Beef for Ember's Steak Slices
Farm Wilder provides minced beef for Ember’s fantastic Steak Slices. Founders Jack and Harry Mayhew were looking for the most sustainable mince they could find, so we put together a group of farmers in Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire.
All these farms are organic, but that’s just the start. They go much further, working regeneratively, which means they focus on restoring soil health, something that has declined across the UK over many years. Healthy soil naturally contains lots of carbon, so taking better care of soil is an important way we can tackle climate change.
Rather than growing the monocultures of ryegrass that you see on intensively run farms, our farmers sow herbal leys that can contain 15 or 20 different species of grasses, legumes and herbs. Each kind of plant has its own role, bringing different nutrients up from underground or fixing nitrogen, and the combination makes a much healthier diet for the cows. These fields are typically grazed rotationally, or mob grazed as it’s sometimes known, where electric fences allow animals to be moved to new strips of land every day or sometimes several times per day. This encourages a greater diversity of plants to thrive, as well as increasing yield. All these farms are organic, some are100% pasture-fed certified, and the others are working to minimise the amount of grain that is fed to the animals, and no imported soya is allowed.
Regenerative farming is also much better for wildlife - the more kinds of plant there are in a field the more kinds of insects can thrive, and that in turn feeds birds, hedgehogs, bats and many other creatures. But biodiversity needs specialised habitats, which is why we select farms with wildflower meadows and marshes, making sure that all our farms are custodians of exceptional wildlife. So whether it's an SSSI with several species of orchid, or a coastal meadow with water voles and rare dragonflies, all our farmers go the extra mile for wildlife.
