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Farmer Stories

Florence Mannerings - Building resilience to drought

England
Case Study
Dairy
micro dairy
native breeds
drought

All imagery: Joanne Coates © for the Nature Friendly Farming Network

Transitioning to nature-friendly farming is helping Chilton Farm maintain financial viability while providing resilience to drought, one of their biggest threats in Kent.

When Florence Mannerings and her family arrived at Chilton Farm in 2017, they didn't expect to start nature-friendly farming. However, paying close attention to the land quickly led to them adopting major changes to their previous agricultural approach.

The farm lies just a few miles from the busy ferry port and industrial development of Dover but enjoys a secluded and scenic location in the Alkham Valley, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Its 80 acres lie in a steep valley with woodland, chalk down and rich pasture ground.

Our minds have changed here. It’s not just about the level of milk in the tanker; we're thinking more about what it costs us to get it in there.

Florence Mannerings

Florence and her parents moved to Kent from Winchester in Hampshire, where they had been tenant dairy farmers, and she combines her farming with four days a week as an NHS community midwife. Though farming goes back at least a couple of generations on both sides of her family, Florence thinks of herself as something of a new entrant as they are building a completely new chapter at Chilton Farm and are new to the area.

When they arrived, Florence said the farm was a far cry from what it is now. “It was an absolute mess,” she recalls. “It was intensively farmed, and there were piles of rubbish everywhere. But we could see through that and knew that it could be a lovely farm.”

Faced with a mountain of work, Florence and her family decided to start with smaller, manageable jobs to turn things around. They planted around 500 metres of hedgerows to split up the large fields which had been used for arable crops, a task that became all the more urgent following their first year when they put the fields to grass and floodwater dumped seed and soil in their courtyard. 

The farm now has around 100 head of cattle, with a micro-dairy, suckler herd and a mixture of Albion and Dairy Shorthorn breeds. Florence said switching from their previous farm quickly brought about changes in their farming mindset.

“Before we had 200 cows and were focused on the milk, so it was a case of whatever inputs were needed for that,” she says. “Then we came here and just brought with us our rare and native breed cattle. We also have a really keen Natural England rep who likes to walk around the farm and show us the potential it has. Gradually our ideas of what we want the farm to look like have changed. Native breeds help you forget about intensive, high-input systems and think in a different way.”

Florence says they are now creating herbal leys for the cattle and are also in the Higher Tier Stewardship scheme, which means the chalk downland is only lightly grazed at certain times of the year. Currently the farm does set stocking in very low numbers, but Florence says creating the leys means they will experiment with rotational and mob grazing. The family also has access to a further 70 acres where they do conservation grazing. They only worm the cows when needed, which helps the dung beetle population on the farm.

Nature-friendly farming is about one big cycle. It’s about turning your whole farm into an ecosystem with lots of different habitats.

Florence Mannerings

The milking cows will graze 365 days a year, apart from the very rare occasions in Kent when it snows or is too wet, but generally, the cows at Chilton Farm will be in at night for around three months of the year between November and February. Feed levels have reduced dramatically, with only the milking cows now getting a small amount of concentrates.

“Native breeds are perfect for nature-friendly farming," says Florence. "They last a long time, cause minimal soil damage and are really brilliant grazers. They will eat everything and are so happy to be outside. They give you good-quality milk, which also makes brilliant cheese. They will really enrich your farm.”

“For us, the hardest shift was not feeding the cows concentrates twice a day. It was a culture change for us and our cows. The cows came from our last farm, so they were used to being a bit spoiled, and then we expected them to eat the grass in the fields here. It feels like you are doing a hardship to your cows at first, but ours are now absolutely fine just having forage, herbs and minerals. Then you see the new species in the grass and the hedgerows flourishing with flowers and berries. That’s so rewarding and makes you want to persevere.”

Working in Kent, climate resilience and ensuring the farm is able to withstand extreme weather conditions is a priority. Florence says the climate is “closer to French than English”, and one reason they're establishing herbal leys is to ensure there are deep-rooted plants able to withstand long dry periods in the grazing.

Climate change has made itself much more visible in the area over the past few years. “In 2022, it didn’t rain from April until September, and it got above 40 degrees on some days,” Florence says. “I think we’re going to have really dry summers in the future. Vineyards are going up in Kent every year because we’ve got the climate for it, and we also have Kentish fruit like peaches and apricots now. Drought is one of our biggest threats here.”

“Sometimes issues like carbon and the climate crisis seem too big an issue which we can never do anything about," she says ."It can feel like it’s never going to get better or something that only the people with the most power in the world can tackle. But we can all focus on our little corner of the world and see nature move back in and that area becoming alive again. It makes you feel better, and collectively, it could make a massive difference.”

Florence is passionate about supporting and extolling the virtues of small-scale, British family farms, but to make Chilton Farm viable, diversification has been necessary. Farm buildings around the courtyard have been turned into three cottages rented out as a B&B and a communal breakfast room. 

The farm has also launched its own milk vending machine, which tours local villages, farmers’ markets and a farm shop. This came as Florence particularly wanted to maintain the dairy side of the business but had to find an alternative to loading it into a trailer to be sent off for retail use in order to stay profitable.

Florence admits it has been a tough process riddled with mechanical teething issues, but the response from the public has been very positive. “People in the village ask where our milk is from, and I can literally point at our cows,” she says. “People love being able to taste how fresh it is and that they can trace where it comes from.”

Florence says nature-friendly farming has very much been a process suggested by the farm and land itself. One of the most satisfying aspects of farming in this way has been noticing and enhancing the farm’s biodiversity. The fields are home to rare vetches and orchids, and there are plenty of bats, as well as the rare nightingale, the bird the dairy business is named after. She also enjoys seeing how much the cows love their outdoor lifestyle. “If I open one of our farm fields, even if it’s chucking it down with rain, they literally buck and skip into the fresh field. That’s what I love to see,” she says.

“Nature-friendly farming is about one big cycle. It’s about turning your whole farm into an ecosystem with lots of different habitats. You start from the ground up with your soil health by planting herbal leys, and then your soil is enriched; the cows are eating a better diet, and they encourage root growth while also putting nutrients back into the soil. The better your soil is, the better your cows do, and the better your end products are. You have to work with the ground to keep it working in that way, with all the wildlife thriving as well.”