New venture for St John’s tenants goes down a treat!

The Christensen family have been renting Kingston Hill Farm from St John’s since the College bought the farm in 1968. Today the farm operates as a large dairy farm, milking 600 cows and producing around 5 million litres of milk annually. The milk is sold to the cooperative Arla Foods and, as part of the Tesco pool of suppliers, the farm’s milk ends up in milk bottles on the shelves of Tesco. All the calves from the herd are reared either at Kingston Hill Farm or in a joint venture with a local farming family.

The farm focuses on reducing its environmental impact and on protecting biodiversity and this year in particular the farm has been prioritising these areas. They have planted sunflower mixes in certain areas of the farm to provide winter bird food and have a number of nectar and pollen plots located around the farm to provide food and shelter for pollinators. 200 meters of new hedge was planted in December 2020 and a barn owl has been spotted nesting in one of the nesting boxes.

In November 2020 the Christensens began a new venture making ice-cream under the name of The Oxford Cow, selling via home delivery and at events which are now starting back up again. The Oxford Cow has made two visits to St John’s recently for a staff and student ice-cream day, which both went down very well. As well as the delicious ice-cream, students and staff greatly enjoyed chatting with the Christensens about their time at St John’s and life on the farm.

Thank you very much to The Oxford Cow, and we’ll hope to see you again very soon!

For more details visit www.theoxfordcow.uk and follow the business on Instagram @theoxfordcow.