We have built a new lagoon to harvest the natural nutrients of the farm. This allows us to use these nutrients by application into the soil when the grass is growing during the spring and summer seasons, cutting down on the fertilisers used, and stopping nutrients from leaching into the river.

The river Axe has been fenced on one side to allow wildlife and the plants to return, including the reeds the monks would have chopped all those centuries ago.

We have started to keep bees to help pollinate these wildflowers.

We don’t use sprays on the farm. Weeds are cut or topped to stop them from seeding. Maize is not grown on the farm. This enables us to have a no-spray policy, helping the bees and butterflies and also stopping soil erosion, and preserving the fertile soil in the field and out of the river.

In the Seaborough valley, we have planted over a mile of hedgerows and trees.

We don’t just look after our environment. We also look after the rainforests by not feeding soya or GM crops.

We do feed hay from old parkland. This is fed to each cow during the winter. Helping with long fibre in their diets,  helping the cows produce higher butterfat milk for our creamy cheese. The hay from this old pasture also brings different moulds and yeasts, all helping with the flavour of the cheese.

At the heart of the Monkeychop ethos is sustainability, and we have taken steps to ensure that our farming practices minimise environmental impact.

We have installed heat recovery units to take the heat out of the milk and the conpressors in order to heat the water. We have also installed 11.5kw solar panels with Tesla batteries to enable the cows to be milked in the dark using solar energy.

Additionally, we have invested £100K in our slurry pits to increase their efficiency, thereby reducing the fertilizer application by 50 tons this year alone.

We have halted the growing of maize, thereby eradicating soil erosion, growing only grass to improve carbon capture.

We have also banned the use of palm kernels and soya in the feed to protect rainforests, as well as fencing the river banks to protect the indigenous wildlife habitats, while removing river dams to enable the fish to spawn upstream and encouraging the movements of the otter community upstream also.

All of our efforts have been implemented as, ultimately, we believe that our cheese should be produced responsibly.

These initiatives mirror the love and care we have for our cows and the surrounding wildlife habitats, all of which, in their own way, contribute to the production of our cheese, which, by the way, is bloody moolicious!

We sincerely hope you love it as much as we do!