Farm of the Week: Legacy of success to spur new generation onwards

Sarah and Edward Williams are a mother-son farming partnership that sees them run a tenanted 500-acre mixed farming enterprise of dairy, arable and beef cattle at Jowett House Farm, Cawthorne in South Yorkshire.

Having been cruelly robbed of her husband Jim to cancer two-and-a-half years ago Sarah tells of how she and Edward have tackled the massive void left since his father passed away.

“Edward and I can’t do this without each other. We work really well together. Edward has Jim’s wonderful trait of being calm and methodical. He’s become an incredible fixer and doer and yet is also bright enough to know when something is beyond him.

“Jim and I arrived here 23 years ago at what was then a 200-acre farm with our two young sons Edward and David and our three-month-old baby girl Kate. Jim had a fantastic farming pedigree having been farm manager for the Co-op’s CWS farms in Cheshire, Goole and Cirencester before working in Shropshire on a mixed concern that grew from 4,000 to 10,000 acres, but his dream had always been to have his own farm.

“Our introduction to farming here was a real baptism of fire. We signed with Lancashire Dairies after the Milk Marketing Board came to an end and they quickly went bust. We were left without a milk cheque for six to eight weeks.”

Nonetheless Jim and Sarah went on to increase their operations with the addition of Denby Hall Farm a decade ago, and they carved out their own slice of the farm attraction tourist market when Sarah came up with Yorkshire’s first Maize Maze, which last year celebrated its 15th anniversary.

They have sold their milk to Arla ever since the Lancashire Dairies debacle and Sarah is currently vice-chairman of the Wakefield Arla producer group. Their price has just dropped to 22.61p per litre and while she admits they are struggling like everyone else, she takes a wider view.

“We’ve always looked at this as a business. We borrowed everything so the farm has had to pay from day one. The Maize Maze was my baby and our Maizie Moo ice cream has helped. I’d seen a maze in Oxfordshire and knew how busy the park opposite our farm at Cannon Hall gets. I thought it would work, Jim wasn’t sure because of concerns over insurance, but I still didn’t expect to be running it 15 years later.

“The maze takes up four acres and is still helping as well as providing our visitors with greater education of farming.”

Edward was already a partner in the farm before Jim passed away. He picked up a Young Dairy Farmer of the Year award last year as a result of managing the farm’s increase in dairy cows from 134-165 milkers; upping its cow production average and maintaining his father’s record by winning a Grassland Society silage competition. He currently has 170 Holstein Friesian cows in milk, producing a herd average of over 9,000 litres and is looking to increase it further.

“My sister Kate has done a lot of work on calf growth and development so that when the cows come into the milking herd they are really flying in terms of milk production. It’s also about breeding robust cows that last longer. We’ve recently put in new sand cubicles to improve the housing, which has made a massive difference to cow welfare and altered the collecting yard so that more light and air is let in to the parlour.”

The farm’s arable cropping runs to 140 acres of Relay winter feed wheat, 50 acres of Glacier winter barley that also provides soft straw for calf rearing, 80 acres of maize and, new this year, 35 acres of beans replacing oilseed rape. The beef operation pushes the cattle number to 500 head overall with all stock apart from dairy replacements going to a local abattoir. The dairy herd is the bedrock of the farm and the reason for everything else being grown or reared.

“Milk from forage is one of my key drivers,” says Edward. “We get three cuts and sometimes four. The first is usually around May 15 and last year’s sugar and protein content produced a phenomenal feed that was like rocket fuel for the cows. It’s all about how you utilise grass through silage or grazing. It is the cheapest available feed in any dairy system and anything we can do to stop lorries (feed wagons) coming up the drive keeps our costs down.

“We make high quality grass silage and maize silage and we’re using more in-house nutrients through umbilical slurry spreading and dribble-barring in the spring. By putting on less artificial fertiliser and applying slurry I’m making savings and we’re also using it on some of the arable crops.

“Maize is now a staple diet of most dairy diets. Our best rations have 70 per cent maize and that’s when we get the best performance from the cows.

“It’s very rewarding when you get things right and very frustrating when you can’t do anything about it.”

Jim’s words still resonate in Edward’s mind. “Clamp management was always drummed into me. Dad won a number of silage competitions.”

Sarah sees traces of Jim in all three of their offspring. “They were all here at Christmas and it was wonderful to see them milking together on Christmas Day. Kate has Jim’s drive. He would have been so proud of her for becoming the top dairy student and achieving a first class degree at Reading University. David is an architect with construction company BAM. All three have an incredible work ethic.”

Edward intends taking the farm further. He says: “The only way to survive in this industry is to drive forward. The real skill is turning production of what we grow into a healthy, cost effective food product.”