Westcombe Dairy

Evercreech, Somerset.

Father/son duo Richard and Tom Calver have built a name for their family-run business, creating some of the UK’s finest cheese and now ex-dairy beef.

Evercreech, Somerset.

Father/son duo Richard and Tom Calver have built a name for their family-run business, creating some of the UK’s finest cheese and now ex-dairy beef.

At Westcombe Dairy farm in Somerset, father/son duo Richard and Tom Calver have built a name for their family-run business, creating some of the UK’s finest cheese.

In recent years, the Calver’s have begun to build a balance in the dairy industry, by utilising all of its by-products. The Westcombe Dairy team have started creating their own artisan charcuterie using their pasture-reared bull calves, calves that ordinarily would be culled at birth.

We are incredibly proud to announce that we are releasing the first ex-dairy beef from Westcombe Dairy, from the cows that are no longer able to provide milk and have been retired to lush Somerset pastures. By supplying us with ex-dairy cattle beef, Westcombe Dairy has added another string to its already sustainable bow.

On the land management front, the team at Westcombe Dairy have long been adopting regenerative farming methods; practising mob grazing, new blackberry and cobnuts hedgerow plantation, and encouraging the resurgence of a biodiverse environment by letting nature take its course. Cover crops of mustard and radish plants, and grazing pastures of clover, chicory, and docks, have allowed Tom to create a healthier root structure that can sequester more effectively. Everything revolves around the health of the soil at Westcombe Dairy, as they strive to create a balanced ecosystem, that not only benefits the land and environment but leaves a distinctive flavour in the cheese and beef they create. On a recent trip to Westcombe Dairy, Tom was excited to tell us of the recent return of dung beetles to the farm. ‘It makes us realise that what we are doing is working.’

We take great pride in working with farms like Westcombe Dairy, that look at nature on a micro level, respecting the land and farming in the right way.