We meet to talk turkey, with an eye on the calendar. But that is just one strand among several which make up the Low Stonehills Farm business – including Maran chickens, producing point-of-lay pullets; bed and breakfast pigs; two herds of pedigree sheep and two of cattle; plus wheat and barley.

Geoff Riby grew up in farming at Meaux, near Beverley. In 1969, aged 21, while still at Bishop Burton College, he and an older partner, Norman Kirkwood, sketched out a proposition for a dairy business. Mr Riby is still grateful to Lt Col Ellis Starkey, the landlord at Huttons Ambo, near Malton, who took them seriously. The partnership ran for 20 years, during which time Mr Riby married Jackie, daughter of the late Roland Mason of Flixton, near Scarborough, and their three children were born.

In 1991, the family moved to Low Stonehills, which runs down to the sea at Fraisthorpe, just south of Bridlington. It was 750 acres rented, to start with, but has grown to 1,000 acres, including about 150 purchased, which Mr and Mrs Riby farm with son Christopher, 24.

They took their dairy herd with them but the last milking was five years ago. The beginning of the end was having to lose a full-time herdsman, so Mr Riby was looking after 140 milkers himself. Even then, eventually, "it just didn't add up any more". The Yorkshire coast has suffered from the contraction of the collection network, as well as prices, and his is one of five farms within three miles which have come out of dairy.

The second mainstay of the business, when Mr Riby still had three full-time hands, was sheep. He got up to 500 Lleyn ewes producing Suffolk-cross lambs, but has cut back to an operation he and his son can run with one other employee.

He swapped his dairy Holsteins for beef shorthorns in time to see the breed make its comeback. He has about 25 breeding cows and his chief bull is a prize-winner from an American cow by a Canadian sire. The breeding stock sells more or less by word of mouth. Some stores go to Albert Hall Farms at Strensall, York, for finishing for Andrew Loftus of Fountains Abbey, who has become an important hub for specialist meat, thanks to his own family's shop, Weeton's of Harrogate, and connections in London.

Mr Riby has no time for the ultra-lean Continental-sired beef which has taken over the supermarket trade."Everyone now claims to hang their beef but there is no point if it is not marbled," he sums up.

"It is the marbling which responds to being hung."

On the sheep side, he has cut back to 70 Suffolks producing breeding stock. He says there is nothing like them. But Christopher has become a Texel specialist – and has just bought three Aberdeen Angus to go his own way in beef too. Last year, dad had best Suffolk at the Yorkshire Show and son had the champion at the national Texel sale at Worcester. They have only dabbled in showing the shorthorns so far but are planning a campaign for next year.

On the arable side, Mr Riby had experience in potatoes and did grow them on the coast for a few years. But the location gets surprisingly low rainfall – 24 inches on average – and too many potatoes came up with skin damage. He ended up concentrating on wheat, for biscuits and feed, and barley for Munton's malting plant at Flamborough.

All this, and the children growing up, left a vacancy for something else and Mrs Riby saw a market in the swing back to traditional Christmas turkeys.

A lot of supermarket birds are fattened fast in crowded sheds and killed at 10 weeks or so. The Traditional Farmfresh Turkey Association, which runs the Golden Promise label, insists on 20 weeks. A free-range bird from the Ribys lives 22 weeks.

Most supermarket birds are 'whites', meaning white-feathered, because quill remnants in the skin show up less. But the bronzes, descended from older English breeds, are making a comeback, on the strength of strains developed by Essex farmer Paul Kelly, who runs the KellyBronze Label. The Ribys are not in his franchising scheme but use his poults, which arrive in July as day-olds. They spend three or four weeks under infra-red, then six or seven more inside, before going outside in October.

Five years on from her first 100, Mrs Riby is aiming for 300 grown birds this Christmas – as many as she can manage without help or mechanisation. They spend their days in and around a seven-acre pasture fenced with standard pig netting. They can flutter out of it but do not go far. For nights, they are herded into an old barn because to leave them outside would require expensive fox-proof fencing. As it is, the odd daytime fox gets a few birds. The loss rate is about four in 100 from July to December. Feed is BOCM turkey pellets, wheat, oats and forage. They graze, but do not scratch like chickens and the pasture stays green.

In the second week of December, the birds are electrically stunned, bled, then hand-plucked by a team of seven or eight, working flat-out for three days. Each takes at least 15 minutes but this gives a better finish than machine-plucking. For a slaughter operation of this size, no licence is required, but Environmental Health check the facilities. The carcasses hang for 10 days at 9C before being drawn.

Chicks are picked from a range of genetic types to give a range of full-grown sizes. Small birds, up to 12 lbs, sell at £3.22 a lb (£7.08 a kilo) and bigger ones, 21 lbs plus, at £2.53 (£5.57), on collection from the farm on December 22 or 23 and 100 go out earlier, to the Ainsty Farm Shop at Green Hammerton, near York, YO26 8EQ. Call Low Stonehills Farm on 01262 673043 or find it, on the A165, at YO15 3QR.


Trotting into history

There is history in turkeys in East Yorkshire. The parish church at Boynton, a few miles from the Riby farm, has a turkey instead of an eagle as its lectern – commemorating Sir William Strickland, who brought the birds back from the New World nearly 500 years ago.