THE WHEY FORWARD

The crème de la crème of ice cream from a progressive dairy farm in Devon

t’s milking time at Taw River Dairy. Every morning at eight o’clock, Sam Bullingham walks his herd of 55 Jersey cows across the Devon farm he shares with his wife, Katie. Calves weave in and out of the plodding females, whose udders are heavy with milk, as they make their pilgrimage to the parlour. By industry standards, this is unusual – offspring tend to be separated from their mothers at birth to maximise milk production. But Sam and Katie practise the calf-at-foot method – keeping mother and child close until the four-month teenage mark, when the young get a taste for grass.

Once milking is over at about ten, the herd are left alone to graze the wild-flower-rich pastures that comprise the tenant farm, in Sampford Courtenay, just north of

Dartmoor. This diet sustains them completely, so there’s no need for imported grain and its associated carbon emissions. Milk from pasture-fed cattle is said to contain higher levels of omega 3, vitamin E and antioxidants, and Taw River’s is easier to digest because it has a higher percentage of A2 proteins (gut-friendly protein often found in Jersey milk). Then there’s the flavour – it’s creamier than regular milk because the animals are milked once a day, rather than twice as in most conventional dairies. “You could easily tell the difference in a taste test,” Sam says.

BEST IN GLASS

Pasteurised on site by Katie, milk is either whipped into velvety ice cream (flavours include strawberry, mint and

honeycomb) or hand-poured into reusable glass bottles and distributed to the 50 Devon shops that stock Taw River Dairy products. “We’ve always used glass bottles,” Katie says. “From the beginning, we knew we wanted the business to be as sustainable as possible and after Blue Planet II [which highlighted the danger of plastic in our oceans] in 2017, the phone didn’t stop ringing.” Demand for Taw River Dairy’s milk took off overnight. Today, the pair process up to 2,000 one-litre bottles a week (amounting to well over 65,000 litres last year alone). The couple have also implemented a return scheme – customers pay a £1 deposit per bottle and are encouraged to bring back empties. Katie and Sam then refill them – just as the milkman once did.

“There’s nothing new or innovative about what we’re doing here,” Sam says. “It’s the way my grandad farmed 60 years ago. It makes sense to keep cows and calves together – they know how to raise their young better than we do, it makes calves stronger and means we don’t need to buy artificial feed.”

Sam grew up in the town of Okehampton in Devon. His father was an engineer and his mother a teaching assistant, so it was his grandparents who introduced him to farming. Tenant farmers all their lives, they retired to a bungalow on the 15-acre farm that would later become Taw River Dairy. For his eighth birthday, they bought Sam two Romney sheep, which he would visit every day after school. By the time he left education aged 18, he was running the farm with a flock of 50 and started renting the land next door.

Katie, meanwhile, studied agriculture at Harper Adams University. Having grown up on a dairy farm near Helston in Cornwall, she was aware of the volatility of the industry, so became a pest and weed specialist based in Hayle. Here, she met Sam, who was supplementing his income by rearing calves for a local farmer – his first foray into dairy after a decade of tending sheep. Both passionate about the role of agriculture in environmental preservation, they moved to Devon, and decided to launch a business.

THE INSIDE SCOOP

It all began with an ice-cream machine. At an agricultural show in 2017, Sam was taken in by a compelling sales pitch, where he learnt that making ice cream can be more economical than bottling milk for small-scale dairy farmers because of its higher retail value and longer shelf life. “He said I would only need five cows to make a decent stock,” Sam explains. “At £1,000 a cow, I didn’t have enough money to buy a big herd of Jerseys, but I could just about afford five.” Katie quit her job and they bought some

THIS PAGE Baby Rosa gets to know one of the Jersey cows that graze the flowerfilled pastures. Katie refers to the herd as ‘Jersey X’ cows – a mixture of pure Jersey

with Montbeliarde, Ayrshire and Guernsey OPPOSITE The rich milk is the perfect ingredient for creating Taw River Dairy’s ice creams and sorbets

Jersey cows, along with a tricycle, trailer and ice-cream churner. “It was idyllic,” Sam says. “We’d milk the cows at 8am, then go to a wedding or festival and sell ice cream all day.”

Over the past three years, that herd of five has increased to 55. The plot has also expanded from 60 to 370 acres, so there’s plenty of room to roam. Even the family has grown – the couple had a daughter, Rosa, in 2018. Running a start-up dairy farm while bringing up a baby involves a lot of multi-tasking – there is a playmat in the processing room – but, thankfully, Rosa loves the cows. “She isn’t scared of them at all,” Katie says. “We’re in direct contact with them every day and know them as individuals – they all have distinct roles within the group and personalities.”

A KINDER FARM

The couple try to approach farming from an ethical perspective, with little going to waste. Bull calves are often seen as expendable because they can’t produce milk, but Sam and Katie have other ideas. They have expanded into sustainable meat products, one branded as ‘Jersey jerky’. “Customers have asked why we can’t keep all our bull calves,” Sam says, “but, when you consider feed, electricity, medicine and rent, it would be £500 a year for each one, and yet we couldn’t rationalise wasting them.”

Every aspect of the process is considered for its environmental credentials. The couple have planted bird’s foot trefoil, chicory and more than 3,000 trees to enhance biodiversity and soil structure, keep bees to help pollinate them and have crowdfunded for an electric delivery van. In the future, they hope to make their own hard cheese, creating a range of products available to the community, boosting local businesses and reducing food miles. As many of us question the ethics of industrial dairy farming, Taw River Dairy is demonstrating an alternative way – and, as Sam says, the methods are actually as ancient as the land they’re practised on.