At Mansergh Hall Farm, the Hadwin family put animal welfare and sustai- nable farming first to produce some of the county’s finest beef, pork and lamb.

sion than most when we went to visit. The Hadwin family have farmed here for some four generations, with Jim taking over in the 1970s. He now farms it with his entire family, including son James, who breeds the pigs, and daughter Amanda and son-in-law Simon, the latter the butcher in the team. If you’ve been to a farm shop or two in Cumbria, chances are you’ve come across meat products from Mansergh Hall. The com- bination of variety and quality that comes out of this farm is quite unique – the Hadwins rear both sheep (cross of North Country Cheviot ewes and Texel rams), cattle (Highland – pictured above – and Galloway) and pigs (in- cluding Gloucester Old Spot, Saddleback and

T

Issue 2 • May 2010

here are many stunningly situated farms in this county, but Mansergh Hall Farm outside Kirkby Lons- dale still made a bigger impres-

Large Black). Mansergh Hall consists of 270 acres of land, and the family grows much of the feed needed on their own land, following a crop rotation system, through which they plant two crops together in a field, e g barley and grass, which produces a so called whole crop silage and means the resulting feed is higher in nutrients and doesn’t need to be supplemented as much.

Forced to stop organic farming

The Hadwins have always produced their meats (and feeds) without the use of herbi- cides, pesticides or growth promoters, and in 2004 the farm completed its conversion to organic. Unfortunately, new EU regulations now means that Jim and his family have been forced to come to the conclusion that far- ming of pigs organically at Mansergh Hall is no longer feasible and therefore the entire

5 Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18