Introducing Godlingston Manor Farm

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25
Jun
2010

Ben runs the family farm, along with wife Cath

Ben Bowerman lives the dream. He runs a 450 acre family farm with a beef suckler herd, grazing 300 acres of conservation ground with the rest used for winter forage and horse grazing. The stables in the Victorian range of buildings are let on a DIY basis. He started a diversification business selling the water from the natural springs at Godlingston Manor and in his spare time flies helicopters and sits as a magistrate on the East Dorset bench. In his blog, Ben shares life on his farm.

“My first blog for H&C is being written from a coffee shop in Broadstone in Dorset as I wait for my son George to have a guitar lesson. As a farmer, I have had to, by necessity, master certain aspects of computers just to run our business. However, until recently I had never uploaded anything to any site on the Internet. It was, however, my desire to show George’s guitar playing to his godfather that led me to experiment with uploading a video of him playing to You Tube.

Since then I have been nursing a poorly calf and decided to upload regular video clips for friends and family to watch his progress. This has created a regular viewing and, surprisingly, media interest about the plight of “newborn calf Henry”. Tomorrow we have a TV news channel visiting plus every day our You Tube channel gets more and more hits. It is this background that brings me to be writing a blog for H&C.

Watch Ben's videos of baby calf Henry:

I will write a more detailed overview of our life here at Godlingston Manor in Swanage for those of you who wish to read it, but for this page I will give a brief description of what we do here.

My family has been farming approximately 450 acres at Godlingston Manor Farm since 1949 when my grandfather took on a three-generation agricultural lease, on behalf of my father, with the Bankes family of Kingston Lacy. The freehold has since passed to the National Trust and one of my children will hopefully become the third generation to farm here after me.

The main business consists of a beef suckler herd of 56 cows and 2 steers. They are utilised to graze approximately 230 acres of Higher Level Stewardship and SSSI hill land and 70 acres of arable reversion land. A further 150 acres of lower land is used for making winter forage and horse grazing.

The horses are stabled in the Victorian farm buildings with the stables rented out on a DIY basis. Horse owners get the use of both the indoor and outdoor schooling areas plus they are able to ride around the perimeter of the farm thus giving a safe and undisturbed riding experience. The farm borders onto bridleways that lead along the ridge to Corfe Castle to the West and Studland beach to the East.

Finally the diversification business is a water bottling plant situated in the heart of the farm. Here we bottle the water from the natural springs that flow out of the woods and sell it to Aquaid Franchising Ltd who supply offices with water coolers right across Britain and Northern Ireland. It has taken twenty years to build the business to its present size and stature as one of the country’s largest water cooler bottling businesses. There is a symbiotic relationship between the farm and the water business as the catchment area for the springs are the hills, and the hills are managed for conservation purposes which in turn avoids sprays and fertilizers entering the water supply.

I have tried hard to build a purposeful relationship with the National Trust. I needed their permission to build the bottling plant and in turn I go out of my way to promote conservation on the farm. They receive a handsome royalty from my water sales and I get cooperation and a fair rent. Hopefully I can show other farmers that a bit of give and take on both sides can lead to a fruitful and harmonious relationship between conservation and commercial business.

Life here is exceedingly busy so I have decided that my blog will take on the form of a video diary backed up with prose, rather than pages of commentary. I hope you will enjoy following our progress.

The obvious place to start is with Henry who was unable to suckle from his mother and became dehydrated. We managed to get some electrolyte into him and some of his mother’s milk, but he then started to scour very badly. Due to him missing out on his colostrum intake which contains antibodies from the mother, we have had to give him a course of antibiotics, an anti inflammatory and a pain killer as he started to develop the symptoms of joint ill. This is where infection gets into the joints and can be quite serious if not treated straight away. However, as I write this last part of the blog I am back in my kitchen and Henry is stretched out behind me happily snoring by the Aga! You can catch up on his progress on ‘You Tube’ by typing in ‘Newborn Calf Henry’.”