About us
Who we are
We have a relatively small, family farm here in Petrockstowe, run by husband and wife team Richard and Ruth Kelsey. Richard is a vegetable farmers son and has been growing veg himself for 36 years. The main part of his working life was spent growing vegetables for the large supermarkets, some 5 million cabbage and 15 million spring onions per year! An unease with the imbalance of power in the trading relationship with the supermarkets and the intensive methods of farming necessary led us to look for an alternative market for our wares which lead us to Devon and the birth of our local veg and meat box delivery service
We are lucky to have very loyal local people working for us all of whom are passionate about good food, farming and the countryside. Organic? We are not registered ‘organic’ but we adopt many organic growing methods to greatly reduce our reliance on chemicals, we only spray if we absolutely have to – many of our crops receive no sprays at all.
All of our meat and approximately 90% of our vegetables for the veg boxes is grown here at Hallwood Farm. The emphasis is always on own, local and seasonal first but in order to provide a wider choice we buy produce from other local farms and food producers and everything else from further afield comes from our wholesaler in Cornwall.
Where We Are
At Hallwood Farm we have 50 acres of gently sloping south facing land on the outskirts of the village of Petrockstowe.
What We Do
We are busy little bees here at Hallwood We have a traditional mixed farm here at Hallwood with our vegetables and Jersey x Ruby Red Devon Beef cattle, see Hallwood Meat. The different enterprises in the farming business all complement each other. all dung produced is used on the veg fields to replace organic matter; valuable traditional methods of farm husbandry which unfortunately are sometimes lacking on intensive farms today.
We are not registered as organic growers but, like to think we are a sensible ‘half way house’ between organic and conventional farming. We adopt many organic plant Husbandry methods to reduce our reliance on pesticides. For example; with the aid of a sophisticated ‘on farm’ weather station and a technically advanced computer software programme we can predict peaks and troughs of pest populations which largely reduces the need for pesticide application. Many of our crops receive no pesticide at all. To find out more about what we do, see Hallwood Husbandry FAQs
Support Your Local Economy
According to an in depth study by The New Economics Foundation into local rural economy ‘Income into organic food box schemes generates about twice as much for the local economy as supermarkets’ see Plugging the leaks
