Who Are We?

Beatbush Organic Farm is the trading name used by Nicola and Toby Bulgin for producing and selling organic meat and related products.

Nicola and Toby purchased Brook Hall Farm in 1999. Organic Farmers and Growers accepted the farm for the two-year conversion to organic production in September 1999 and successfully completed conversion to organic status in 2001.

Brook Hall Farm had been part of a much larger arable unit but the buildings remained from the farms previous use as a dairy farm back in the 1970's. More recently the buildings had been used to house a beef herd in the winter or for hay storage.

Converting the farm from an intensive arable unit to a mixed organic stock farm involved several miles of fencing, the sowing of fertility building grass and clover leys and the establishment of a sheep flock and a beef suckler herd.

Improvements and modifications to the buildings and yards are carried out every year. The addition of a lean-to to one of the barns in 2002 has improved the stock housing and we will continue to try and improve the buildings to make life as comfortable as possible for the livestock. A new electricity supply and replacement of all water mains with troughs in every field turned out to be fairly straightforward compared with the twelve months it took to get a telephone line from BT.

We converted a derelict cattle shed into a farm office and welfare facility and this is the hub of everything that happens on the farm.

In 2003 Nicola and Toby took over the tenancy of Joyce's Marsh, Goldhanger on the Blackwater Estuary. The marshland grazing forms part of the East Coast environmentally sensitive area and we are grazing it to help achieve the aim of establishing a wildfowl refuge providing a feeding area for wading birds and waterfowl and enhanced habitat conditions for breeding waders and other wildlife.

Joyce's Marsh will achieve organic status in April 2005.