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Welcome to Primal Meats

Welcome! We're all about providing the best meats, including 100% grass-fed, Organic and Free-range, for your health needs. We are completely tailored to popular Ancestral Health Diets to help you find the right meats for your health journey.

We're passionate about high animal welfare and being more than sustainable, we're regenerative.

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Monday - Friday: 09:00 - 17:00 Model Farm, Hildersley, Ross on Wye, HR9 7NN 01989 567663 [email protected]

Category: Sustainability

Hereford Beef

Introducing Model Farm

We work with this inspiring Family be able to offer you some of the best beef available in the UK through our ‘cow share’ way of purchasing. Read why it is so important to support farmers like these.

Model Farm

Simon Cutter Farms on the wonderful rich pastures and meadows of Model farm, near Ross on Wye in Herefordshire.

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Simon Cutter is the founder of Model Farm Society. Educated at Cirencester Agricultural College between 1977-1980, he has studied and practised traditional farming for over 30 years including time spent farming in Australia. Simon has been a pioneer in the rearing of Organic livestock and produce long before the ‘Organic bandwagon’ started to roll in the wake of the BSE crisis in the early 1990′s

Model Farm is home to a herd of 270 Hereford Beef Cattle and 400 Easy care ewes on sustainably managed grassland and forage crops. Simon’s cattle and sheep are 100% pasture fed and receive NO grains. Model Farm is managed to soil association standards for Organic status, the land receives no in-organic fertilisers or sprays and a forage crop rotation system produces natural organic foods for any winter feeds required.

‘Easy Care’ is a breed of sheep ideally suited to this topography and organic management system. They require minimal management and even shed their own fleece, so don’t require shearing. The torpedo shaped head of the lambs allows for easy lambing and Simon’s careful selective breeding program has led to the health of the flock to be nothing less than exceptional in the absence of routine medical intervention. The sheep require a small amount of supplementary feed in winter and this is provided by way of a home grown red clover hay.

Of the 270 Cattle, 100 hundred are breeding cows, the health of the herd is outstanding and the vet visiting is a very rare occurrence. There is NO routine medicines used and Simon maintains, that with extensive healthy grassland and soils, the cows and sheep receive all the nutrients they need to stay healthy from the diverse range of plants they eat.

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The Hereford breeding stock stay outdoors on pasture, all year round. Hereford Cattle are a hardy traditional British breed originating in this area so are ideally suited to its climate and terrain. The young stock usually come in for the wettest parts of the year to avoid poaching the delicate grassland. Indoors the young stock will be bedded on local straw and fed Lucerne silage. Lucerne is a green, nutrient dense plant that grows very deep roots, it can access reservoirs of minerals not normally available to normal grasses and is considered a ‘superfood’.

The Beef is outstanding, due to the diet of the cattle consisting ONLY of natural herb rich plant matter and organic home grown super foods. The animals are getting all the minerals and vitamins they need and these will naturally pass on a range of these beneficial nutrients to you. The beef  is dry aged for a minimum of 21 days.

Simon is ‘pasture for life‘ certified.

Simon handles all the transportation to a local abattoir and the meat will be cut by Simon’s butcher on the Model farm in a new purpose build unit.

Belted galloway Beef

Introducing Hill Top Farm, Malham

We work with this inspiring couple to be able to offer you some of the best beef available in the UK through our ‘cow share’ way of purchasing. Read why it is so important to support farmers like these.

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Hill Top Farm

Neil Heseltine with Partner Leigh Weston farm the very beautiful ‘Hill Top Farm’ at Malham in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Neil and Leigh are passionate about producing 100% pasture fed beef from their 100 strong herd of Belted Galloway Cattle.

The Cattle are grazed all year round on limestone pastures and are never housed. In the most extreme of winters if the cattle need extra sustenance they are fed home grown hay or silage.

This is no hardship for these animals, Belted Galloway Cattle are renowned for their hardy and agile nature and are well equipped for the wind and cold they will experience on the higher Moors of this extensive Farm. Originating in South West Scotland the breed is very distinctive due to its ‘belt’ of white on a black, dun or red body.

Belted Galloway Cattle are incredibly efficient at converting rough grassland into very fine quality beef.

The beef these animal produce is exceptional, due to their diet consisting ONLY of natural herb rich plant matter. The animals get all the minerals and vitamins they need for supreme health in their diet and therefore need no medical intervention. No anti biotic residues here! The meat they produce will naturally pass on a range of these beneficial nutrients to you, and is arguably among the most nutritious meat you can buy.

“All our cattle are finished on grass or occasionally hay, they do not get fed grains at all,” LEIGH

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This breed of cattle are at their best and most content when allowed to express their natural instincts. If managed in harmony with their nature you will see them wandering as a herd over the large open areas, occasionally wallowing in the watering areas. The ‘in-calf’ Cows will sneak off to calve and keep the newly born calf hidden for a few days until it is strong enough to be with the herd.

Limestone pasture is a delicate habitat that has been damaged by increased sheep grazing over the last few decades. Sheep graze only the most palatable grasses, and in many areas this has resulted in the rare and important species becoming choked by rank grasses. Hardy native cattle are ideal for restoring the diverse range of flora, their grazing action is less selective so reduces the long grasses. The grazing and trampling action opens up pockets of soil allowing important native species to successfully re-seed. Neil and Leigh farm the Belted Galloway cattle as part of a conservation scheme to regenerate these delicate and important habitats.

The couple Farm within a very High Tier of Higher Level Scheme which encourages farmers to manage land for the benefit of the environment.

“IT RESTRICTS YOU IN TERMS OF WHAT NUMBERS YOU CAN GRAZE, THE TIMINGS OF GRAZING AND WHAT YOU CAN FEED THE ANIMALS, AMONG OTHER THINGS, BUT I DON’T SEE ANY OF IT AS A HINDRANCE. I DO IT BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN IT.

“I BELIEVE THIS IS HOW AGRICULTURE SHOULD BE. THE KEY FOR ME IS IT SHOULD BE SUSTAINABLE, ENVIRONMENTALLY AND FINANCIALLY- NEIL.

The couple are so passionate about sustainable Farming that they do not ‘finish’ the Cattle, they simply allow them to continue grazing year after year until they reach the correct conformation for slaughter. This is often more than double the duration of a commercial grain fed beef animal.

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Neil and Leigh want to see their good work continued to the very end, by working through us, to reach out to ‘conscious consumers’ they can make sure the nutritious ethical meat they have spent several years bringing to your table will be FULLY appreciated.

 

sustainable meat

Sustainable meat – how it all went wrong!

Sustainable Meat – Where did it all go wrong!
In the UK we are lucky to have avoided (on the whole) the huge industrialised farming units of America, but much of our meat is still reared on cereals and the animals many don’t get the chance to see the great outdoors let alone eat a blade of grass!

How did it get to this?

The use of cereal feeds came about at the time of subsidised arable production when grain prices were falsely low. Around the same time, grasses and cereal plants were cleverly manipulated and planted in place of mixed herb rich grassland. These rye grass leys and strains of grain plants, yield much higher if supplied with N P K fertilisers, these fertilisers were still relatively affordable at the time and the use of fossil fuels was not so obviously unsustainable.
The outcome was a move away from traditional pasture reared livestock, to ‘finishing’ systems based on housing animals and feeding them cheap grains (and often food factory waste products too, I worked on a farm that fed Cadbury’s rejects, wrappers included!). Much land turned over to producing crops and inexpensive fertilisers replaced farm yard manure. Often the same crop is planted year after year and grassland was deemed unprofitable.

It worked quite well until –

Grain prices sky rocketed in correlation with exorbitant petro-chemical prices and unsustainable supply of fossil fuels.
The soils became degraded and unable to retain their moisture, so need regular irrigation. The soil is unstable, so after every heavy rain storm, tonnes of soil washes down becks and gullies.
Cultivated land hold less water too so it is much more likely are lower land and towns will flood.
The carbon that was once safely locked up in healthy nourishing humus, has been released into the atmosphere and is contributing to our climate change.
Our cereals and vegetables are depleted of essential vitamins and minerals as there is little to uptake from the soil.
The livestock that are fed these depleted cereals, are less healthy, need routine medical intervention and produce food that is of a very poor quality in comparison to the nutritious, delicious, grass fed meats, milk and eggs of early in the last century.

Aren’t we clever!

So let’s have a look at a pre war system, in my opinion this was the time when the lessons of the last 10,000 years of agriculture came to a perfect point and the land was able to produce optimal amounts of nutritious foods. People were healthier, animals were healthier and the planet was healthy.

Most farms adopted a ‘mixed farm’ and its greatest highly valued asset was its pasture.  The benefit to the soils health from this system is great, grass transfers the sun’s energy into food for a whole underground world of organisms. Microbes in the soil are responsible for breaking the organic matter in soil and recycling the nutrients into a form that can be taken up by plants. In the process they ‘lock up carbon’ taking harmful CO2 out of the atmosphere and keeping it safe below ground.

This wonderful pasture contains a diverse range of plants and flowers, some of these plants have very deep roots that can tap into deeper nutrient stores including water in times of drought.  The various species flower and seed at different times, ensuring a good balance of lush rich grass with fibrous material throughout the growing season, perfect for maintaining gut health in grazing animals.
The deep rooted sward stabilises the soil and prevents it from washing away in floods. The grazing animals have a secure and nutrient dense food source that will last all year round.
Our uplands act as a sponge to provide a slow release of water into the rivers and valleys.
When required, the fertile pasture can be ploughed and vegetables or cereal crops can be planted, its natural fertility is enough to produce a bumper crop without need for chemical fertilisers.
The use of the fields would be rotated to prevent fertility loss and manage any disease transfer.

I addition to the global climate benefits of the pasture based system, there is a great local biodiversity advantage too. A mixed farm landscape is ideal for flora and fauna and will have a range of different habitats to allow multiple species to thrive.

Traditional regional breeds of animals are well adapted to survive some very hostile grazing environments. Mountains, cliffs and fells are unable to produce food that requires cultivated land, they can however, still contribute sustainable meat, by providing grazing for hardy breeds. It is vital to maintain regional diversity and support rare breeds, each breed has particular characteristics that have evolved to adapt them to the local topography, climate and terrain.

You may be sceptical about the profitability of a mixed farm type system and may question if it can really produce enough food to feed our hugely increasing global population. The answer is yes.

It is very difficult to quantify the volume of food produced from a mixed farm as, by its nature, it is producing a mix of vegetables, grains, meats, eggs and milk. A hectare of modern arable land producing a high yielding crop of grain may produce an impressive tonnage, however remember that the grain may then end up being fed to animals to indirectly produce food.
Almost half the British wheat crop is fed to animals, to produce 1KG of beef it takes 8KG of wheat grains. Modern grain usually requires irrigation, fertilisers, and harvesting it is usually ‘carbon’ heavy. The food that is produced is unlikely to nourish us well, and the range of species we are regularly eating are becoming fewer.  In times of drought and flood this system is very prone to failure so offers poor food security.

In the 1950’s Andre Voisin did a series of studies on grazing productivity and eventually published his remarkable findings in the hugely popular ‘grass productivity’. He concluded that with a particular way of grazing (now called mob grazing) grassland could produce more food per hectare than arable crops. This method was well accepted and followed in the UK but sadly fell out of favour with the introduction of Subsidies. The Government generously encouraged the growing of crops through the EU Common Agricultural Policy and made it impossible for a business minded farmer to ignore.

I think it’s time to take a long, hard, objective look at how we produce our food. You can vote with your pound, seek out producers who refuse to take leave of their inherent wisdom and stubbornly keep producing great food in a way that benefits us all.