The Hues Family Story
Mike and Dibbie met at Devizes Young Farmers in 1961. They both grew up milking cows on their respective family farms, Mike at Conock and Dibbie at Horton. After a couple of years of courtship they got married in 1963 and it was only natural that they would want to establish a dairy herd within their own farming business. As luck would have it Poulshot Lodge Farm was on the market.
Poulshot Lodge Farm originally formed part of the estate belonging to Walter Long, who was the local MP between 1880-1892. In 1911 it was sold at a public auction held in The Bear Hotel, Devizes, alongside many other Poulshot properties, and was described in the auction catalogue as being one of the `best grass land farms in the district`. After its sale, it was the home of reputed local cheese maker Harry Upshaw who made a hard white cheese, which developed a blue vein as it matured. This was sold locally and was very popular around the village. It then became home to Lemons Dairy where milk was bottled and sold directly from the yard, so there is a rich history of the farm selling it’s own produce.
Mike and Dibbie moved here in September 1963 and as the business grew so did the family with Jackie, Elaine, Nick and Tim arriving. They all have fond memories of mucking in with the chores and helping with whatever seasonal job was being undertaken at the time such as silaging, haymaking or the summer harvest.
Mike and Dibbie’s hard work soon paid off and the family business started to thrive with a growing dairy herd and additional land added. Nick came back in 1991 to look after the dairy herd following a few years’ experience on other farms and he also started rearing calves and retaining them to be raised for beef.
Four years later Tim returned home after school for an initial period of work experience, which is still continuing 25 years later! His passion for arable farming saw him start to build this side of the business by offering contract services to neighbouring farms. Throughout the 2000`s a lot of extra land was rented in as economies of scale became necessary to become more efficient in combating the falling commodity prices.
Continued low milk prices and pressure on investment within the dairy infrastructure meant that the difficult decision was made in 2007 to sell the herd and retire from dairy farming. Focus shifted to the beef cattle and Nick began to explore options into how we could add more value and establish a connection with the end consumer.
In 2008 we started selling beef boxes to local people, which proved to be a successful venture and spurred us on to open the farm shop in 2010. Martin joined us as our butcher and between us we set about trying to make the shop a success. We primarily sold our own prime grass-fed beef from the Aberdeen Angus and Hereford cattle that you see in our fields and all our beef is still fully traceable back to the animal.
We are a family farm first and foremost and take great pride in producing our own quality meat but over the years we have broadened our offering to include food and drink from other reputable local producers. Our primary aim is to stock local affordable unique brands that are sustainable and honest.
Today the farm is vastly diversified to help make us economically sustainable. It has many different parts including environmental schemes, renewable energy, industrial lets, retail units and grain storage but farming and producing quality produce remains our passion and is firmly established at the core of the business. We have tried to retain as many of the buildings as we can and in fact the farm shop is actually situated in what was the old bull pen where Nick is as much at home behind the butchery counter as he was in the milking parlour!
Recently there has been a real buzz around the yard as we have started to welcome new businesses on site with similar values and introduce the farm to lots of new faces. We love getting to know our customers and are very grateful to the residents of Poulshot and nearby communities who have always been very supportive.
