Aulis

Welcome to our Sunday series, where we take a deeper dive into the regenerative practices at Our Farm - Simon Rogan's farm in Cartmel, The Lake District. This week, our head grower, Adam, explains how we integrate chickens into our soil restoration program.

The chickens on Our Farm do far more than just lay eggs - they're active partners in restoring our soil health and preparing our fields for future crops.

Our approach centres on giving the soil rest. Rather than continuously extracting nutrients from the same plot year after year, we practice a full-season fallow system. "By making it fallow, we're not taking from the soil year after year, we're actually putting back into the soil," explains Adam, our head grower.

The chickens work as living soil conditioners, their manure enriching the earth and feeding the beneficial microbes that keep our soil healthy. These birds are natural cultivators - they consume weed seeds that would otherwise compete with our vegetables, providing organic weed control for the following season. Their scratching also brings stones to the surface, making field clearing much easier.

We move our chicken enclosure regularly to adjacent areas, ensuring benefits are distributed across our growing spaces. We're now in our second year of this approach, and the results speak for themselves - areas that have gone through our chicken-fallow rotation deliver much bigger, better yields when we return to plant.

This chicken integration represents just one element of our broader regenerative philosophy. By working with natural systems, we're building a more resilient farming operation that supports both the land and the exceptional produce that finds its way to all of Simon Rogan's UK restaurants.

Watch Adam explain this all on @ourfarm’s Instagram and stay tuned for next week's Sunday series, where we'll explore another aspect of our regenerative practices.