We are a family owned, working farm open to the public all year round. Roves Farm covers 166 hectares (nearly 400 acres) just 3 miles east of Swindon, on the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire border. The visitor centre opened in 1992 to welcome people of all ages to come and experience and learn about animals, farming and the countryside.
Aside from our visitor centre, Roves Farm has remained a working farm. Over the past several years it has undergone some significant changes and is now predominantly a livestock farm; our commercial sheep flocks, pigs and cow herds have grown significantly as we look to supply our farm shop, opened in 2017, with high quality meat produce year-round. We currently run a commercial flock of 300 Poll Dorset and Suffolk cross breeding ewes, 20 Gloucester Old Spot breeding sows, producing over 350+ piglets a year, and a herd of 40 breeding Sussex cows.
In the past arable land has been planted to crops such as wheat, barley, oats and beans. Much of this land has now been put down to pasture to feed and house our growing numbers of livestock. A proportion of the arable land also now houses a solar farm, a source of renewable energy, where our sheep and hens graze the grass beneath the panels. Short rotation willow coppice has been harvested and stored to provide wood chip to fuel our biomass boilers, which heat the visitor centre during the colder months.