Enterprises
Ballingham Court is a diverse and dynamic farm with a range of enterprises that reflect both its heritage and its commitment to sustainable agriculture. Alongside traditional livestock farming with cattle and sheep, the farm grows apples for juice and pears organic box schemes, produces crops for animal feed, and supplies firewood from its managed woodland. Renewable energy plays a key role too, with solar panels and an anaerobic digester helping to power the farm and reduce its environmental footprint. Each enterprise is carefully managed by the Rudge family, working in harmony with the land and the seasons.
Anaerobic Digester
The Anaerobic Digester plant is fed maize, chicken muck and cattle muck to generate electricity and heat. The feed is put in the rectangular air proof pit and the gas collected, the methane is used to run the engine and electricity and heat is produced. The electricity that is not used on the farm is exported to the national grid and some of the heat is used to heat the farmhouse.
Cattle
The 50 cows calve in the spring, they spend most of the spring, summer and autumn outside with their calf grazing. In November they are brought inside, the calves are weaned and the cows prepared for the next calving. The weaned calves are fed on silage (preserved grass) over the winter and then back out to grass for the summer. When they are about 600kgs they are sold under contract to Waitrose where the meat is sold with their Native Beef label. The cows are Stabilisers and the bulls are Herefords, the two current bulls are called Pepperstock 1 Buster and Mouboon Sterling.
Crops
The maize (sweetcorn) is grown to be made into silage. It is planted in April and harvested at the end of September. Ballingham Court grows wheat which is sold to be used as animal feed, triticale is also grown and used for feed on the farm.
Fruit
Apples The 8 hectare apple orchard is grown in an Agroforestry system. Most of the Jonagold apples are sold to Pixley for apple juice. Ballingham Court also presses some of the fruit for their own sales. Every apple picked by hand and put into apple boxes like the one that the firewood is in.
Pears The 3 hectare Conference pear orchard is managed organically, the pears are sold to companies such as Abel and Cole and Riverford for organic box schemes.
Sheep
The 160 ewe flock lamb from the end of January until the beginning of March, most of the ewes are crossbred Aberfield and the rams are a hybrid using New Zealand genetics. The lambs are sold between 10 and 20 weeks of age. In the autumn some store lambs are bought which are usually lambs from hill farms where the grass isn’t of a high enough quality for the lambs to be ready for market.
Woodland
Some trees are felled every year, processed and kiln dried to be sold locally as firewood – including to Natures Nest. All our firewood is Ready to Burn accredited