Product Provenance

Peelham Farm is Organic and Pasture-for-Life certified. We farm Beef all-year-round and Sheep seasonally. When necessary, to supplement growing demand for traceable, Organic and grass-fed meat we supplement our butchery with other Organic and Pasture-for-Life or Pasture-raised (ie not PfL certified), livestock from farmers we know and trust.  This also has a beneficial impact on the wider market for meat from traceable, Organic and agroecological farms.

Our Beef:  Our home-bred and reared high-health status herd of pure-bred Aberdeen Angus cattle are never fed any grain.  They are born, fed and reared onto our Organically certified farming and grass-management system free of agro-chemicals.  Our grass-only status here at Peelham, is audited and certified by Pasture-for-Life.

When shortages of beef from the farm occur to meet demand through our  butchery, we make-up with animals from other local Organic and where-ever possible Pasture-for-Life certified farms.  We currently source Organic, Pasture-raised (ie not Pasture-for-Life certified), beef from the Andersons of Swinside near Jedburgh here in the Scottish Borders. 

Our Sheep; Our mutton flocks come live to the farm from the Organically certified flock (pasture-raised and managed), at Thistlyhaugh, Northumberland (The Nellis’s).

Our Pork We no longer breed pigs here at Peelham.  After nearly 30 years, the growing demand for our free-range pork far exceeded our farm’s capacity to supply and was impacting on our soil health.  We sourced  from other organic pig farms for a short period until the collapse of the UK  pig industry which has hit the organic sector particularly severely with many pig units closing down.  The sourcing of organic pork became increasingly unreliable and un-viable. Our only option involved looking over the farm fence (literally),  to the open fields of our neighbour’s the Punton Family.  Although non-Organic, on their farms at West Edge and Brow-of-the-Hill they farm their high welfare breeding pigs free-range, out-doors on grass all-year-round.  The pork is as local as it used to be when we had our own !

Our Food and Farming is:

1. GOOD because our farm animals and those on farms that we share our market with, graze and forage free-range producing good nutrient-dense meat 
2. CLEAN because our farming is  free-of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers.   
3. FAIR because we value  our employees and their wellbeing as the most valuable part of our business, and give as much as we reasonably can to provide fulfilling jobs. Our high-welfare livestock management is nature-based, enhancing biodiversity and landscape while allowing our farmed animals to follow their foraging and grazing characteristics.

“Good, Clean & Fair” is the motto of the Slow Food Movement which has been a key-influencer of our evolving ethos over the decades.