Hands on the ground, not names on a letterhead.
Martin looks after everything out in the fields: watching the forecast, mowing, tedding, baling, and mending whatever has chosen that week to give up. Christine keeps the office running, plans the delivery round and answers most of the calls herself. Between them they can tell you how each field behaves after rain and which gateway floods first.
We keep it small on purpose. A farm this size lets us stand over the whole job, from the standing crop to the loaded trailer, and still pick up the phone when you ring.
Chalk Lane, Sidlesham, between the Downs and the water.
Our fields lie on the Manhood Peninsula, a short run south of Chichester. The South Downs National Park rises to the north, and Pagham and Chichester Harbour sit close to the south. The soil is a light loam over chalk with a southerly aspect, so it warms early in spring and drains cleanly once the weather turns.
It is proper hay country, and we treat it that way. We manage the land for healthy soil and a good mix of grasses and herbs, not just tonnage, because a living meadow makes better hay year after year.
2003
Incorporated 2 June 2003 as Downs View Nurseries Ltd, Companies House number 04783609.
20+
More than twenty hay times on the same fields, through parched summers, soggy ones and every year in between.
Grown here
We grow the grass and make the hay ourselves. Nothing is bought in, nothing is blended, and every bale comes off our own land.
A family farm
Run by the Brassfields since June 2003.
Off our own fields
Sussex meadows, Sussex bales, never bought in.
Start to finish
We grow it, cut it, dry it, bale it and store it.
A real person
Ring the number and you reach the people who grew it.
Fancy a look round the fields?
We welcome visitors by arrangement. Give us a call first so someone is on site to show you round.