Tregaddra is a 220 acre traditional family farm. The main enterprises being the beef suckler herd and winter cauliflower with a small acreage of cereals grown for our own cattle (the straw for their bedding in the winter months and the grain for feed). Jonathan's great great grand father came to Tregaddra in 1864 as a tenant and then bought the farm in 1884, the name Lugg means 'cattle herder' or 'calf rearer' in the native Cornish language !

Winter Cauliflower

We grow 20 acres of cauliflower which we harvest between November and April. Jon and his Dad cut the cauliflower (each one has to be individually cut). Jon's Mum drives the tractor with the 'rig' and I pack the cauliflower, we are a family farm and this means everyone helps out! West Cornwall has a very mild climate in the winter months and is the only place in England where cauliflower can be grown between November to April, hence a lot of cauliflowers are grown in the area. We sell them to a wholesalers at Helston who in turn sells to Sainsburys.
The rig is a conveyer belt with bowls fixed to it that circulates around the from of the tractor upon side to the back and into a pack house attached to the back of the tractor. The cauliflower are packed in Sainsbury bags and put into the green trays you see in the Supermarkets. Eight are packed in a tray, they must meet strict guide lines on size, colour, leaf condition and weight.
We grow lots of different varieties to hopefully have an even amount to cut each week. Despite this, some weeks are busier than others. Occasionally we only cut for one or two days, some weeks we cut six days in a row.

Cereals

We grow a small acreage of winter and spring barley (Winter barley is planted in the winter months, Spring barley is planted in the Spring in the fields that have just finished growing the cauliflower). The combine emerges out of the shed in July to start harvesting the corn . This is a really stressful time - not only does the weather have to hold out for the harvest but also our vintage John Deere combine! Despite her dilapidated state she still manages (after a couple of visits to the combine scrap yard in Devon and a little welding) to separate the grain from the straw. The straw is the baled by the round baler and stored in the sheds until the winter, and the grain is taken back to the farm to be dried and stored ready to be milled in the winter. The straw is used for bedding cattle in the sheds during the winter and the grain is used for winter cattle feed.

Silage and Hay

The grass is cut between May and September for silage. Silage is fermented grass which is stored until the winter for fodder for the cows. Grass is cut with a tractor pulling a mower it is then left to wilt for a day before being picked up by a round baler. The baler looks rather like a snail shell trailing behind the tractor gobbling up the grass and rolling it into a compact cylindrical bale before tying it with string and then rolls it out of its back end (this is as technical as I get, Jon will be able to explain it if you visit us!). The bales are then transported by tractors and trailers back to the farm to be wrapped with black plastic to seal it and keep it airtight. The hay is cut during June and July and is wilted for nearly a week before it is baled. The hay must be really dry before it is baled. It is not wrapped and is stored in a shed as it must be kept dry for the winter (it is baled in the same way as the silage).

The Suckler Herd

A suckler cow has a calf and rears it for about nine months (the calf 'suckles' the cow) before it is weaned. This is the main difference between a dairy cow which is separated from its calf soon after birth is then milked with the rest of the herd by milking machines, the milk then being sold to dairies. Our cows calve between November to April in the comfort of well bedded sheds at Tregaddra. They are fed with silage, hay and rolled barley. When the weather becomes dry and warm in Spring and the grass has started to grow the cows and their calves are turned out to the fields. The herd is around 95 Hereford x Friesian cows and they mainly graze on grassland near Goonhilly Downs with the world famous telecommunications satellite station bordering them. By this time they are pregnant again, we have three pedigree Limousine bulls, Freddie, Lombard and Oxo who 'visit' the cows about two months after they have calved. When the calves are old enough to wean they are taken from their mothers to our other farm Tregidion. They are then kept through the winter, fed on silage, barley and hay and housed in a shed with plenty of straw bedding. In the Spring they are sold at our local market at Helston as 'stores' (this means another farmer will buy them and keep them until they fatten ready to be sold for beef. The cows stay on the downs land until it becomes wet and cold. This is usually by mid November depending on the season. The cycle then begins again .We bring them into the sheds at Tregaddra they calve etc.