Young couple builds dairy enterprise with direct business

Matthew Elphick and Betsie Edge jump-started their dairy processing business in response to local demand during the covid pandemic. And they have not looked back since, as Sara Gregson finds out.

Matthew Elphick and Betsie Edge are just two of the many farmers who seized the opportunity to sell direct during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Born and bred in Surrey, the couple, together with seven-month-old son Albie, are living their dream having had the chance to set up a small-scale dairy farm at Brays Farm, not far from Gatwick Airport, selling their products locally.Betsie grew up on a dairy farm, where she remembers helping her grandparents milking and feeding calves, and her parents now are the only farmhouse cheesemakers in the county, producing Norbury Blue and Dirty Vicar cheeses.

Matthew went to Plumpton College, in Lewes, and worked as a dairy herdsman for nine years for Stockfirst Livestock Services, relief milking and carrying out other cattle tasks.

Matthew says: The long-term plan has always been to go into dairy farming.

I started with a small suckler beef herd on rented ground while I was still relief milking.

But four years ago, one of my clients who farms opposite Brays Farm, mentioned the farmer, John Collett, was looking to rent his farm out.

I made the call, met him and we got on really well. We were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to take it on.

John died in 2017 and left the farm to the Countryside Restoration Trust, which champions farming for biodiversity and wildlife, encouraging its 18 tenant farmers to use sustainable farming methods.

They signed Matthew, 20, and Betsie, 25, up on a farm business tenancy last October.

Methods

Made up of 20 hectares (52 acres), the south-facing block of land is surrounded by a band of broad-leaved woodland and the fields are bounded by fulsome hedges.

There had been sheep on the farm for many years and the fencing and water supply to all the fields is good.

The top half of the farm is on sand and dries out in summer, while the bottom half is on clay and very muddy in winter.It has always been farmed using low inputs, with very little artificial fertiliser applied.

This autumn, Matthew intends to overseed the pastures with clovers and herbs to increase the diversity of the sward, with the clovers improving the structure of the soil and fixing nitrogen naturally in the soil.

Wishing to milk a traditional breed of cow, Matthew bought 18 Dairy Shorthorns heifers from Brinsbury College at Pulborough, West Sussex, in 2019.

With no parlour at Brays Farm at that time, when the first five cows calved, he milked them at a farm where he was still relief milking near Dorking.

Betsie says: When the first lockdown came, there was a sudden shortage of milk and demand for local deliveries sky rocketed.

The farmer there was also processing his milk and doing a milk round so we decided to get on and start too, bringing our milk back here to sell.

The couple did some initial Facebook advertising and relied on word-of-mouth promotion to publicise their brand, Nutfield Dairy.They also have a website which is about to be upgraded and relaunched.

Brays Farm is close to densely populated villages and the couple now deliver to 250 households within a three-mile radius of the farm.

They also supply two local village shops, a well-frequented farm shop and two zero-waste shops.

The milk and yoghurt are supplied in glass bottles with screw caps, and customers buying the milk in the shops pay 1.50 for their first bottle and return their empties.

Initially washing their bottles by hand, Matthew and Betsie now have a bottle washer which can handle 400 bottle an hour and they currently hold more than 2,000 branded bottles.

Business

Since November 2021, 22 cows have been milked at Brays Farm in a second-hand eight stall abreast parlour, fitted into an old original milking shed which had tie-up stalls.

Matthews retired father, David Elphick, has been working hard on construction jobs too, restoring the old sheds, concreting floors and putting in new drainage works.

At the other farm the cows were milked in a herringbone and we were worried they would not know what to do in our abreast parlour, says Matthew.

But they adapted really quickly. They all came through the door and by day four were coming in and jumping up on to the step with no problems.

As well as the new parlour, two portacabins have been installed to house the pasteuriser, bottling room and fridge.Matthew feels this is the cheapest way to start, but in the longer term might regret not having built processing rooms from the beginning.So far, they have invested 120,000 in the parlour and dairy equipment.

Matthew and Betsie have a set routine for the week, including pasteurising and bottling on a Monday; deliveries on Tuesday starting at 3.30am, with another shorter milk round in the evening; Wednesday is yoghurt-making day; Thursday is pasteurising and bottling again ready for the two rounds delivered again on Friday evening with drop-offs to the shops in the morning.

The milk sells for 1.50 direct to consumers, but this is about to increase.Butter made with Dorset sea salt has proved popular with consumers at a few farmers markets and Christmas fairs the couple have been to, but it takes a lot of effort and time to make.

Selling raw milk is a non-starter too, as Matthew says their reliance on milk sales would be put severely at risk if there were any TB breakouts.

We are currently milking once a day, which fits in with our sustainable and high animal welfare ethos, Matthew says.

The cows calve at different times during the year to ensure a level supply. They are producing an average of 10 litres a day per cow and it takes an hour to milk. When Betsie is milking, she tries to time it to fit in with Albies nap.

There is a fine line balancing supply of milk and demand. On the farm where we started milking, the tanker came to collect any milk not bottled. We dont have that luxury.

Matthew and Betsie sell whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed, non-homogenised milk on their milk rounds, and 70 per cent of the milk sold is semi-skimmed.

They also sell some of Betsies mothers Norbury Park Farm cheese, free range eggs, artisanal bread from a local bakery and Piehouse pasties, pies and sausage rolls.

Cattle

The cows are housed in an airy loose straw-bedded barn and will be turned out as soon as weather and soil conditions allow.Matthew is going to put in cow tracks and use electric fencing to split the fields and rotationally graze the cows this summer.

Small amounts of cake are fed in the parlour, but they are keen to follow a pasture-fed philosophy Matthew might, he says, join the Pasture-fed Livestock Association to learn from other no-grain dairy businesses across the country.

Contractors will be brought in to make silage bales from late June.This will be of high enough quality for the cows at their production level and will also be good for wildflowers and pollinating insects.The inclusion of herbal leys in the autumn will increase this in years to come.

We are going to be carrying out low-input farming with a traditional breed of cow that is hardy and will happily graze and produce milk from not much else, he says.

We are going for quality rather than quantity so we dont have to ask much of our ground.

We wont be using artificial fertilisers, will minimise the cutting of internal hedges and will leave clumps of nettles here and there. We have a good population of swallows, little owls and kestrels, and we did have barn owls until the drought two years ago hit them hard.

But I plan to install nest boxes to encourage barn owls to settle on the farm again.

We are delighted to be working with the Countryside Restoration Trust and they seem to like the things we are doing and all the things we plan to do in the future.

This might include making a hard cheese, selling frozen yoghurt and possibly having a farm gate outlet at the end of the drive one day a week.