Sheepdrove Organic Farm is a farm near Lambourn, West Berkshire, England. The farm gained a public profile when Juliet and

Peter Kindersley Peter Kindersley (born 1941) is the co-founder of the publishing company Dorling Kindersley and ran it with Christopher Dorling from 1974, until he sold his family stake for £105m in 2000. The firm's illustrated non-fiction reference books for ad ...

took the UK government to court over its handling of the 2001 outbreak of

foot-and-mouth disease Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids. The virus causes a high fever lasting two to six days, followe ...

. They also campaigned for a different approach to the 2007 FMD outbreak. The Kindersleys established Sheepdrove Organic Farm during the late 1990s after the acquisition of land neighbouring their home at Sheepdrove Farmhouse. The holding was put through organic conversion under Soil Association UK certification and uses an organic rotation system with a broad range of livestock and crops and has a policy of environmental sustainability.

Location

The farm is situated on 900 hectares of chalk downland in an area that crosses the boundary of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, near the village of Lambourn. The local landscape is recognised as nationally important, being in the

North Wessex Downs The North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is located in the English counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The name ''North Wessex Downs'' is not a traditional one, the area covered being better kno ...

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The business

It is a diversified farm, producing crops and livestock, processing and marketing its food, and with additional enterprises. On the site are Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre, facilities for on-site butchery, organic herb plots, composting yards, and rented housing. Sheepdrove Eco Conference Centre was opened in June 2004 by

Prince Charles Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person to ...

. It has a timber frame, cedar roof shingles, wooden panel interiors, a wall made of re-utilised chalk and panels made of recycled plastic. The building gained the 2005 Special Award for Sustainable Architecture from the

Civic Trust Awards The Civic Trust Awards scheme was established in 1959 to recognise outstanding architecture, planning and design in the built environment. As the longest standing built environment awards scheme in Europe, since 1959, more than 7000 projects have ...

. The venue is licensed by

West Berkshire West Berkshire is a local government district in Berkshire, England, administered from Newbury by West Berkshire Council. History The district of Newbury was formed on 1 April 1974, as a merger of the borough of Newbury, Bradfield Rural Distric ...

for weddings. The centre kitchen uses fruit and vegetables from the farm's gardens and meat from the organic farm. Projects at the farm include: * Poultry agroforestry: the farm's chickens live in a multi-use field system. * The reedbed water treatment system: waste water from the farm, conference centre, processing unit and houses is treated in the constructed wetland of a reedbed system. Sheepdrove has entered the

Defra DEFRA may refer to: * Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, United States law * Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, United Kingdom government department {{Disambiguation ...

agri-environment schemes to help support farmland

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

including special measures to restore habitats such as Sheepdrove Rare Butterfly Project which aims to attract marsh fritillaries. The farm has records of 25 species of butterfly, 10 species of bee, 6 species of bat and 104 species of bird (including 5 types of owl). Notable plants include the

goldilocks buttercup ''Ranunculus auricomus'', known as goldilocks buttercup or Greenland buttercup, is a perennial species of buttercup native to Eurasia. It is a calcicole typically found in moist woods and at the margins of woods. It is Apomixis, apomictic, and se ...

, field gromwell and Venus's looking-glass.

References

External links

*
Sheepdrove Trust entry at Opencharities.org
{{coord, 51.5339, -1.4837, display=title, region:GB_scale:5000 Farms in England Lambourn