Published by Farmers Guide, May 2008.

Although fully modernised, the external
appearance of Butley Mill has changed
little in 100 years.

A long history of diversification and innovation

TO MOST farmers, diversification has been a phenomenon of the past 20 years or so, with the changing fortunes of agriculture forcing many to seek alternative enterprises or land uses to help increase farm income. For the directors of Sewell Hewitt Farms Ltd, however, diversification and innovation has almost been a way of life at Hill Farm, Chillesford, in East Suffolk.
Many of the developments, which include the introduction of large-scale, outdoor pigs to Suffolk more than 50 years ago, were started by John Hewitt, who enjoyed a long and successful career in farming and milling until his death, aged 95, in the year 2000.
But that spirit lives on in Mr Hewitt's daughter Rachel, her husband John Massey, the couple's son-in-law Andrew King and long-time fellow Director Glyn Evans. As the current directors of Sewell Hewitt Farms, they have guided the business through a tricky eight years to leave a viable mix of enterprises for the 21st Century.
While farming, in the shape of contract pig rearing, is still an important contributor to the annual revenue of the farm, the mill - operated by Hewitt of Butley Mills Ltd - now rents out buildings for local artists and, has recently converted Butley Mill into five high-quality holiday apartments and the nearby Mill House into two holiday homes.

Community mill
John Sewell first came to Butley Mills in the mid 19th Century. The mill was at the centre of the community, not only producing flour for domestic use, but preparing animal feeds as well.
Being close to the tidal Butley Creek, feedstuffs used to be delivered by barge, as well as from local farms, up until the late 1920s when the railway came to the area for the first time and a station was built at Campsea Ashe.
John Sewell's grand-daughter, Kate Sewell, married Tom Hewitt and their son, John Thomas Sewell Hewitt, took the business to the next level.
Although he didn't have a formal agricultural education, his attendance at Woodbridge School before he joined the family business gave him the ability to seek out information on subjects he was interested in, and the confidence to act on his beliefs.
Not long after leaving school, he began farming in his own right by renting local farms. The depression meant that land was plentiful for those able to take it on, and by the 1930s he was farming about 2,000 acres (with horses, these were the day's before tractors). Profits were put into buying land when it became available.

Outdoor pigs
In the late 1940s John Hewitt moved into outdoor pigs for the first time. He had heard of the system being used in other parts of the country and thoroughly researched the enterprise before committing himself to pig production. This included working with an Essex blacksmith to design and build pig huts to house the sows and piglets, and also formulating the best grass mixture for the job - deep-rooting chicory and comfrey were added to the sward for the pig fields (in the beginning the pig houses were moved every day to give the inhabitants access to new pasture).
The pig business took off in a big way and at its peak took up 80 acres of Hill Farm and included more than 700 breeding sows. The enterprise ran successfully for almost 60 years until Swine Fever hit the herd in the year 2000, not long after John Hewitt's death. In all, more than 7,000 pigs were culled and most of the farm's 300 pig huts were also ordered to be burnt. Several full-time staff lost their jobs as a result.
The loss of the pigs resulted in a major change in direction for the business. Butley Mills had changed from being a community resource to become a feed factory for Sewell Hewitt Farm's pigs. With the herd gone, the mill - which had been upgraded over the years from water and steam, to an oil engine and then electricity - was more or less redundant and the decision was taken to close it.

Dried lucerne
Towards the end of World War II, John Hewitt started another novel enterprise when he began growing and drying lucerne as a feedstuff. The crop produced a high protein - 16-24% - ingredient for use in animal feeds and the process to produce it required the installation of a hammer mill that was imported from Canada and a drier built by Ransomes of Ipswich. Lucerne continued to be grown at Hill Farm until the early 1980s.
John Hewitt was a firm believer in balanced farming and built a mixed enterprise that included cereals (for feeding to the pigs), a suckler cow herd and sugar beet. All the farm's straw was used for bedding and the muck went back onto the land.
The typical rotation on the lighter land included lucerne and cereals, while the heavier land rotation typically included sugar beet, wheat and two barleys.
Hill Farm's light sandy soils benefited from the organic matter and became very productive, especially when irrigation was introduced in the 1980s. At one time, land was rented out for vegetable growing, while sugar beet yields of 20t/acre were regularly achieved.

Contract pig rearing
After swine fever hit, it was a year before Sewell Hewitt Farms made a return to pig keeping. Uncertainty in the pig market and the length of time and cost it would have required to re-establish the herd from scratch ruled out that approach, but the decision was taken to start rearing baconers on contract for British Quality Pigs.
The farm now rears up to six batches of 4,000 pigs on a half-outdoor/half-indoor system. The piglets are delivered from local breeders at three weeks old and spend up to eight weeks in outdoor arks, on 20 acres, before being finished indoors at anything up to 22 weeks old.
It's an all-in/all-out system that sees the facilities in the field and on the farm thoroughly cleaned out between batches. Feedstuffs are supplied under the contract and payments is made for the number of pigs successfully finished to the correct specification rather than based on the market price.
Today the bulk of the 500 acres at Hill Farm is let on a contract farming agreement. The directors took this decision when Sewell Hewitt Farms' grain handling facilities, at Butley Mills, needed a major cash investment to bring them up to scratch. With a relatively small cropping acreage, it was decided instead to redevelop the buildings as artists' studio instead.

Holiday accommodation
With Butley Mills no longer needed for its traditional use, the directors decided to develop it into holiday accommodation. Today it houses five apartments; two with two beds, two with four beds and one with six beds.
The conversion was a hands-on exercise for John and Rachel Massey, and Glyn Evans. They were involved in every stage of the two-year project from the planning stage (which took more than a year), through choosing the contractors and managing the build, to fitting out the apartments. The apartments opened for business in October 2006.
They have also decided to retain complete control over the apartments, and two more holiday houses they have recently completed in the former mill-owners house (where Rachel Massey was born), by managing booking themselves rather than handing the day-to-day running to an agency.
A website has been set up to promote the properties, which are also listed on specialist holiday accommodation sites. Visitors have so far come from as close as nearby Woodbridge and as far as New Zealand and South Africa.
Finished to a high standard, the Butley Mills and the Mill House are perfectly situated for a weekend break or a longer stay on the Suffolk coast. All the apartments are equipped for self-catering and there are a number of farm shops and Farmer's Markets in the area with local produce for those visitors who want to cook. For those that don't, there are some excellent pubs nearby that are well known for the quality of their food.
The new holiday accommodation represents a large investment for Hewitt of Butley Mills, but it's an initiative that deserves to succeed. Not only has it given a building that has been under the family firm's control for more than a century, it's the latest example of the innovation and diversification that has helped the current directors, and their predecessors, to overcome the cyclical nature of farming.

For more information visit: www.butleymills.co.uk.

Outdoor pigs have been a feature of Hill Farm,
Chillesford, for more than 60 years.