Norfolk farmers were shown how a native cattle breed is producing quality locally-reared beef for a traditional butcher while helping to manage low-lying meadows in the Bure valley.
Tony Bambridge, who founded a pedigree herd of Lincoln Red cattle in 2009, now has 55 breeding females on the National Trust’s Blickling Estate, near Aylsham.
He led about 85 members of Stalham Farmers’ Club and the East Norfolk branch of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) on a tour of the 96-hectare Park Farm.
Mr Bambridge supplies about 50 beef cattle a year to Aylsham butcher Crawford White. "Locally bred, finished and almost zero food miles," he said.
The Lincoln Reds, described as "easy-calving, and producing superb marbled beef", are extensively grazed at one animal per 1.2 hectares.
Mr Bambridge said that under the government's new SFI (Sustainable Farming Incentive) scheme, a payment of £146 per hectare for managing grassland without artificial fertilisers and sprays will help his livestock enterprise.
He also sells bulls, including many into the breed’s Lincolnshire heartland.
He told visitors that there were only 3,000 Lincoln Red breeding females registered by the pedigree society in the country, including some large herds in Scotland. Under the SFI, only registered females qualify for this payment, he said.
In the two-hour walking tour, visitors were also shown crops grown for seed – grass, vetch and barley – and a field of Maris Otter malting barley.
Mr Bambridge, who took on the tenancy at Park Farm 34 years ago, has recently planted 2.6km of new hedges – all set back from the raised field boundaries, which were documented in Faden’s Map of Norfolk of 1797.
He showed where the course of the River Bure had been diverted more than 600 years ago to power Ingworth water mill, which ceased operations in 1912.
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