Progressive and Passionate

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Team Yatesbury

The Gantletts have been farming at Yatesbury since 1968.

Richard and Charlotte Gantlett farm today, supported by their children with the aim to produce the best quality produce in the most sustainable manner. 

We have an enthusiastic team of  local, dedicated and skilled farmers (our staff), engineers,  craftsmen and tradesmen who support and make the team.

Yatesbury House Farm is a 534 ha family farm, on the Wiltshire downs near Avebury. Experience and tradition is combined with a deep-rooted belief that farming should work together with nature, not against it. The bio dynamic methods we use are a key part of achieving sustainable, natural and quality food.

At Yatesbury House Farm, we are focused on providing the highest quality of produce with the highest levels of customer satisfaction – we will do everything we can to meet our customers expectations.

The Yatesbury BioDynamic System
The resilience of the farm and its ability to produce food is embedded in the life, energy and quality of the soil.
–the health of soil, plant, animal, human and planet as one and indivisible.

  • Dedicated Team             working sustainably and ethically, constantly striving to improve the whole farm through research.
  • Feed the Soil                  diverse ley mixture (33 varieties), Dynamic grazing by cattle, High Biomass Rotation, BD preps,                                                   and Bio-cultivations
  • Light Cultivations          no ploughing since 2003, <5t tractors, satellite guided, low cost/low input
  • 3D Sowing                      competitive, diverse and high quality crops, vibrant rooting, under sowing, low weed burden
                                                                           
Cattle
Our herd of pedigree Aberdeen Angus beef cattle is growing steadily from 6 heifers in 1996 to nearly three hundred animals today. Their welfare is paramount to us, in the way we keep them and in the way we treat them. They are given neither routine antibiotics nor growth promoting drugs and  we even attend courses to make sure we understand and meet their needs and treat them with respect. Our cattle feed on our herbal rich diverse pastures and are fed hay and silage during the winter. Ruminent animals are natural converters of pasture crops  (cellulose) into food and Aberdeen Angus cattle are beautifully suited to our low input system,  naturally without horns, easy calving, easy fattening, happy cows. We supply our Black Angus pure bred, grass fed, beef to CALCOT Hotels.

Herbal Rich Pastures we call Diverse Leys
We sow leys that have over 33 varieties of plants from 24 species of clovers, grasses and herbs. They are full of nectar producing plants and insect ideal foraging for bees and farmland birds as well as cows. The diversity in the seed mix ensures plants ideally suited to every corner of every field, with less competition the different species and varieties occupy more of the soil profile too making a more active and dynamic sward  and root system. The diversity makes for a healthier diet for our cows to savour. We have resently been part of the LegumeLink project which has demonstrated the outstanding benefits from a polyculture, mixed species, pasture sward, the research was published in 2013 (LegumeLink, 2013).

Cereals, Quality Produce

The cultivated crops on the farm are wheat, barley, oats and field beans.

We work closely with our long term customers who produce flour, porridge oats, malt for whiskey and now lentils.
See our Soil and Life page for more information.
Technology is important to our progress as satellite guided tractors demonstates.

Soil Quality or Terroir is a critical influence for produce quality.

This factor has been understood in viticulture for a long time and is beginning to be understood in farming.

Wildlife and Honey 
The farm has areas of woodland rich in bluebells and orchids. Deer, hares, buzzards, kytes and a rich array of farmland birds including: corn bunting, common curlew, yellow hammers, tree sparrows, sky larks, barn owls, little owls, tawny owls, quail, short eared owl, lapwing, and partridges as well as more common birds. We have already run projects to maintain and improve the environment in terms of planting and caring for hedges and woodlands, improving meadows etc. The results are already visible on every corner of the farm. Colourful finches nest in the many hedgerows and butterflies and bees help with pollination. Some of the bees work hard to produce our delicious natural honey. Ladybirds help to keep pests at bay and owls and bats find shelter in our barns. We are also planting special bird seed crops to feed wild birds when feed is in short supply in the Spring. Having said that the farming and the wildlife are one and whole, indivisible.
Some lovely comments from locals:

"… so many more bugs here than other farms I go to", "the hares are the size of foxes here", "your Farm is cherished"


Research

Everything on our farm is work in progress. Trial and error has been a big part of developing our systems, now we like to call it research as it is  a little more structured and organised. We have scoured the planet for good ideas. In this picture two Brazilian scholarship students from the University of Reading are helping to gather baseline data for a research project entitled High Biomass Rotation and its impact on Soil quality, Crop quality and Weed burden.

Geology
Our farm is located on sily clay loam sitting over a seem of grey (lower) chalk. Man's land, certainly not boys' land. If turned over when wet this soil would quickly turn to concrete in the past. Dryer years have usually been better years as rainfall is still sufficient in dry years for a good cereal harvest.
Grey Chalk Subgroup - Chalk. Sedimentary Bedrock formed approximately 94 to 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous Period. Local environment previously dominated by warm chalk seas. These rocks were formed in warm shallow 'Chalk' shelf seas with little sediment input from land. They often consist of a calcareous ooze of the microscopic remains of plankton.

Climate


Rainfall

1040-580 mm, 800mm mean

40-23 inches, 31 inches mean

We are certified by the Soil Association for farm assurance standards known as Red Tractor.

Shumei


A Japanese charitable organisation and UN NGO  have their UK base on our farm developing and demonstrating their method of sustainable farming called Natural Agriculture. Their market garden is beautful and their wide variety of market garden crops delicious. They are working to encourage others to take up their method which has been used successfully for fifty years in Japan.
shumei.eu/yatesbury/