, and this is the backdrop to what has been a challenging decade for Jenny and I, farming at Park House in Torpenhow.

Our Organic Dairy Vision

We are an ‘organic pasture for life’ certified dairy farm, turning our creamy milk into cheese, butter, and Gelato on farm.

We milk 160 crossbred cows which graze outside for 300 days of the year on a mob grazing rotational system. The cows graze grasses, clovers, legumes, and herb-rich paddocks for 12 hours and then are moved off, not to return for another 40 days.

This ‘rest period’ gives the plants time to regenerate to lend a phrase to this style of regenerative farming.

Soil Health and Agroforestry

We focus on improving soil health, aiming to improve the pasture, increasing its nutrient uptake when the cows graze, and this directly improves the nutrient density of our produce.

We have worked with RAISE Cumbria Community Forest and United Utilities to plant thousands of in-field trees with the intention of creating wooded pasture.

This environment, we hope, will improve the soil fungal to bacteria balance, provide shelter from heat and rain, and improve the range of grazing for our inquisitive herd of cows. This concept has been coined 3D grazing, as the cows can choose what to eat and at several levels.

More planting this wet season is getting us closer to our aim of planting 100-acre wood pasture interconnecting our 25 acres of ancient woodland now rebranded as Atlantic rainforest.

Our Journey to Regeneration

Last year we hosted Down to Earth, a regenerative dairy farming conference where 1,000 farmers travelled from all over the British Isles to see what we do and listen to some world authorities on agroecology.

It has not always been this way at Park House. We moved here 12 years ago having previous careers in the Army and teaching. Jen had grown up on the farm but had no idea she would one day be running the farm with two girls and her husband with no farming experience!

Changing Our Herd and Practices

Our herd of Holsteins were fully housed, milked three times a day, and fed on a very high protein-rich diet of soya, grain, silage, and protected fats. The cows gave over 10,000 litres a year each, but at a cost of production of 28p per litre we needed to change when the milk price dropped to 16p a litre.

Some trips to other farms led us to selling our old herd and buying in some Jersey/Friesian crossbred cows which are world-class at converting grazed grass into milk. We calve in February which allows the cows' lactation to mirror the grass growth curve, ensuring that we maximise the amount of pasture through the year.

The Lightbulb Moment

Our lightbulb moment came after we had been advised to spray a field of “weeds” with herbicide. Our sprayer had a blocked nozzle which striped the field.

Seven weeks later we allowed the cows to graze the paddock and they grazed in perfectly straight lines, walked over lush grass, and continued in another line. The cows were telling us they wanted to eat the “weeds” that didn’t have the herbicide on.

This observation led us to search for more information, reading Rachel Carson, Gabe Brown, Allen Williams, and Mark Shepherd. From that week onwards we stopped applying all chemicals onto the land and started our organic conversion, this was in 2017.

Organic Transition and Cheese Making

We struggled to grow enough grass for the first three years after stopping the fertiliser

because our soils were degraded and we had short-rooted ryegrasses which demanded fertiliser. However, as with our herd, when we added diversity into our paddocks, they began fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere and we began to grow almost as much grass as when we were applying 100 tonnes of chemical fertiliser.

As an organic producer, we couldn’t find a milk processor to pick our milk up, so decided we would add value to our milk and make cheese. We trialled it in 2019 and the cheese was ready to sell just as the country went into lockdown.

Building the Cheese Business

This shaped the way we grew our cheese business—delivering direct to locals, setting up an honesty fridge on the farm, and we also sold to village stores.

Our cheese is organic and PFLA certified. Last year, we won a gold medal in the world cheese awards and three stars in the great taste awards.

Regenerative Agriculture and Community

When we started our conversion “regenerative farming” was not a commonly used phrase. It can sometimes seem a divisive term in the agricultural community and there is always the worry of greenwashing.

Nevertheless, the pillars of improving the environmental, economic, and social aspects of the farm are really fundamental to our approach to the business. From employing two people in 2012, we now employ 15 people and the growing artisan food community around the lunch table has whispers of how the farm would have felt in the 1950s when Jenny’s grandparents moved here.

For us, our mindset needed to change before we made big changes, but once it did, the opportunities seemed endless.

New Ventures - Gelato and Beyond

Last year we began filling beer barrels with milk and delivering them to local businesses to try to reduce plastic in the milk supply chain.

We attracted a Gelato maker’s attention and the company asked whether a member of their team could join us on the farm and start making products with our milk full time. In March 2023, Three Hills Gelato was born and a new outlet for our organic milk secured, with a shop on the high street in Keswick and several good customers scooping it throughout Cumbria.

Looking to the Future

What’s next on our farm's regenerative journey?

A spirit made from the whey of cheese making has been funded by a local grant, as has a study to measure the phytonutrients in our milk, cheese to extend outside of Cumbria, whey-based soaps, as our daughter discovers the amazing versatility of milk—and maybe even an on-farm bakery!

Final Thoughts

The rain is still driving against the windows, what are we going to do if the rain doesn’t stop? What if the climate creates an environment that causes crop failure every year?

We can’t change the worldwide environment but we can protect our own. If we increase the organic matter in the soil and improve its structure, it can hold 20 times more rainwater. If we plant as many different trees as our farming allows, together with mixed species leys, our soil will have armour to protect it from extreme conditions.

Our cows rotationally grazing grows more grass with less inputs, which is beneficial to our bank balance. We are food producers first, but we need to do it with consideration for nature and to protect and regenerate our land.

Now I must check the cow shed before calling it a day.