Pentrefelin Dairy: A Visit to the Heart of Regenerative Farming
At Café Notos, we believe that sustainable food starts with sustainable practices – and that understanding the people and principles behind our ingredients is as important as the dishes they create. On a recent visit to Pentrefelin Dairy, our sole milk supplier from Day 1, we caught up with the team (and the cows!) to check in on their growth as a farm and on their sustainability journey.
Located just outside Denbigh in North Wales, Pentrefelin isn’t just any farm. It’s a place rooted in regenerative farming principles, where animal welfare, soil health and nature-centred practices guide everything they do. Led by farmer Huw Foulkes, the team run a cow-and-calf micro dairy that works with nature, not against it.
Meeting the Red Polls
Our visit started with a walk through the pasture where Pentrefelin’s heritage Red Poll cows graze. These are not the high-yield, industrial breed you might picture when you think of modern dairy farming – they’re calm, hardy animals that thrive entirely on the diverse pasture of legumes, grasses & flowers seen on site. What’s truly special here is that the calves stay with their mothers throughout the milking process, a system that prioritises their wellbeing and keeps stress low for the herd.
There’s a rhythm to the farm that’s hard to describe but easy to feel: cows moving gently from field to field, the quiet confidence of animals that know exactly where they belong, and the sense that every choice from grazing patterns to how milk is collected serves a bigger purpose.
This approach isn’t just good for the animals. It’s good for the land too. Pentrefelin uses pasture-based grazing and regenerative practices that enrich the soil, encourage biodiversity and reduce the need for external inputs like chemical fertilisers. That connection to soil, grass, animals and people is what makes the milk from here something truly special – and we believe makes our coffees taste so wonderful!
Hanes y Pridd: Sharing Knowledge, Connecting Communities
Pentrefelin isn’t just a farm — it’s also home to Hanes y Pridd (“the story of the soil”), a community-focused project that invites people to reconnect with the land, learn ecological food skills, and explore regenerative food systems in practice. From hands-on farm tours to workshops on agroecology and soil-building, Hanes y Pridd shares the knowledge and experience of farming in ways that celebrate local food, healthy soil, and community learning. This echoes what we care about at Café Notos — understanding where our food comes from, supporting practices that care for nature and people, and bringing everyone into the conversation about sustainability from the ground up.
Why It Matters to Us
At Café Notos, our relationship with Pentrefelin goes beyond simply ordering bottles of milk. We bring their unhomogenised, grass-fed milk into the café in reusable glass bottles, which are returned to Pentrefelin to be cleaned and reused. This simple loop reduces waste and brings the story of our coffee, from farm to cup, full circle.
Our most recent visit to Pentrefelin and spending time with Huw & his team, deepened our understanding of where our milk comes from and the care and principles behind it. It further solidified our beliefs on why we choose local, why we care about practices that support the land, and why community and sustainability are more than just words on a page.
A Shared Commitment
Our visit to Pentrefelin Dairy reinforced something we already believed: that the best food comes from people who care deeply about the world around them. Huw’s work, rooted in respect for animals, thoughtful land management and traditional farming values, aligns so closely with our own approach at Notos.
As we continue to work and source suppliers for menu and make choices that reflect our values, we’re grateful for partnerships like this. Ones that ground us in place, connect us to real positive impact on people and planet, and remind us that every ingredient has a story worth telling.
If you’ve stopped by the café recently and enjoyed a coffee made with Pentrefelin milk, we hope this gives you a little glimpse into the care behind it – from field to farm gate, and now, to your cup.
