Chypraze Farm – Premium Pasture Fed Meat

WELCOME TO CHYPRAZE FARM

A family owned rare breed farm, butchery and wedding venue,
situated on the rugged West Penwith Cliffs at Morvah, in Cornwall.

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT POST-CHRISTMAS RUSH
WE DO NOT HAVE THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE:

ANY LAMB UNTIL JANUARY 20th
ANY BEEF UNTIL FEBRUARY 3RD

ORDERING THESE ITEMS WILL PUT YOU ON THE WAITING LIST, BUT
PORK, SAUSAGES, AND OTHER ITEMS ARE STILL AVAILABLE NOW

Here at Chypraze Farm we have a simple mission. To produce the best quality meat as ethically as possible, using environmentally friendly practises wherever we can. Our cattle are Highlands, Herefords, Shorthorns and Guernseys. Our pigs are pedigree heritage Saddlebacks. These beautiful animals are raised outdoors and pasture fed, and we encourage our customers to come visit us and see this for themselves.

Father and son team Ian and Mervyn took over the family farm in 2009, and quickly realised that its former life as a small dairy farm was no longer viable. A new approach was needed. Ian’s lifelong participation in the Green movement led him to believe that people would be interested in quality meat, where they could know precisely where it had come from, how the animals were treated, what they were fed, whether they were dosed up with antibiotics and other medications. Whether the land they were reared on was polluted with chemicals. Whether it was the kind of industrialised factory farm that is doing such harm to our planet and beautiful Cornish countryside around us.

Serendipitously the farm’s buildings had had no investment for 60 years previously, and were made up of the kind of basic cow and pig sheds from that bygone era when all British farm animals were pasture fed and free to live outdoors in the fresh air. It was the ideal start! We quickly turned to the traditional breeds, now rare, but prized for their taste.

15 acres were put aside for around 100 pigs, giving them plenty of dedicated space in which to munch and play with some of the best views in the British Isles. Because they’re not crammed in side by side in mass producing rearing houses, they need not worry about MRSA or be dosed to the eyeballs on antibiotics. They need no special dietary supplements, receiving all the minerals and vitamins they need from eating turf. When it’s time to farrow our sows receive a place in a comfortable, spacious traditional indoors pen, and the piglets are allowed out into the fields as soon as they are weaned.

Our herd of Highland cattle are used to graze the plant life above Portheras Cove, overlooking the Atlantic ocean, in a manner that promotes conservation of the land. Working with Natural England, we have improved the biodiversity and overall health of our land along the clifftops. The Highlands are a native breed, now rare, and ideally adapted to the rough and steep terrain, and to keeping the gorse under control so that shrubs, wild grasses, and heathers have all returned, along with the countless wild flowers and fauna that depend on them. Lizards and slow worms have thrived as a result, as have butterflies and other pollinating insects. And then there are the ground nesting birds – stonechats, whitethroats, and larks. And the holy grail, the Cornish chough. It took 5 years, but we are delighted that we now regularly see a small flock of choughs feeding here at the farm, eating the bugs that swarm around our cattle’s dung.

When you buy from Chypraze, you’re helping us to continue to improve our local environment, and you also get the benefit of very tasty meat from low density herds, free from supplements, and with a clear provenance. We always state exactly what breed of animals are used to produce our meat. We’ve also added our own on-site butchery and learnt how to process and pack the meat ourselves, ready to deliver directly to you, our customers. We can’t compete with the supermarkets on price, but with us you will always know where your meat has come from, and it tastes fantastic too.

Our successes over the last decade have inspired our neighbouring farms to adopt similar practises, raising rare native breeds, and engaging in conservation grazing as part of stewardship agreements. Working with them, we’re also able to supplement our own produce with other exciting and unusual options, raised locally to high standards, giving our customers even more choice.

And lastly, to improve our sustainability credentials and reduce our demand for fossil and nuclear fuels, we have installed a 5KW Evance wind turbine, 4KW solar panels, and a ground source heat pump to provide heating and hot water. We have internally dry lined the external granite wall of the farmhouse to include 30mm of foam insulation. Our delivery vehicle is a fully electric Peugeot Ion, that has its charge point connected directly to our renewable energy supply. Our next energy project is to extract some hydro-energy from the stream here on Chypraze, that in past times was used to power several water wheels and tin ore stamps.

We take enormous pride in what we do, and we hope that this is reflected in the meat and other products we sell. Whether you’d like to order home delivery, buy from our stalls at various local farmers markets around West Cornwall, or even collect from the farm shop itself, you’ll find links to pages on this website with more information to help you to do all of this, navigating from the menu at the top of the page.