Farm of the Week: Avisons put family farm back on track

“I’m not a massive train nut but it has revolutionised our farm shop and pick your own soft fruit business. We’re up between 15-20 per cent since we carried our first customers. It took two years to build, we used 17,500 self tappers to fasten it to the sleepers and it took an incredible amount of work and quite a bit of capital expenditure but it has all been worth it.”

The 7¼ inch gauge railway has provided Karl and Mandy with a unique attraction to add to their café, shop, soft fruit business and farm. It’s light years from the days when Karl was concerned with how they could make the 150-acre family farm work, with most of the land based at Top Bridge Farm, High Marishes four miles away and a mix of cattle, sheep and arable cropping, but a decade later he has developed a confidence that may never have been attained by maintaining the status quo.

“I’m enjoying it (farming) and all of this far more now. I wasn’t bored with life before but I wanted to move it on and we couldn’t make a living out of the size and type of farm the way it was. We had an Angus herd, Lleyn sheep and grew cereals and oilseed rape. Most of the farm was and still is at Top Bridge but we have always had 27 acres here. It’s just out of Pickering on the way to the coast and we’re making the most out of our location.”

Two years ago Karl handed over his arable operation to neighbouring farmer David Beal on a share farming basis whereby David is paid for his contracting side and the pair share the profits. Karl also sold David his sheep, now a mix of Suffolk and Mule X Texel.

“David is a brilliant farmer, we get on well and reorganising ourselves this way is beneficial to us both. I can concentrate my efforts up here at Cedar Barn and look after the cattle. David can afford better machinery because he’s farming a larger acreage. We now buy his lamb from what was our flock for the shop and also buy beef from his suckler herd that uses our Angus bull.

“My farming is now cattle, the soft fruits and other vegetables and herbs we’re growing. Life’s never perfect and the reason I went into share farming was that Cedar Barn’s increasing trade was getting to the point where I was watered down too much. I’m now outside far more making sure of everything from strawberries, that we started with last weekend, raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries, apples, new potatoes, asparagus and pumpkins.

“All of the lamb, now supplied from David, and beef from our herd comes into the shop and our butchery. I now have 30 Aberdeen Angus cows and as well as an Angus bull, to produce pedigree heifer replacements, I now cross with a Charolais bull. The continental influence gives a little more meat-to-bone ratio. Our pedigree stock destined for the shop was getting too fat too quickly and we were having to finish them earlier. It’s not that we’re intensive at all, it’s just the land at Top Bridge that is very fertile.”

Prior to starting Cedar Barn Karl sold beef from the farm locally and before he and Mandy opened the shop they had a maize maze - one idea that didn’t come off.

“The land here is quite heavy medium loam to clay and we couldn’t get the maize to grow tall enough for when the kids broke up for summer holidays. That was bad enough but any rain we had also stuck to their feet like glue, so we gave it up.

“Our hairiest time was our third or fourth year when our accountant told us to sell because we weren’t making any money, but we learned very quickly. We listened to others’ experiences, went to FARMA conferences and started developing our business acumen. I’d gone from working just with my dad to working with 30 people.

“Our turning point was appointing a general manager and a new accountant who broke down each area of the business so we found out were the holes were. Overstaffing was an issue. We’d had no idea what was the right amount of people to run each department. We now work on a percentage of turnover and monitor constantly.

“Mandy does a brilliant job looking after finances and the café. She had a background in hotels and hospitality; our daughter Chloe is shop manager and will hopefully be under-manager to our general manager by September; my sister Mandy (Cook) and niece Holly work here and my mum Maureen washes up on a weekend. Although dad passed away two years before we started all this I’d like to think he would be proud of what we’ve achieved.”