Little Valley Farm

Little Valley Farm is a 33 acre organic smallholding on the edge of Bratton Fleming, managed sustainably without the use of fossil fuels.

Our primary business is a market garden, cultivated using working horses. We sell a wide range of vegetables at Bratton Fleming Market on the 4^th Saturday each month and outside Bratton Fleming Village Stores every other Saturday (9.30am-midday). We also sell vegetables at Brayford Market (2^nd Saturday, 10am-12pm). We often also have frozen beef for sale.

We keep cows, goats and chickens, and plan to produce cheese to sell in the near future.

Visit our online shop to order vegetables, eggs and meat. Produce can be delivered within Bratton Fleming or collected from our stall or from Bratton Fleming Village Stores.

Sustainable Farming

Here at Little Valley Farm, we try to live and work as sustainably as possible, so you can be sure you are not harming the environment when you buy from us. Whilst we are not yet perfectly sustainable we do strive to improve wherever possible.

Here are some of the ways we try to minimise our impact on the environment:

Fossil Fuel Free

We don't burn any fossil fuels on the land - we use horses to cultivate the land, make hay and to transport stuff around the land. We use electric bicycles to get around, deliver produce and collect our chicken food.

Our stoves for cheesemaking, cooking, heating and for making tea are powered by wood.

All of our electricity comes from solar panels and is stored in a second hand electric car battery.

Organic

We are certified organic, which means that we don't use artificial fertilisers or pesticides. Production of artificial fertilisers require burning lots of fossil fuels. Pesticides kill off biodiversity and fertilisers damage the soil and can pollute waterways.

The fertility in our soil is provided by manure from our animals and from green manures. These manures increase the organic content of the soil and help to create more biodiversity.

Low embodied energy

All of the farm buildings are made of locally sourced timber. Wherever possible we buy equipment second hand.

Waste

We try to minimise the waste we produce. Our grey water is processed by a reed bed. We use a compost toilet and the compost is used to fertilise our willow coppice, which provides sustainable firewood.

Where possible we use re-usable containers. Our salad is sold in biodegradable plastic bags to maintain freshness - this is not ideal and we are always looking for a better alternative.

Any waste cardboard packaging brought in is used to mulch willow and fruit trees.

Grass fed

Our cows have access to pasture all year round and live on a diet of grass and other wild plants.

There are claims that cows are unsustainable due to their methane emissions, but our cows are part of a carbon cycle - any methane breaks down to carbon dioxide within 12 years and the carbon dioxide is sequestered by our grass and eaten by the cows.

We believe that a diet with a little meat and dairy can be more sustainable than a vegan diet - most vegetable fats (such as sunflower oil, rape seed, almond oil, palm oil) have a high environmental impact.

There were plenty of cows before the industrial revolution and the start of global heating, but not as many as there are now. We need to reduce the number of ruminants to pre-industrial levels to reverse climate change - our low stocking levels are consistent with this goal.

Our pastures have high biodiversity and we manage weeds with scythes and goats.

Pedro and Charlie
Little Valley Veg

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