The Family Who Invited Britain to the Field: The Cherrys of Lannock Farm

I came to the Cherry family of Lannock Farm through the meat and eggs, and through Groundswell, the regenerative farming festival they host at Weston, near Hitchin. There are Shorthorn cattle on grass, hens that live outdoors, a farm butchery, and, each summer, a gathering that has helped a great many people believe they could farm differently.

Locator map showing Lannock Farm in Hertfordshire — Lannock Farm is in Hertfordshire.Map: The Hedgerow Gourmet, using Natural Earth data (public domain)

Cattle, eggs, and a mixed farm

The heart of the farm is a herd of beef Shorthorns. A November 2024 account of the Weston estate described 140 Shorthorn suckler cows grazing permanent pasture, with no bought-in feed and no fertiliser on the grass. Shorthorns are one of the oldest British breeds, and they are easy to love: quiet, good mothers, and well suited to finishing on grass alone. A herd like that, living on permanent pasture, is exactly the kind of grazing I want to celebrate.

Lannock Farm itself offers pasture-fed beef raised on the meadows of Weston, sold through its own whole-carcass butchery, alongside other meats from trusted local farms. In 2024 the family also opened Lannock Larder, a farm shop that is especially proud of its pasture-raised eggs, from a flock of 800 free-roaming hens.

This is not a ranch, and it was never livestock alone. Lannock still grows combinable crops in a mixed rotation, with woodland and pasture in the same plan. The beef and eggs I would buy sit inside a working mixed farm, not a show paddock. I like that honesty. You can buy a joint from the butchery, or eggs from the Larder, and know they come from the same place that hosts the festival. The other meats on the counter come from trusted local farms, which seems to me a good neighbourly habit.

I think meat and eggs from well-grazed land belong at the centre of a good table.

Putting the plough away, then dividing the land

Brothers John and Paul Cherry have farmed in Weston for nearly 40 years. The farm’s own story says they ditched the plough in 2012, with soil health as the priority. (Some later portraits have put the change in 2010. I am staying with the farm’s own date.) Farmers Weekly, writing in September 2024, told of Paul noticing a neighbouring ploughed field losing soil, while an adjacent stubble field on their own farm did not. “It made me realise we couldn’t go on treating the soil like dirt,” he said.

Cover crops and a more diverse rotation came with the no-till turn. The point was the soil. Once they had stopped turning it over, they began to treat it as something to feed and protect, not as a surface to be cleaned each season. In 2016, Paul’s son Alex left a London job and came home to help launch Groundswell. A November 2024 portrait described him as having launched Lannock Farm with his wife, Francesca. He is now Event Director of the festival.

In 2025 the Weston Estate was divided between the two brothers. Lannock Farm remains with Paul Cherry. Irongate Farm is now run by John. The farm’s account says the next generation is stepping forward, and that Weston parish is “alive with interesting farming enterprises.” John, writing in Direct Driller in October 2025, said that after the split he found himself with “most of the cattle,” low fixed costs, and a wish to cut the expensive business of housing animals through the wet months.

Work on converting farm buildings began in 2019, and Lannock now welcomes a dozen resident enterprises tied to food, drink, wellness or creativity.

The festival in the fields

Groundswell is a two-day regenerative agriculture festival, hosted by the Cherry family at Lannock. It has an on-farm feel: talks, field demonstrations, camping, and a “by farmers for farmers” ethos the organisers still claim.

The idea, Farmers Weekly reported, came after John went to the No-Till on the Plains conference in Kansas and came home struck by how hungry American farmers were for information about the soil. “We thought that if the good people of Kansas were ready for this, we sure as hell ought to be ready in Europe,” he said. They were already farming without the plough, and they could not find a summer show in Britain that they wanted to attend. So they put on their own, in 2016, in the barns at Lannock. Farmers Weekly said it started with 450 farmers. The festival’s later account spoke of a few hundred people.

Attendance has grown. Lannock Farm’s own story has described Groundswell as a global gathering of more than 10,000 farmers. In September 2024, Farmers Weekly put the figure at more than 8,000 visitors. The tenth festival was held at Lannock on 1 and 2 July 2026, and Groundswell’s press release of 6 July said the event “welcomed over 10,000 people.”

I still think opening the gates was a generous thing to do. They could have kept the no-till work private. Instead they built a gathering that, a decade later, draws thousands of people into the same fields. A great many farmers have found their way onto better soil, and better grass, because they walked those paddocks in midsummer, sat in a barn for a talk, or simply saw cattle on grass and thought, I could try that.

What a farmer here can borrow

This is already a British farm, so the lesson is close at hand. A small UK holding can take something useful from cattle on grass, eggs from hens that live outdoors, and a shop that sells the farm’s own meat. It cannot easily host a midsummer festival of this size, or match a substantial Hertfordshire estate with a dozen resident enterprises. That need not put anyone off. You can still put the plough away if the land allows it, keep livestock on living grass, and be willing to show a neighbour how you did it. The festival is one way of teaching. A farm walk, or a joint sold at the gate, can be another.

I would still go for the beef and the eggs.

Frequently asked questions

Who runs Lannock Farm now?

Paul Cherry remains at Lannock, with the next generation involved; Alex is Event Director of Groundswell. In 2025 the Weston Estate was divided, and John Cherry now runs Irongate Farm.

Can I buy the farm’s meat and eggs?

Yes, according to the farm. Lannock sells pasture-fed beef from the meadows of Weston through its butchery, and pasture-raised eggs from a flock the farm has put at 800 hens, through Lannock Larder.

What is Groundswell, and when is it held?

Groundswell is a two-day regenerative agriculture festival hosted by the Cherry family at Lannock Farm, near Hitchin. The tenth festival was held on 1 and 2 July 2026. Check the festival’s own site for current dates.