Farm of the Week: Father and son who realised their dream of getting their own Yorkshire farm

“Dad and I had always talked about getting a farm,” says Ed. “We took on Rookwith in 2010. We started with its 228 acres and have since acquired Sandhill next door, and Newton Grange at Newton le Willows in 2013.

“When we first came we needed to put certain parts into place. We looked at the infrastructure we needed and sorted that. It took a bit of time. We’re now almost completely a livestock farm and will be wholly next year.

“My neighbour handled the arable side we’d started with that first year, but I was quite keen on cracking on myself. I then bought myself a plough and he taught me how to plough and the same with a drill. But I’ve now become more a livestock man, which is how I first got the bug when I was 10-12 years old and had sheep on land we owned near Fewston and showed at the Great Yorkshire Show and many others.

“Today we are predominantly a grass farm and we’ve 200 acres in stewardship schemes. We just have 30 acres of cereals, which we won’t have next year, across our 600 acres with 600 breeding ewes and 70 suckler cows.

“I’ve opted for a lot of herbal grass leys. We’re now in our fifth year with those and have never looked back. We’ve just applied and been accepted under the SFI schemes.

Getting his parts together was what his father’s company had been involved with, by selling parts for cars. Ed has found his main components are now producing quality pedigree cattle and sheep.

“We started with sheep, with Mules and had got up to 1000 ewes, but we’ve now moved into mainly white-faced sheep because we get a better lamb. I now run less ewes.

“Taking up with white-faced sheep is how I got interested in the Beltex and the idea of selling quality tups, females and top end quality fat lambs, predominantly through Kirkby Stephen livestock market.

“They’re not the most straightforward breed but the Beltex has developed. It now has a bit of stretch, better skin and mobility. We now run 150 Beltex ewes, 50-60 Blue Texels and the rest are three-quarter Beltex cross Texel. We sell 40-50 Beltex and Beltex-crossed tups a year direct off farm or at local marts and we’ve built up repeat trade.

“We produce quite a few Blue Texels. We have produced a very nice Blue Texel tup that we’ve put to the Lleyns that we’ve added to our sheep enterprise recently.

“Crossing with the Lleyns we will aim to keep the replacement gimmer lamb and that will hopefully produce us really good Beltex-crossed commercial fat lamb. This year’s lambing off the Blue Texel-crossed-Lleyns are looking really good.

Ed says the move to Lleyns was as a result of Heather having joined the team.

“Heather was promotions officer for the Lleyn Society. I’d never been a big fan of them but we were trying to keep a clean flock with the MV accreditation on the pures and Lleyns were the only route we could go, so we got 300 ewes last summer.

The other main part of Ed’s set up came when Newton Grange was added to their farming acreage.

“It was set up for cattle and I wanted a local breed. There were some really good Beef Shorthorns around and the breed stood out for me.

“We got the foundation stock from Lowther and Chapelton Shorthorns and bought a bull called Castlemount Junior who nailed it for us at the time. We now buy in stock bulls out of Stirling and do a little bit of AI.

“We bought eight pedigrees initially and then 20 three-quarter Aberdeen Angus cows that we crossed with the Shorthorn bull and kept all replacements of the cross.

“We continued breeding pedigree Shorthorns and got to 60. We also bought 20 more Angus cross Shorthorn heifers and had an Angus bull. We crisscrossed with the two breeds and got up to 120 cows. We’ve since offloaded older cows and cows that weren’t performing.

Ed says the work he and Martin have done with the herd has established a better quality and quicker finishing beast overall.

“We had quite a few Shorthorns that weren’t doing what we needed. We cut them back to 30. Our black cattle then dropped to 15. We now have 70 in the breeding herd of which 35 are pure Beef Shorthorn.

“I am able to put 9-14 month old cattle through at Leyburn livestock market as strong stores where a lot of breeders are putting through 24 months plus.

“Everyone wants to buy something that will turn around quickly and our cattle’s fleshing ability is incredible when you get the right ones.

It has been a busy time in the Page farming camp with calving and lambing in the past few months and Ed is always looking at how to get the best out of them all.

“We usually calve in March and everything destined for the beef market wants to be gone between January to March the following year. They do well here and then go to finishers. Our current struggle is to get the right bulls to go on to these cattle we’ve bred. They’re great cattle and we can’t match them, so this year as an experiment we’ve put a lot of the Shorthorn to either the British Blue or the Limousin.

“We’re also quite interested in myostatin, the Beef Shorthorn Society aren’t but we’ve now matched the bulls and tested all the cows that have produced tremendous calves. The reason is I don’t want store beef at 12 months going at £600. Mine have to be £1000-£1200 so with that extra carcase, a cow that can pass that flesh ability and has the milk is giving us eye appeal, and farmers and buyers want to look at something. By putting a good Blue or Limousin bull on it can make that £400 difference.

Ed has done well with his pedigree Shorthorns too and says he has a simple philosophy over selling quality stock.

“It’s a couple of years since we were last at Stirling, but we did sell Rookwith Marvellous at 20,000 guineas. If I wouldn’t put a tup or bull on my own animals then they go down the road, we don’t sell them to others.

Ed says the team is another vital part of the success of the farming operation.

“Martin has been with us for seven years, Heather joined us last year and handles all the

Accounts as well as the livestock side. Mum is tremendous, particularly at lambing time, and dad is a hero mucking out and putting up sheep pens. I’m married to Chloe who’s a local girl and we have a son Max.