Many will know Churchtown Farm on St. Martin’s as a result of receiving a small box of scented joy, in the form of narcissi, through the post in the depths of winter. The delicate flowers bring welcome spring promise at what can otherwise be a bleak time of year. Posting homegrown flowers is a business at which the family farm next to Higher Town’s church is well practised; Churchtown Farm has been growing winter narcissi (and summer scented pinks) under the brand of Scilly Flowers since the 1980s.

What fewer visitors may realise is that alongside producing those floral beacons of hope, since 2010 Churchtown has been rearing native-breed grass-fed cows, their meat branded Scilly Cow. For self-catering guests in search of top-quality island-reared meat, this additional strand to the farm’s business (along with holiday lets) is a godsend. “As with the flowers, visitors hugely value knowing where the meat is from,” says Zoe Julian, who runs the Duchy-owned farm with her husband Ben.

Cows and flowers might seem unlikely bedfellows, but Zoe says the two partner beautifully. “We started with just two animals, which arrived on Ben’s fortieth birthday. Now we have around a dozen.” The cows – hardy native Red Ruby Devons - graze the farm’s own fields, as well as the rugged heathland that’s managed by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust and covers nearly a third of the island. Zoe takes me past the flower packing sheds and up to the wild terrain behind, from where we see St. Martin’s iconic candy-striped Daymark to the east, framed by glistening silver seas. Dodging a rainstorm as we return through Churchtown’s fields, we pass a placid ruby-coated mother with a fluffy newborn calf that’s gently nuzzling for milk.

Keeping these hardy slow-growing cows is a win-win, says Zoe. The cows enjoy a varied diet and at the same time help keep dominant plants like gorse and bracken under control, enabling a greater diversity of plants to survive on what is some of the most environmentally important marine heathland in Britain. Grazing is far cheaper and more effective than mechanical cutting. And the cows’ dung, and the disturbance by their hooves, encourage insects which in turn provide food for birds. The cattle are regularly moved, to avoid damaging the soils.

“Keeping cows has improved the way we farm,” says Zoe. “We’re now rotating our crops, resting the land and enriching our grassland by interplanting it with herbs and mixed grasses. The cows’ manure has improved the fertility and health of our soil, which has hugely helped our flower crops. The cows have increased the farm’s biodiversity too.”

To feed the cows in winter, when there’s little grass, the farm grows fodder crops, such as turnips, and grass for haylage. “These mean we don’t have to buy in cereal feeds and can be self-sufficient,” says Ben, who has lived at Churchtown since the age of 16 and, with Zoe, took over the farm from his parents Andrew and Hilary in 2002.

At present the cows have to travel to mainland Cornwall to be slaughtered, as there is no abattoir on Scilly - yet. “This is expensive, and means we’re forced to work at a certain scale,” says Ben. “We and other farms are campaigning hard to get an abattoir, which would be better for the cows as they wouldn’t have the stress of the boat journey. With an abattoir, more of Scilly’s farmers would be able to produce high-welfare meat. There’s a lot of red tape to get through, but we’re optimistic – a small abattoir here is a no-brainer.”

Once the cows have been slaughtered, their meat is butchered and packaged, then returned to the farm where it’s sold frozen at the entrance to the flower sheds. As the cows have been slow-grown and enjoyed a varied diet, their dark red meat is beautifully marbled with healthy fat. It’s in hot demand from those who know their meat. 

“I have yet to find a price that a French yachtsman won’t pay for one of our steaks. They make a beeline for St. Martin’s once they hear about it,” smiles Zoe. “It’s the same on the campsite. Someone barbecues our meat, others smell it and ask where it’s from, then we get a trail of people. They adore the burgers and minute steaks.”

Zoe says even vegetarians are seeking out their meat. “People who don’t normally eat meat on the mainland see our cows and how they’re looked after and say ‘Yes, I’ll eat that.’”

Increasingly, she says, visitors are realising that eating less but better meat is the sustainable way to go. “We have become more conscious about how we eat at home too.”

In the past, Scilly’s inhabited islands were dotted with mixed farms which combined animals with crops, and farmers grazed their cows, ponies and donkeys on both their own enclosed farmland and unenclosed ‘common’ land. Then, as tourism developed, and farms turned to growing flowers intensively, the animals disappeared. Mixed farms were no more. But now farms like Churchtown are once again discovering that a combination of livestock and crops is best for biodiversity, soil health and nature. The small mixed farm is back.