About the farm

West End Barns is situated on a working farm on the outskirts of Wheathampstead called West End. The Dickinson family own West End and Cross Farm (located about a mile down the road) and the farms are run by father and Son team, Will and Fred. Fred is the 7^th generation of Dickinson to run the farm and lives at West End Farm with wife, Vicky.

Cross Farm and West End are arable farms which means the land is used to grow crops including wheat, barley, oilseed rape and beans. The farms have diversified over the years and as well as West End Barns café, they both also have livery yards where local people can keep their horses.

In addition to the arable crops, Fred and Vicky also have a small herd of cattle which include a mixture of two breeds – Hereford (brown and white) and Aberdeen Angus (black). We have around 50 cattle on the farm and these include heifers (not yet had a calf), cows (have had their first calf), their bull, Tim, and their calves.

The farms also make hay (made from dried cut grass) and silage (wetter, more sugar rich cut grass) to feed the horses and cattle and straw (the dried stems of the arable crops and a by-product of combine harvesting) which is bailed to make bedding for the livestock.

A lot of the work on the farm is done with the aid of tractors and heavy machinery. The farm currently has three Massey Ferguson tractors, two JCBs and a combine harvester, as well as other equipment such as bailer and fertiliser spreader. All three tractors and the combine can be controlled by GPS and autosteer – meaning the tractors have the ability to steer themselves!

Recent changes to the farm include a move from using inorganic man-made fertiliser to an organic form of fertiliser. You may have seen a strange round green tank at the end of the Cinder Path – this is the storage tank for the organic fertiliser which called digestate. Digestate is spread on the crops, providing nutrients to help it grow. On this farm our digestate is made from treated McDonald’s food waste.