Samphire Lamb
Our Samphire Lamb graze on one of the world's best salt marsh farming areas, the Gower Peninsular in Wales; an area of outstanding beauty.
The coastal estuaries and salt marshes washed by the tides are home to many salt-tolerant grasses and vegetation, such as samphire, sea lavender, sorrel, sparta grass, and thrift to name but a few. It's these plants that the flocks graze on that enhance the flavour of our superb Samphire Lamb.
Lamb from the heart of Wales
Samphire Lamb grazing standards:
- Animals graze for a minimum of 100 days.
- No supplemented feed.
- Chemical free.
- Welsh origin with accredited PGI status.
We have various cuts available to order: legs, belly, saddles, racks, and shoulders.
The Farmers
"The saltmarsh is a way of life. We are controlled by the tide and we have to move the sheep and gather them according to the time and height of the tide. To do all the work on the marshes we have to have good dogs."
Andrew Gordon
Farmers who care
Our lamb is sourced from a very select group of farmers whose passion and farming welfare commitments ensure superb sustainability for the environment where our Samphire Lamb flocks live and graze. The sheep receive the highest standards of welfare possible and our lamb is fully traceable.
The benefits for the sheep living in this environment produce tasty, tender, and succulent meat.
The Owen family has farmed the 200 acre Bovehill farm which is in the village of Landimore overlooking the mouth of the Loughor Estuary on the Gower and the saltmarsh since 1930 and Andrew Owen is the third generation to farm there.
The farm runs 650 mostly Suffolk cross ewes on the marshes to produce saltmarsh lamb and 120 beef cattle.
Lambing takes place in March and April and all lambs are finished off grass or on homegrown fodder after the new year.
Andrew Owen
Andrew Gordon lives on the Gower Peninsula near Swansea in South Wales, on Stembridge Farm. He comes from a farmer family, he is the fourth generation of the Gordon family. His family has been farming on the saltmarshes for over a hundred years. Andrew’s father Colin is known far and wide as a sheepdog trainer and trial judge, and he uses dogs for work as well. He also wrote a book, "One Man’s Opinion" about trial judging. He has won many trophies proving his skills. Colin was invited onto TV’s One Man and His Dog in 1986 as well. Colin and Andrew work together on the saltmarshes at Landimore as father and son. These areas are very fertile, so you can produce silage and grow corn.
Andrew wouldn’t be able to shepherd safely without the Tide Book, a little manual that comes out each year giving the exact details of tidal behaviour. The length of time he can leave his sheep out on the marsh depends totally on the position of the tide and to forget or ignore this can be disastrous. The tide is at its lowest when the moon is new, and it is highest during full moon. When the tide comes up all sheep must be gathered otherwise they will drown.
The sheep are spread on the marshes mixed with other people’s sheep, but when they go and collect them, they gather together into their own flock. You can never buy in any sheep therefore; they have to be born there on the land so that they go to the marsh where their ancestors have been before them.
"Windmill Farm on the Gower peninsular has been in my family since the beginning of the 19th century, three generations of my family have farmed here with our sheep grazing on the salt marshes (40,000 acres) overlooked by the farm. I was born on this farm and have been farming for as long as I can remember, the farm has evolved and adapted over the years to keep pace with the modern world, the production of our own Salt Marsh Lamb always being at the heart of what we do. Producing a high quality product for consumers for three generations is something we are very proud of and hope to long continue enabling future generations to benefit from the land and animals that make Gower the very special place it is."
Viv Pearce
Enquiry
Samphire Lamb is available exclusively from Direct Meats (Chappel, Essex), or James Coleman of Creedy Carver (Devon).
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