Lydiard Turkeys and Pop up Farm Shop

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Lydiard Turkeys and Pop up Farm Shop

Lydiard turkeys & pop-up farm shop
Once a month selling our own pasture fed meat & other local goods We use no artificial fertilisers or pesticides.

Lydiard Turkeys is run by Chris and Lindsay Rumming and was established in 2008, the turkeys are all sold direct to the customer from the farm that they were raised on and are not available in supermarkets. In 2020 we decided to open a monthly pop up farm shop to showcase the other meats we produce. We have rare breed Oxford Down sheep which produce award winning lamb, hogget & mutton plus pasture

fed beef (Sales co-ordinated by Chris's brother, Andy)
We also carefully source other produce from trusted small suppliers including free range eggs, organic dairy, bakery including lardy cakes, British in season veg and much more! We farm in a way to increase biodiversity and do everything we can to encourage wildlife. This includes rotationally grazing the livestock, leaving large areas of rough grasses and scrub, hedgelaying and more. Our free range bronze turkeys arrive on the farm at a day old at the end of June. For the first couple of weeks they are housed under heat lamps until their feathers fully develop. They explore the great outdoors from around three weeks of age, starting in a small paddock close to their house. Once they are big enough they move into our fruit orchard which we planted in January 2014. We believe that giving our turkeys twice the required outdoor space leads to a happy stress free turkey. At night they are shut into a large airy barn safely away from foxes. They are bedded on straw that is made as a by-product of the wheat that is grown on the farm. We also put lots of straw bales in the shed for them to roost on and peck at. First thing in the morning the turkeys are let out into the paddocks but can come back into the barn to drink and eat. They are fed on a cereal based diet that is supplemented with any horticultural disasters or over production from our poly tunnel! You wouldn’t believe how excited a flock of turkeys become when a handful of tomatoes or a cabbage is tossed over the fence! Our Turkeys are with us for at least 25 weeks, this means they are more than twice the age of a fast growing commercial turkey when they are slaughtered. We are very proud to have excellent processing facilities on the farm, which means the turkeys do not have the stress of transport before slaughter. Our ability to carry out every part of the processing on the farm gives us complete control and traceability. To learn more please sign up to our newsletter via our website.

05/06/2026

Lindsays pigs just having the BEST time!
11 little bundles of trouble

Pop up is next week end, time to clear out the freezer and make some space!
See below for beef and lamb

04/06/2026

Record number of nests!

Photo by local farmer and photographer David White (not my Swallows)

Yesterday our first Swallow family fledged, 5 chicks have spent the day perched on a fence being fed by the parents.

Careful observation since arrival shows we have 11 active nests. 1 more than last year. 1 nest is also in a building that hasn't been nested in for many years.

Swallows can have 1,2 or 3 broods of young in a season but they have to be very productive to maintain their numbers. They are relatively short lived and have high mortality rate on their long migration. Having 1 brood a year probably isn't enough to maintain numbers, they need 2 or better 3.

Most nest will have 4 or 5 chicks but I can never tell - unless, like today I manage to see the fledglings sat outside the nest.

If all the first broods are successful we should have about 50 youngsters and 22 adults in a couple of weeks, numbers will keep building through the summer!

Much of what we do in our style of farming either by accident or design maximise insect protection. (you'll need to come on a tour for me to expand fully on this!) The more efficiently the Swallows can feed their young the more they will produce in a season. They don't like having to go far for their food.

Magpies and Crows will predate 1 or 2 nests, Hobbies will take a few as will Sparrow Hawks occasionally but most will leave the farm in September health, full of insects and ready to fly to South Africa 🇿🇦

If you like what we do then please consider supporting us via our monthly pop up farm shop where as well as getting loads of amazing local food you can stand and marvel at the Swallows zooming around the yard!

26/05/2026

Anyone heard this yet this year?

23/05/2026

Make sure you're watching and more importantly voting for the Hawkstone Farmers Choir!
They're raising money and awareness of mental health problems in farming which as an industry has one of the highest su***de rates.

Good luck to you all!

21/05/2026

Which one will kill you?
☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠☠
3 beautiful white flowers
One is the most poisonous plant in the UK
One can give you burns
and one is harmless.

The moral of the story? Don't touch the pretty white umbelifer flowers

All these are in flowers right now, I'm not saying which is which as this is NOT an ID guide. One is cow parsley/hedge parsley, one is hogweed and one is the very deadly hemlock water dropwort

17/05/2026

Amazing weekend!
at , spotted my first ever Turtle Doves with , THE best sourdough from .wakelyns got home to see my first of the spring sheltering from the cold northerly.
Even bagged my first sub 20 Park Run Saturday morning!
An unforgettable 36 hours

14/05/2026

Each move we are surrounded by Swallows, this cold windy weather must make feeding so hard which makes them drawn to the cows. The shelter of of the also helps.

13/05/2026

Dodged the showers and battled the wind this afternoon to improve the fitting of my
Badgers had been lifting the guards to dig in the moist soil around the trees which up-roots and kills the young trees.
We are combating the pesky mustelids by flipping the guards over so the spikes are around the base rather than top, also ensuring all mulch is contained in the guard. Screws have also been added to prevent lifting but will still allow easy removal for maintenance.

My 2 lines contain 70 trees and the 3 of us got round nearly all of them making improvements.

Trees are eating apples at 10m spaces interplanted in some of the gaps with Hazel, Poplar, Black Locust (Robinia) and Sweet Chestnut.

In time these will provide shade, shelter, water infiltration, food, timber, habitat, improved soil biology and lots more.

Last years trees came from
This years trees were from
and next years trees are coming from
All brilliant nurseries producing different varieties of the finest eating apples which continue to expand the apple range in the pop up shap. 🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏

Big thank you to Steve and Neil for their help💪🔨

12/05/2026

The 11th to the 14th of May are the days of the Ice Saints.
Galileo noted that last frosts often occurred on these days in the middle of May. Late frosts were feared by farmers across western Europe especially wine growers.

Yesterday (Saint Mamertus day) we had ice on the car window, today (Saint Pancras day) we had 3mm of ice on the troughs and overground pipes were frozen, tonight looks clear and cold so I wonder what Saint's Servatius and Boniface will bring us in the coming days.

Our farm is in the base of a wide shallow valley into which cold air settles. We are ofter several degrees colder than the surrounding area.

Thanks to Alan H, my weather guru for putting me onto this legend which is certainly proving accurate this year.

10/05/2026

Wow, that was a busy few days! 😴

Big thank you to everyone who came to the pop up and the 28 of you who braved the cold easterly wind to endure me talking about the cows, sheep and wildlife!

The pop up weeks are always busy, squeezing in all the butchery in amongst the ever present farm work. Setting up the stock and loading the fridges always runs very late into the night before Saturday's opening. The Sunday is normally far more relaxed unless we attempt to throw in a farm walk and a burger cooking session!!!!!
We many have overstretched ourselves and Lindsay has decided she definitely doesn't want to be a chef!

Thanks Andy and Jo for the beef, Francis and Sheila for mince packing and car parking, Tash for beef butchery, mutton butchery and tills, Bev for tills and Lindsay for doing EVERYTHING (way too much to list) to pull the whole lot together!

and thank you all for coming along and supporting the whole crazy show, let's do it all again on the 13th and 14th June

In other news Nick who came on the farm walk used his ornithological super powers to pic out the song of a Garden Warbler right at the end of our farm walk, I didn't know this till he told me later but I will be heading back to the spot in the morning to see if I can hear bird number 104 on the Park Farm list.

Address

Swindon
SN53NY

Website

http://www.lydiardturkeys.co.uk/

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