About us

The Farm is based in the mild climate of the North Warwickshire. Ranging from 650 ft. to 750 ft. above sea level, our Farm has an average rainfall of 36 inches and soil that is a mix of clay loam and heavy clay. These are ideal winter wheat growing conditions. We also grow grain maize, a high-energy animal food, oil seed rape for bio-diesel production and we have a small amount of grass for hay making but mainly for grazing for horses. There is also a fairly big area of woodland.

For many years we had our own beef cattle, turkeys and also grew potatoes. However the economic climate changed for the worse for these things so we stopped producing them. As a farming business, we are focused entirely on producing high quality crops to be sold for human consumption.

Grendon House Farm – timeline:

1958
George Sutton purchased Grendon House Farm from the Grendon Estate as the estate was being broken up and sold off. The actual Hall was taken down and re-erected somewhere in the USA.

1958-73 The farm was sorted out with a new yard and buildings being constructed. Some field shapes we altered and many 1000’s of metres of hedgerows were laid. Various arable crops such as wheat and potatoes were grown along with grass for a dairy herd of cows.

1974
The neighbouring ‘Home Farm’ was purchased which added some more land to the business along with another farm yard and 8 cottages! 7 cottages were sold off straight away to help fund the purchase of the farm.

1976
The dairy cows were sold and the land used for producing grass for the herd was replaced with more arable crops. Some of the dairy herd sheds were converted into storage for the farms equipment and also the crops it grew and some we used to house a Beef herd of cows.

1980
The beef herd was sold off, due to a family heath problem to be replaced by turkeys which we mainly produced for the Christmas trade. During this time the amount of arable crops increased along with up to 100 acres of potatoes (which if you have never grown them can be a serious nightmare, especially back in the early 1980’s because of lack of mechanisation. Most of the potatoes were dug by hand!)

1981 – 92
The business grew to producing 10,000 turkeys per year supplying the hotel trade all year round but also still the core Christmas trade. The cropping side to the farm remained stagnant, but became easier due to better mechanisation. In 92 George Sutton passed away. Also in this year European Union ruling changed meaning it was very difficult for a small turkey producer like Grendon House Farm to continue under the same guise. So it was either invest heavily or stop production. We decided to get out and simplify the whole business. Having no stock to look after allowed us to streamline the staff numbers and shed excess equipment and poultry buildings. During this time we also as a farm started our own environmental plan where we stopped cropping by water courses and started to introduce more wildlife on the farm by planting bird mixtures for feeding and looking after hedgerows – more on this in the environmental section of this web site.

1995
Building began on the old poultry site to turn a number of the old brick buildings into Barn Conversions. This development is still continuing today with very slow progress because we seem to have adopted other people's building jobs along the way! More information about our Conversions can be seen on our sister site Grendon Building Company.

Also in this year a farm contracting business was established to utilise the farms equipment a bit more and generate some extra income, to find out more click here.

1995 – 00
The farm contracting grew considerably and we started to incorporate more diversification into the business such as Bed & Breakfast, Stabling, House building and Farm Machinery Sales. In 2000 we ceased growing potatoes because the market had become to cutthroat. Production costs in the UK were in the region of £60/tonne at the time but we were only being paid £30/tonne, so were effectively loosing on every single tonne produced. Therefore in this year the 100 acres of potatoes was replaced with more arable crops. We also used this as an opportunity to look at our arable rotation which at the time included Winter Wheat, Winter Barley, Winter Beans, Spring Barley, Oil seed rape, Spring Beans and Set a Side. We streamlined this down to Wheats (1st and Continuous), Oil seed rape and Spring beans to simply the system again.

2000 – 2005
Things continued at a pace with the building business and farm contracting growing every year. The arable cropping remained pretty much the same and farm machinery sales were good but difficult due to a bit of downturn in UK agriculture as a whole.

2005 – present:
The building business and farm machinery sales are still going strong with 2007 being the best year for equipment sales since we started. We’ve got a lot of building jobs lined up in front of us and some new ideas for Carbon Neutral Housing. We have also added an electrical business to the line up, which ties in nicely with the building, but is also freelance for other work.

Farm wise – a change again! For over 5 years we had been looking for a like-minded farmer to work with to share machinery costs. This type of approach we feel is the future of UK agriculture with farmers working together over larger areas. This gives reduced mechanisation costs and better buying power for the inputs we need to produce good crops. So we gave up a considerable amount of contracting work to concentrate on our other ventures and the new machinery sharing agreement with a neighbouring farmers who’s website can be found here. More on how the agreement works in the Machinery section of this website.

Our environmental plan which began in the 1980’s is continuing at a great speed as we now have wildlife here that we have never seen before. The hedgerows and woodlands are bustling with activity and our pollen mixtures have evolved. We have just completed a water management plant where we have cleaned out all the water courses and ponds on the property. This has been a slow expensive job which has taken over 10 years to complete. Hopefully now this will increase wildlife numbers again. We have also joined up to a scheme called ELS, which the Government is offering to farmers. This provides some funding to help with the ongoing costs of being an environmentally friendly farm.

Finally in late 2006 we began a new business recycling farm waste streams. Farms up until 15th May 2007 had been allowed to burn the waste they produced such as animal feed bags and cardboard etc. Anyway the powers that be decided this was no longer a good thing to do, so they made some laws making all farms recycle their waste where possible. So we joined up with a company called Agricycle (web link) from Lincolnshire who have a recycling facility close to Lincoln. Grendon House Farm is now operating a franchise of called Agricycle Central. This is a new business which is only in its early stages which we hope to grow over the coming years when environmental legislation with means even more tighter rules to do with all types of waste produced from all industries, not just agriculture.

Summary

So as you can see we’ve been on a bit of roller coaster ride since we first moved here in 1958, but that’s what UK agriculture is all about. We have to adapt and move with the times to survive. Hopefully this website will give you an idea of what we do and if you think we can help you in any way please just give us a call anytime.

Thank you,