Meet our members: Katie and James Allen
Katie and James produce beef, lamb, wool, leather and plant dyes on the 170-acre Great Cotmarsh Farm, in Wiltshire.
They sell all their lamb and beef direct to customers who value their organic and 100% pasture-fed meat.
As a small farm, diversification plays a vital role in the viability of their business. They run a small campsite and Katie sells knitwear under her own brand Katie Cotmarsh.
This year, with a grant from Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL), they have been able to convert a barn into a classroom to educate fashion students about the connection between farming, food, fibre and the environment and build what is the beginnings of the UK’s first micro-scale veg tannery for cattle hides.
The couple first met in Cornwall, where Katie was running a smallholding with a farm shop and campsite.
In 2015 she moved north to live near James in Gloucestershire, and together they started Heritage Graziers, carrying out conservation grazing with livestock including Castlemilk Moorit and Portland sheep as well as British White and English Longhorn cattle.
Katie Allen at Great Cotmarsh Farm
“We grazed all around the Cotswolds for about eight years,” says Katie.
“We would graze some sites that were owned by the Wildlife Trust, or were owned by the council, or we would graze private land that had never had chemicals on it, never been ploughed and was really species rich.
“We would graze at the right time for the right duration with the right livestock and then we'd move on. It was really tough. There's no security, you're running your whole business on grazing licences and there's no subsidy support of any kind.
“The ideal was always to try and have our own farm, so the opportunity at Great Cotmarsh in 2022 was amazing.
Making the move to Great Cotmarsh Farm
“One of the first things we did when we bought the farm was put it into organic conversion for the Soil Association. We officially finished our two-year conversion in December 2023 and had some hoggets go off as our first organic meat sale the day after. It was so satisfying.
“During our time as graziers we’d been grazing cover crops, parkland, floodplain meadows and doing short duration, long-grass grazing, so we already had the knowledge to begin applying the principles of adaptive grazing to our own farm.
Katie Allen and her sheep at Great Cotmarsh Farm
“We've always had pedigree rare breeds. I think it’s important to preserve their heritage genetics and they're also well suited to our pasture based organic, outdoor system.
“We currently have a herd of about 25 British White and Longhorn cattle and 350 Portland and Castlemilk Moorit sheep. We are hoping to increase the size of our herd as time goes on.
“The healthiest sheep are the ones that are born into the flock, rather than bought in. They always seem fitter and stronger, bred to thrive in our system.
“We don’t take any hay. Everything’s deferred grazing. During the summer, the whole farm is full of tall grass and you can hear it. The fields are alive. You can just feel the life in them. ”
“The animals are outside all through the year and we lamb and calve outdoors. We learnt to farm without housing and it just seems like an expense our farm business can’t justify, so the cattle conservation graze on the Marlborough Downs over the winter months.
“We don't take any hay. Everything's deferred grazing. During the summer, the whole farm is full of tall grass and you can hear it. The fields are alive. You can just feel the life in them.
“We’ve noticed a real increase in biodiversity since we’ve been doing the tall grass grazing. We're seeing species like autumn hawkbit appear, and an increase in vetch and species like mouse-ear chickweed. We’ve had barn owls breeding in our owl box, which was so exciting, and we were told it was 100% down to the tall grass grazing.
“We've got funding from the Woodland Trust to plant 6500 trees across the farm in the next 18 months. We’ve put in some areas of woodland and scrub, a long shelter belt that runs up the length of half the farm and next we are going to put in browseable silvopasture alleyways with sweet chestnut and willow amongst other species.
“The idea is to improve grazing by offering more diversity, offer the livestock better access to shelter from weather extremes, increase habitat for nature on the farm and to improve the water cycle. We’ve noticed it's always the grass under the trees that is most lush when it’s dry.
“We're also planting an orchard and we're hoping that people will sponsor trees so they can come and pick the fruit themselves in the autumn. That will reduce the management for us but also engage the local community as well. We're planting the trees wide enough so we have the option of growing veg in rows between them in the future.
Quality produce for those who need it most
“Having a farm has really helped with marketing our products because it makes the story much easier to tell.
“We are now selling our beef and lamb to The Long Table, which is a community project where people can pay as much as they can afford for quality meals with nutritious ingredients. You can also opt to buy meal tokens for other people who cannot afford it themselves.
“All the food that they buy is either organic, local, pasture-fed or free range. They also use waste food from the supermarkets. We're really chuffed because it means our food is getting to people that need it the most.
“We've also got a wholesaler taking our lamb who specialises in regen, organic meat, and they really like the fact we’re farming native rare breeds as well.
Diversifying into wool and leather
"I think it’s tough that farmers aren’t able to get a fair return on their wool clip. I always felt that my sheep are using energy from the pasture to produce both their lambs and their fleece, so it just didn’t make good business sense not to utilise it.
“I never used to be able to knit or to sew. In fact I was renowned for being rubbish with textiles and craft. I couldn't even cut straight. I had zero textile skills, but I did have design training from my early career as a graphic designer.
“I got some of my fleeces spun into yarn and started learning how to use a knitting machine, but the real change came when I completed an MA in Design for Fashion and Textiles, which was a springboard for my first knitwear collection in 2021.
Knitwear made by Katie Allen from wool grown at Great Cotmarsh Farm
“All my knitwear is made using the wool entirely from our flock. The fleeces go to Cornwall, where it's spun into yarn. It comes back here to the farm and I have a studio on the top floor and I make everything.
“We have a dye garden and I am growing plants like Japanese Indigo, woad, madder and marigold. It’s amazing to be growing my own fibre and cultivating colour here at the farm now too.
“Alongside this, James is building a micro scale veg tannery for cattle hides. He spent a year travelling on a Churchill Scholarship to learn how to tan cattle hides. He spent three weeks in Oregon, and time travelling across Italy, Germany and Switzerland.
‘Fashion as a Force for Nature’
“All of this feeds into the education programmes we run on the farm.
“I’ve launched a farm workshop called 'Fashion as a Force for Nature’. We are bringing fashion students out on to the farm to engage in the beginning of the fashion supply chain. By connecting with the soil, students gain a new perspective of what true circularity looks like, particularly in the face of an ever-shifting climate and demand for new cradle-to-cradle models around fashion design.
“They can see dye plants growing, stand in the fields and feel how alive they are from the interaction of the livestock with our grasslands. By bringing together fashion, craft, food and the local landscape, we can create conversations that ask us all to consider how we can do things differently.
“We are also working with The Sustainable Food Trust as one of their Beacon Farms, to deliver curriculum-linked outdoor experiences on our farm that have been designed in partnership with The Harmony Project (theharmonyproject.org.uk).
“Farm visits are a unique way to bring lessons to life, promote sustainability awareness and create outdoor learning experiences for primary school age children.
“The visits are designed to enhance children's curriculum learning outdoors while exploring topics like where our food comes from, healthy eating and, in particular, nature-friendly farming. We are hoping to develop a fibre-based programme here at the farm with them too.
Working with Regenerate Outcomes
“We've never opened a bag of fertiliser in our life or sprayed a pesticide.
“When we moved to Great Cotmarsh Farm, it had been a conventional dairy farm for 40 years and we thought it would be criminal not to get baselines of the soil health because we were going to drastically change the management on this farm. To me it was a no-brainer.
“We really wanted a record of the soil health so that we could monitor the impact that our management change was going to have. It would have been completely cost prohibitive for us to do that ourselves. We would never have been able to do it without Regenerate Outcomes.
“Kyle came out to visit us from the mentoring team and he's amazing. He's so lovely and so knowledgeable. I fired a load of questions at him, and he took the time to sit and go through everything. It is a really great dialogue to have.
“The most important thing will be getting some tangible data that we can use to demonstrate the benefits that our livestock are having.
“That is such an important part of the story of what we're doing here, both in the education we provide and when we're talking to customers about where their meat and other produce has come from.”
Regenerate Outcomes works with
farmers to grow profits
Regenerate Outcomes provide one-to-one mentoring to help you cut costs and improve crop and livestock performance.
We also baseline and measure soil carbon at no upfront cost to generate carbon credits which you can retain or sell for additional income.
Find out more by downloading our Programme Handbook.