A SUSTAINABLE farm is appealing to its customers for help in securing funds to make it more efficient.

Rosewood Farms, based in Ellerton, has applied for £500 funding through Fund 101, an Enterprise Nation initiative supported by PayPal and Intuit.

Robert Rose, owner of the farm, said they needed one vote per pound requested and so needed 500 people to vote for them to get the money.

He said they need the £500 to invest in a weighing station, which will help them run the farm more efficiently.

Rosewood Farms, which won Think Green Business Of The Year at The Press Business Awards 2011, uses rotational farming techniques learnt from the United States to avoid having to feed their sheep and cattle grain, and therefore avoid the fertilisers, sprays and tractor work used to grow grain. They have also avoided the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, encouraged herbs and legumes within the pasture and improved wildlife habitats during the ten years they have rented the 40 acres of farmland in East Yorkshire.

He said installing an electronic weigh platform would help the farm make better use of conserved and grazed forages. “It will allow us to monitor how the animals are growing so we can feed them appropriately and keep records of individual animals to see which cows produce the animals that have grown better than the others.”

He said that units were commercially available for both cattle and sheep but were made in different sizes, so they wanted to construct a universal weigh platform that could be adjusted to take both cattle and sheep to keep costs down and make better use of space.

The farm has also just invested £10,000 in installing a new shed, which it has been recycled from another farm, taken down and put back up piece by piece at Rosewood to provide a better housing for its cattle.

Visit enterprisenation.com/ funding-applications/ rosewood-farms to vote for the company.