Our Story

Our farming journey

Llais Aderyn farm on Ynys Mon is the hub for all our farming activities. We’ve been farming here for just over three years, but have been in the business for nearly a decade.

Our absolute passion is for producing super tasty food that’s produced in harmony with nature.

We believe in the fundamental idea that we, as humans, are part of the natural ecosystem, it’s just that on a global scale we’re definetly more of a taker than a giver.

At Llais Aderyn we’re heading in the other direction - we produce our food in a way that builds biodiversity, rather than causing it to decline; that complements and helps nature thrive, rather than destroying it.

These principles are beautifully summarised in this video by Caroline Grindod, where she talks about humans as keystone species:

How we farm

The fundamentals of what we do are grounded in the principles of Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture.

Once upon a time the accept view was that Great Britain was once covered in trees. Recent scientific research and understanding point to a very different picture.

It was in fact a massively complex web of dynamic habitats - including woodlands, trees, grasslands and wetlands. This was as a result of the relationship between the habitats and the grazing herbiovers which at the time included wild cattle.

These habitats would have been constantly evolving and adapting.

The famous Dutch biologist and conservationist Dr Frans Vera describes it as a temperate savanna. A kind of scruffy parkland and open savannah type environment with lots of herbivores driving that ecology. Watch his talk at the Knepp estate conference here:

We are fortunate to have access to some 60 acres of land near out small farm, which includes a mix of scrub, braken, SSSI heathland, patchy woodland and wetland.

Our mission is to use our cattle to replicate this natural ancient ecosystem dynamic - by allowing them to graze vast wild areas of land. By allowing them to move around that landscape in a natural way using their natural herd behaviours.

This is not about re-creating the past (in other words re-wildling). Clearly our world is so changed that it would be impossible to do. But it is possible to use some of the drivers - like grazing animals - to kick-start more diverse, complex ecosystems.

The practicalities of farming on wild land

The biggest challenge of grazing cattle on vast areas of land are two-fold. Firstly there is the risk of escapes and secondly being able to locate the cattle at any given time.

Our cows regulary used to feature on the local community Facebook group: ‘does anyone know who’s cows these are?’

But over the past year we’ve been part of an exciting project to trial the No-Fence system. A cattle collar that enables you to create a virtual GPS fence for the herd and view their location on an app.

The trial is part of the Cwlwm Seiriol project, where we’ve been using the system to graze the unfenced SSSI Rhos Llaniestyn common situated just outside the village of Llanddona.

We’ll post a more detailed article on the No-Fence system in early future. If you'd like to get notified of that article you can sign up to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.

Other basics you need for farming cattle in vast landscapes include:

• Back-up portable water supplies when streams and ponds dry up.

• A bucket trained herd - trying to herd cattle to one point over a vast area is fairly impossible.

• A portable handling system to gather in the cows for things like battery/collar checks, welfare checks, TB tests, moving off-site and so on - we have around 8 cattle hurdles than can be pinned together, but it also helps if the site has a basic pen accessible from the road.

The benefits for flavour

Currently at the scale we’re farming (quite small scale because we both have full time jobs in order to pay the farm mortgage!) we have anywhere between 6-10 cows in the herd at any one time.

This allows us to produce two cows a year worth of beef - equivalent to around 400kg of meat.

Because of the way we graze and also the type of breed (Shetlands), the beef we produce is incredibly flavoursome.

Our customers say it’s really quite different to anything you will have tried before from your butchers or supermarket. The fine marbling gives it a tender texture, and the favour has been described as gamey, mellow and sweet.

It’s just not a product that you can buy in the mainstream.

Every three or so years, we also produce a very very special batch off galacian style beef, which is just out of this world. The thing that makes this most unique is the age of the cow at slaughter - anywhere between 7 and 15 years old.

This is really quite a rare and unique type of beef - raved about by foodies the world over. Netflix even made a documentary on it.

The benefits to the environment

There are many benefits to the environment from the way we produce our beef:

• The grazing techniques and physical disturbance stimulate a complex mosaic of habitats - giving a massive boost to biodiversity.

• The abillity to transfer nutrients and disperse seeds over a wide area through their dung also stimulates this complexity and diversity.

• Trampling of dominant species such as braken allows more diverse species to set-seed and expand - sich as heather and billberry.

• Under this patchy mosaic landscape, trees can establish under the protection of thorny scrub.

• The low stocking levels ensure that the amount of carbon absorbed by the habitat far outweight the low levels of methane emissions by the cattle.

We farm in a similar way to the Knepp Estate. Listen to this podcast featuring the Knepps stockman Patrick Toe, to learn more about the benefits that grazing cattle in this way can bring to the natural environment.

Become part of our community

If your interested in what we do and want to get more involved or here more, here are some of the ways you can do that:

• Sign up to our community newsletter - to be notified about new batches of beef (and rare-breed pork), and notifications of new articles, news and events.

• Try our produce - via our online shop

• Stay at our boutique Herdsman’s cabin

• Get in touch - we love to chat and share ideas.

• Follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

You’ll also find us on Instagram and Facebook.