Farms & Suppliers
We are proud to work alongside a collective of independent farms that share our commitment to exceptional dairy. United by a belief in quality, integrity and doing things properly, every farm in The Estate Dairy network plays a part in producing delicious milk that we are proud to put our name to.
The Farm Collective
Our delicious milk comes from our farm collective, a small group of family farms based on the Cholmondeley Estate, where the dairy is based.
Croxton Manor, farmed by Philip and Sophie Winward. Wiley Farm, farmed by James Willis, is close by in the same Cheshire countryside. They are all working family farms, each milking its own herd, and few enough in number that we can know every one.
What these farms have in common matters more than what sets them apart. They keep their cows well and graze them on Cheshire grass for as much of the year as the weather allows.
The luxury of a long, pasture-led season
This part of the Cheshire Plain is unusually well suited to grazing, and it goes back to the last Ice Age. As the glaciers retreated, they left behind a thick layer of clay. It is hard ground for wheat or barley, but few soils anywhere grow grass better.
Sheltered in a low corridor between the Welsh hills and the Pennines, Cheshire draws in mild, damp air and misses the worst of the weather, both the summer droughts that brown the rest of the country and the hard frosts that set the ground solid further north.
The growing season starts earlier in spring and runs later into autumn, which is what makes a genuinely pasture-led farm possible in the first place. For most of the year our farms can lead with pasture, building the cows’ diet around grazing. When the grass finally stops growing, the herds come inside and are fed on silage cut from the same fields, but they get a longer run at pasture than herds in harsher parts of the country.
Colour and character
Keeping farms pasture-led is not the easiest way to run a dairy herd, but it’s done because the difference shows, in how the cows are and in the milk itself.
Flavour
When cows graze on Cheshire pasture, they eat a varied diet of grasses and clovers and that variety makes a different kind of milk. It has more depth and a rounded, gently sweet creaminess that shifts with the seasons.
Healthy Cows
Cows are ruminants, with digestive systems built to break down fresh grass, so time on pasture tends to mean fewer stomach upsets and steadier health. The freedom matters too. Walking on soft turf keeps hooves and joints in good order, and the open air and the company of the herd keep stress low.
The Product
Cows eating plenty of fresh grass take up more beta-carotene, the pigment that makes grass green, and it carries through into the milk and butter as a natural golden colour.
