Courtyard Farm aims to combine profitable farming with providing an environment where native wildlife can thrive, and public access is encouraged. For wildlife, this means building up a healthy, living soil to benefit insects and native plants which, in turn, attracts birds and mammals. With an organic system, it is possible to marry the farm's objectives of providing crops and meat for food without artificial pesticides or fertilisers, while providing an ideal habitat for wildlife. We hope the farm is also an enjoyable, and safe, place to visit.

The farm finished converting to organic in 2000, and meets the highest, Soil Association organic standards. Peter Melchett, a director of the farm, is well-known for his environmental campaigning work at Greenpeace in the 1980s and 90s, and is currently Policy Director for the Soil Association, the main UK organic body.

Organic farms also employ more people than intensive farms (in Eastern England, for non-organic farms this can mean less than one farm worker per 1000 acres). Courtyard Farm employs 2 full-time staff, and with regular part-time workers this provides the equivalent of three full -time jobs, on 890 acres. See below: Peter Melchett (on the right), with Bunny Rout (Farm Manager, centre) and Chris Galer (in charge of the pigs, left)

Our herd of Norfolk Red Poll cattle spend the summer months grazing on the wild flower meadows and clover fields at the farm and on the farm's grazing marshes at Holme. In winter they are kept in an airy cattle building where they are fed on silage made from clover, and haylage from the grass and wild flower fields. They have no additional grain and protein feed. Meat from slow-growing, grass-fed cattle has improved flavour, and healthier nutrients and fat.

Our pigs are Saddleback or Tamworth sows, crossed with Duroc boars. They have large outdoor pens on white clover fields, with spacious, straw-filled tents for shelter. The sows make straw nests before they give birth, and live in small groups, and their piglets stay together for the rest of their lives.

Organic animals stay with their mothers longer than non-organic (whether 'outdoor', 'free-range' or intensive); almost all non-organic pigs spend part of their lives in closed sheds. Our organic animals grow more slowly, eat natural diets, can always move around freely, and live in settled family groups to minimise stress. Whenever possible, animals are killed at a small, high quality abattoir in Gayton, just 30 minutes drive from the farm.

For most of the year, all the animals can be seen from the public footpaths on the farm.

Wheat, barley and peas, and red and white clover are the main crops grown in the six-year rotation at Courtyard Farm. The wheat, barley, peas, white clover and vetch are grown for use as seed by other organic farmers, demanding very clean fields and high quality grain.

Clover is essential in an organic system for putting nutrients back into the soil without using artificial Nitrogen fertilisers, made from fossil fuels. The energy from sunlight allows clovers (and crops like peas and vetch, also grown at Courtyard) to fix Nitrogen in their roots, which is vital for growing crops. After growing under a wheat crop for one year, the clover remains undisturbed for two more years, to maximise Nitrogen fixing. The clover fields are cut for silage (to feed the cattle in winter), used to house the pigs on, and grazed by young cattle in summer. The manure from cattle and pigs also adds some fertility to the soil, mainly in form of Phosphorus and Potassium, the other two elements vital for growing crops.