Glebe Farm boasts a thriving farm shop and local meat delivery business on the Fosse Way, Warkwickshire. This is testament to the hard work of Christine Coe. She claims that Llanwenog is the ideal breed for this enterprise - requiring little husbandry, providing great meat and coping with the demands of the
“Can I really wear shorts to the AGM and flock visit?”
“If you don’t you’ll boil” my able assistant informed me, “It’s to be the hottest day of the year so far” she added.
With not a brolly or rain cloud in sight, though perhaps we could have done with a parasol, a dozen members met for the AGM and flock visit at Mrs Christine Coe’s farm and shop on the Fosse Way on Saturday 13th July. We could hardly have been in a more central location and just minutes off the motorway. Glebe Farm is a credit to Mrs Coe’s hard work as she has built the business up and now sells all she produces on the farm through the shop. The AGM was rapidly concluded as the aroma of Mrs Coe’s sausages and ham wafted in and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of Berkshire pig in various forms.
Afterwards we had a tour of the farm – over 100 acres with 230 Llanwenog ewes and 12 acres of Berkshire pigs. Mrs Coe emphasised that her customers keep coming back for the flavour of the Llanwenog and really don’t care whether it’s lamb, hogget or mutton. She is very pleased with the Llanwenog and finds the breed suits her ground and certainly the ewes looked in great condition even though the lambs had only recently been weaned. She has a high stocking density but moves them on every couple of weeks – in this way everything is grazed off and nothing wasted. With the price of feed she is very glad of the Llanwenog’s thriftiness and admitted that the sheep subsidise the pigs.
We also saw her crop of lambs and even though she lambed really late this year (thus avoiding the vile weather) some looked like they would be heading for the farm shop soon. She said she was surprised that the majority were twins despite last year’s awful conditions – the prolific Llanwenog comes up trumps again, she also commented that she rarely has to intervene at lambing time and has only ever called the vet out twice. It was great to see the breed at the centre of a successful business and really showing the commercial potential of our breed.
Our thanks once again to Mrs Coe for her hospitality and we wish her every success in the future.