The Dartmoor Shepherd

Our Story

For as long as he can remember Lewis Steer always wanted to be a farmer, however, not coming from a farming background this proved a real challenge especially with no family farm to fall back on and rented land in short supply. As a reward for doing well in his GCSE’s Lewis was given 3 Greyface Dartmoor ewes by his parents which he kept on their smallholding of 13 acres. Lewis pursued his dream by attaining a degree at The Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester whilst building up his flock of rare breed Dartmoor sheep back home in Devon.

Flora Searson grew up in the heart of Dartmoor in Chagford and developed a flare for media during secondary school which she pursued by attaining a degree in Creative Media Practice at Bath Spa University. Whilst studying, Flora made frequent trips home to Dartmoor where she slowly began to learn the ancient profession of shepherding by helping Lewis with his expanding flocks. Having met in a small café in Chagford aged 16 and then attending different Universities, Lewis and Flora were keen to return home together on the completion of their degrees to create a local, sustainable and high quality farm company, and so The Dartmoor Shepherd came into being.

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As their flocks expanded they needed to start renting more land around Dartmoor. Currently owning no land of their own and supporting over 800 sheep is proving a real challenge! Having not come into farming the traditional way they have had to approach it completely differently by diversifying. Instead of selling their lamb to a market they sell direct to the public. They are passionate about local, ethical food and want to connect people with the origin of their food again, by allowing them to buy direct from the shepherd. They began using the unique sheepskin rugs from their rare breed flocks (a bi-product of their hogget) to make into products. This year has seen the completion of the building works for their Workshop and Woolshed on some of their rented land in Chagford thanks to very supportive landlords. They have now taken on two new team members who stitch their sheepskin products in their on farm workshop in Chagford. 

Our Mission

We are the only Shepherds in the world to farm all three of Dartmoor’s native longwool sheep. Now sadly all rare breeds, our sheep were bred for a time when wool was profitable and lambs were given the time they needed to mature and grow naturally. 

Unfortunately in our fast paced food industry, lambs are fed concentrated foods to fatten quickly and it generally costs more to shear a sheep than the fleece itself is worth.

The Dartmoor Shepherd is on a mission to revive our beautiful, ancient breeds and we are passionate about farming our flocks in an ethical and regenerative way. We don’t simply want to farm sustainably. Sustainable means simply maintaining something so it can be sustained, we want to do more. We are on a mission to regenerate, which means to regrow, renew and restore wildlife and the soils on our land through the use of grazing animals and farming in a holistic way. We farm to organic principles and our sheep are 100% pasture fed, meaning we never feed any grains or imported soya, our sheep only eat what our Dartmoor fields provide. Our sheep roam the rugged hills of Dartmoor and our lambs enjoy up to double the lifespan of commercial sheep. 

The Making

Our making begins on the hills of Dartmoor in April, normally at 3am with sideways rain as we lamb our flocks. Our lambs are then kept with their mothers until August when they begin to self wean. Our ewe lambs are kept and brought into our flock and our ram lambs go for hogget (the stage after lamb) the following year. Our sheepskins are then tanned in Britain’s oldest tannery, on Dartmoor before returning to our on farm workshop. Our products are then handcrafted in our workshop in Chagford, Dartmoor where Sara and Bethan stitch our sheepskin products on the land where the sheep graze. This gives our products full traceability and cuts our production distance from miles to yards. We value origin and the environment above all else from the farming in fields right through to our finished products.