A modest affair where quality and taste count

First impressions can be deceiving. Mill Farm, home to The Old Dairy Farm Shop near the village of Rise between Hornsea and Beverley, has neither a mill nor dairy cows and there’s little indication of a farm shop either.

When I arrived the sign was tucked out of sight at the top of the lane behind some bins, nonetheless Christine and Pat Hodgson have built up a good trade due to the quality of beef from their Dexter herd.

“We only officially open on Saturdays,” said Christine. “That’s when we put the sign out. When we started we were only open once a month, then changed to one in every two but that was confusing as people never knew which one we were open, so now it’s every Saturday, but if we get a phone call from someone asking if they can come we will look after them. Our regular customers know where we are so I guess you could say we’re available all hours. It’s like many farms, if we’re here we’re open.”

Christine and Pat started their Old Dairy Farm Shop five years ago and it is a modest affair. There’s no big statement, no café and you won’t find anything other than freezers and a display chiller. It’s primarily their outlet for beef produced on the farm, but they also sell lamb and one or two additional lines such as Bracken Hill jam from Elvington near York.

Christine said: “People come here for our beef. Our butcher Nick Hartley, of Tholthorpe, is great. He hangs it for three weeks and provides us with all the cuts as we want them. There’s a popular thin rib, like a rising beef that is in demand from some of our customers, brisket goes well and there are lots of steaks and mince.

“We started our herd with four cows, of which I still have one of my originals Hertford Jewel who is now 19 and half years old, on a 17-acre smallholding in Rise in October 2002. We’d gone to a country fair at Wykeham and there was a rare breeds tent where I saw some Dexters.

“I said to Pat that I’d always fancied having some and when we got back home I asked the estate manager if I could rent a paddock. We also added rare breed Oxford Sandy; Black and Berkshire pigs and Hebridean X ewes.”

Five years on from that initial foray Christine and Pat moved to Mill Farm just out of the village of Rise.

“This had been a dairy farm with a herd of Jersey cows,” she said. ”It needed upgrading to continue as such but the costs made it unviable and so the estate offered it to us. We thought do we take it, try it and if we fail then at least we’ve tried or do we just spend the rest of our lives wondering what if? So we bit the bullet and took it. I closed down my boarding kennels business Roundhouse Kennels that I’d been running over 20 years and we came here to what is just under 50 acres.

“We now have 60 Dexters including followers from a suckler herd of 20 with the majority being pedigrees; and we have one Belted Galloway cow called Hester who is very special. We put her to a Dexter bull and she produces a mixture of different coloured calves. Our Dexters are what are called the non-short type because they are longer in the leg. Our herd has the prefix Kirise. We have our own bull Kirise Gingersnap who we’ve just swapped with another breeder to bring in fresh blood. He’s really lovely and the herd is easy to deal with. They don’t ail a lot and the meat is delicious. Ours go up to nearly 30 months.”

The Hodgsons also have 30 breeding ewes made up of Mules, Suffolk X and Lleyns and sell some of their lamb through the farm shop. They also have 600 pigs on bed and breakfast from Ian Mosey, coming in at 8 kilos and leaving at 45 kilos nine weeks later to go on to finishers. This sees them with five batches each year. They supplement their income with Pat taking on casual labour work on farms and Christine having various cleaning jobs.

Christine’s previous work had been with horses and dogs. Pat was a haulier for over 30 years.

“I originally moved here to work for Tony Bethell as a groom when I was 21 having started with Don Lee in Green Hammerton when I was 17.,” Christine said. “Don had point-to-point horses, show jumpers and hunters but when he moved away I returned back home to Scarborough, where I was born, before landing the job in Rise.

“Mr Bethell was Master of the Hounds for the Holderness Hunt. I looked after his two horses and as he was also a permit holder and had racehorses I was groom for those too. Some like Starlight Lad and Devon Mignon were winners. When Tony retired I worked for William Bethell. I started Roundhouse Kennels in the 80s.”

Pat, who was born in North Cave, near Hull became a lorry driver, something he’d always wanted to do, after having initially worked on a farm for a Mr Foster at Wrea Head in Scalby prior to moving to a quarry at Seamer Lime Works.

He said: “I worked on the farm because I wasn’t old enough to drive lorries at the time. I hauled steel out of Skinningrove and timber out of Whitby and was with McCain’s for a long while. It sounds daft but I was taking frozen pizzas to Belgium, Holland and France and bringing back potato products like smiley faces, wedges and hash browns.

“What was even more odd was that the Italians would send wagons to pick up the pizzas I’d delivered!”