South Yeo Farm West                                                                                            

Welcome to South Yeo Farm West in Devon where we rear rare, native and traditional breeds and deliver training to budding smallholders who want to gain a genuine insight before taking the leap, or have leapt and now need to buff up their knowledge.

You can buy our:

• Welsh Mountain lamb boxes - superb, succulent meat from this native British breed (delivered to your door)
  
• Pork boxes and gammon and bacon boxes - from pedigree rare breed Berkshire pigs (delivered to your door)
  
• Aylesbury duck and Black Indian runner duck hatching eggs (posted throughout the UK) 
  
• Aylesbury ducklings and Black Indian Runner ducklings (hatched to order, collection only)
• Black Orpington large fowl hatching eggs (posted throughout the UK)
• Black Orpington large fowl chicks (hatched to order, collection only)
  
• Fleece and lambskins from our Welsh Mountain Badger Face sheep (by post)
  
• Welsh Mountain Badger Face ewe lambs and ram lambs from our pedigree Torwen and Torddu flocks
• Pedigree Berkshire weaners - young stock for fattening or as future breeders

Hundreds of you have come to the farm over the last few years to join one (or more) of our popular training courses:

• Introduction to Smallholding (two day)
• Living with livestock: an introduction to sheep, pigs & cattle (one day)
• Build your own website for smallholders, farmers & breed societies
  
• Cattle for beginners (one day course)
  
• Intermediate Smallholding (two day) looking beyond the basics
• Apple & Orchard day (one day)
• Build your own cob oven (one day)
  
• Bespoke training packages - designed specially for you

Check out the tabs at the top of the page for further information and do feel free to contact us with any enquiries.

A bit about the farm

South Yeo Farm West is in Devon, a few miles from Dartmoor, just outside the village of Northlew in The Culm.  The farm has over 100 acres of permanent pasture, with a well-preserved medieval field system, the curving, irregular field boundaries based on early medieval strip cultivation. There is an ancient woodland of about 5 acres (a County Wildlife Site), small areas of oak copse, and a mill leat fed by the River Lew running the length of the northern boundary. A traditional cider orchard still exists on the farm,  visible on maps from the 1880s.

The farmhouse is a cob and stone cross-passage house and a designated Listed Building (Grade II), thought to be at least early 17th century in date with earlier origins, the farm buildings constructed in the later post-medieval period (C18th and C19th).

When we arrived in 2005 the farm buildings, Devon banks and fencing were in various states of disrepair, ranging from barns in absolute dereliction to slumped earthbanks, neglected hedges and saggy livestock fencing. The wood was open access to sheep and cattle, and much of the perimeter was open to the neighbours, which was neither good for them or us.  We started to plan for what is probably a 25 year project to get the farm into good environmental and physical repair.

Our farm is the home of the Yeoman herd of pedigree Berkshire pigs, the Kington flock of pedigree Welsh Mountain Badger Face sheep, the South Yeo flock of pedigree Whiteface Dartmoor sheep and the South Yeo suckler herd of pedigree Red Ruby Devon cattle.  We rear native, traditional and rare breed livestock, and in addition to the pigs, sheep and cattle we keep Aylesbury and Black Indian Runner ducks, Black Orpington large fowl chickens and rare Pilgrim geese. For six months of the year we rear a small number of Norfolk Black turkeys, and have been known to keep Boer goats.

  The veg patch                                     A tawny owl box                                 One of the many log piles