Whilst it was a bit of a misty start to the day, we were really pleased with the number of people who came and enjoyed our first ever Food & Drink Fayre on Sunday 8th September – even the sun made an appearance in the afternoon!
One of our big motivators in putting on this event was to help support businesses with direct sales to customers so people can buy quality local produce directly from the producer and know its provenance. All too often we tend to buy our produce through the supermarkets (as it is convenient) but also where the supply chain is often long and the producer generally loses out. It was fantastic to hear from so many producers who spoke at the event, hearing the stories, understanding the challenges and seeing the absolute enthusiasm to produce high quality goods quite literally on our doorsteps!
Don’t forget if you want more of our lovingly reared venison, we will be at the Louth Food & Drink Festival on Sunday 29th September, not far from WHSmith in the marketplace. We have an exciting new recipe from Richie Stamp-Mason from the Red Lion Inn at Spilsby who we are working more closely with – come & see us to find out more!
Our last open day this year will take place on Sunday 6th October and, with the leaves turning, autumn really is one of the best times of the year to come and enjoy the colours and walk around the estate.
We will be open from 10am – 4pm and it is just £4 per car to park for the day in the woodland car park.
Come and enjoy the trails, bring your pooch (on leads please) and spot the deer in the parks. We will bring the veni van and have a selection of frozen meat on offer from 11am – 2pm where we also hope to have the BBQ out so you can enjoy a cheeky venison burger for lunch!
As this is our last open day this year we have decided to offer mini farm tours on the tractor & trailer FREE OF CHARGE, yes you read that right – FREE . We are taking bookings for these via our website so if you’d like to take advantage of a mini tour of the estate please get booked in ASAP and we look forward to seeing you then!
With the weather on the turn it might be time to get stocked up with some of our kiln dried logs ready for winter. Kiln dried logs are better than barn dried logs as they burn more cleanly and efficiently meaning that you use less, they create less ash and your chimney won’t need sweeping as often. Win, win!
Our kiln dried logs come in 0.7 cubic metre bags and are priced at £122.50 a bag.
We deliver within 20 miles (by road) of LN9 5PB and expect to have enough in stock until Christmas! Guy is out in the van 2 days a week so don’t delay get your order in soon.
We recently unloaded our 600th load of logs out of the kiln – what a milestone!
With harvest safely in and having bid a fond farewell to both Dan and Oli who have moved onto pastures new this month, we have turned our attention to drilling the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI scheme) plots. These have been sown with wildflower mix and winter bird food and will form quite a large area of our farmland for the next 3 years. This is all part of our plan to move to a regenerative agriculture system.
Moving to a regenerative system means that we look after the soils to increase the nutrients in these areas, improve drainage and give the land time to recover from being farmed intensively. It also brings big benefits to the wildlife in the area, encouraging insects and giving birds a safe haven, particularly over the harsh winter months. Our hedgerows will not be trimmed quite so severely and there will be much wider field margins in support of this too. You might visit and think the farm looks a bit scruffy and rough around the edges,, but the really important work is going on underneath the soil. There will be an increase in both the nutritional benefit of the land as well as the wildlife over the coming months and years.
The big recent purchase on farm has been a Horsch Avatar drill – this is an important piece of the ‘regen’ farming toolkit as it is a direct drill, meaning it does not need the land to be worked (typically ploughed and power harrowed) prior to drilling. We can also sow cover crops – crops that are grown simply to benefit the soil prior to drilling in the spring. Using a direct drill such as an Avatar benefits the soil and reduces the need for quite so many ‘passes’ over the land to prepare it for drilling thereby reducing our costs of production. We will wait to see how these direct drilled crops fair when we come to harvest next year!
Some land at Stourton, particularly the heavier clays, will still need to be cultivated and both Tom and Jamie have been using the Caterpillar and subsoiler to loosen the land before using a more traditional sumo drill for the winter barley to go in. We’ve also had a busy day getting some sugar beet lifted and dodging showers to get one field ready for Sygenta so that they can sew some winter wheat trials on the land up near Hatton. Neve, our Harper placement student has moved almost seamlessly from corn carting to beet carting in little under a month! Phew – we’re really looking forward to our new Farm Manager joining us next month…
The most wonderful wedding was held here in September and what a lovely review we received from M&B:
“This venue is everything we could have dreamt of and more. The natural beauty creates the most beautiful setting for your perfect day. Nothing was too much trouble for the team and the help, support and love throughout has been absolutely amazing. The flexibility to be able to build your own wedding is something we hadn’t thought of until we found Stourton and we had so much fun I would do it all again. From the first moment we visited we completely fell in love and watching our ideas and planning come alive has been so magical. We can 100% say it was OUR day and it was one of a kind.”
If you’d like to consider holding your wedding at Stourton Woods please get in touch, whilst we’ve also said ‘goodbye’ to Julie this month, we are still completely committed to holding wonderful woodland weddings here and we would be delighted to show you the venue and what can be achieved here.
The deer are getting ready for the rut, we have separated the two main stags from the boys – Winston and Harry and they are now awaiting their hinds so they can do the business… They are definitely ready for them there is quite a pungent aroma around them that apparently the ladies quite like! The boys have had their antlers removed, this is just like cutting toe nails just a bit longer & stronger. Neve made her own shield and got in on the action with Antony, and over 2 days all 50 boys have had the weight lifted off their heads and are prancing around the parks.
We remove the antlers to protect the deer and ourselves from any exuberant behaviour and it ensures we have a ready supply of natural antler dog chews. If you’d like one of these, we have a great selection of sizes – please get in touch! These doggy treats will also be available from our stand at the Louth Food & Drink Festival on 29th September.
Reared here on the farm, professionally butchered & packaged for us by local butchers and labelled here, we deliver direct to your door in our veni-van across Lincolnshire, freshly frozen venison is also available for delivery nationwide!
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