About Tim Morrow

Tim Morrow is a progressive farmer from Streamvale Farm in County Down, Northern Ireland. Best known for combining commercial farming with public engagement, Tim has helped transform Streamvale into one of Northern Ireland’s most recognised family farms, welcoming thousands of visitors each year while continuing to develop a productive and sustainable farming business.

The Morrow family have been farming the same land since the 1730s. Tim returned home to the farm in 1980 after a short stint at Newcastle University. With three families to support, the decision to diversify came relatively quickly.

The first venture was a milk cartoning business, selling unpasteurised milk to local shops. Unfortunately, that came to an end when the herd had its first outbreak of TB. The next enterprise was a pick-your-own fruit business, growing strawberries alongside raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants. They did that for around ten years before deciding to open the farm to the public to attract more people to pick fruit. Since opening in 1986, and it has since become the major part of their business.

Throughout all of this, Tim has always managed the dairy side of the business. Previously calving cows over seven months of the year, which meant rearing calves of many different ages and serving cows for months on end, he changed very quickly to spring calving only, as it simply made more sense to him.  They now calf cows when the grass starts growing, and they get 85% of their diet from fresh grass alone.

As the Morrow’s changed to this new system, Tim became aware of other things that started happening on our farm. Hares returned because they weren’t cutting silage until late May, for example. At that stage they were still using a lot of fertiliser, but had also started applying a seaweed-based soil conditioner. Tim also established a reed bed system in their wettest field to filter all of the dirty water. That area has really become a wildlife reserve now and a place that the whole extended family loves.

All of these changes encouraged Tim to keep trying different things, so he started on a ten-year plan to see if he could get to very little, or even no, bagged nitrogen. He is now in year six of that plan and still wrestling with it, he doesn’t think I’m getting it right yet, but is still learning. He has reduced fertiliser use to one-third of what it once was, and plans to reduce it even further next year.

Tim will be speaking on the panel – “If I Could Start Over in Dairy Farming I Would…” An honest reflection from people who have built and sometimes rebuilt their systems from the ground up.