Farm of the Week: Tenants of King Charles who have taken over butcher's shop and deli in Pickering

While what has happened on the livestock front had been worked towards for a while the successes, new venture and that meeting were not all mapped out at the start of the year and Chris is reasonably phlegmatic about his 2023 journey.

“It’s all bits coming together like you’re making a jigsaw, your name gets bandied about for quality stock whether it’s sheep, cattle or whatever, and now in our case hopefully our meat.

“You’re trying to connect food together. Our farm, food miles, quality stock, quality meat. We’re trying to secure our future where we are not simply relying on people giving the price they want to give. With our breeding stock, and now the butcher’s shop, we’re closer to guaranteeing ourselves a price.

Chris says the taking on of the shop, previously known as Horsley’s, came out of nowhere, but that uncannily he’d had thoughts about it previously.

“Right place, right time, you’ve just got to take a chance sometimes. I’d been in the shop 18 months ago and thought it was the best butcher’s shop in Pickering. When I’d got home I’d said to Lisa I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on it. Be careful what you wish for.

“I’d gone to the cash machine one Sunday morning in Pickering, at the end of April. As I was walking up the street a parent of one of our children’s friends mentioned Graham, who ran Horsley’s, was retiring.

“By the following Friday we’d done a deal. I’d had a word with Lisa and had asked if she fancied running it. I think she thought I was joking, but we’re always being told we are supposed to diversify. So that’s our diversification done. We’ve enough on now. It felt like we’d had enough on before we had the shop.

Putting all the pieces together on the farm and the butcher’s shop has been as much a focus for Chris more recently as getting his sheep and cattle the way he wanted.

“Before we took the shop on, I’d taken on a full-time man on the farm. It had been myself and Lisa in the shop since we took it over on 15 May, but we’ve now got Josh and Tom, who is a newly qualified butcher having finished his apprenticeship at Bishop Burton College and Gina who works in the deli. I’m more back on the farm now. I’ve sacrificed enough time away from the farm. Lisa is in charge of the shop, runs the deli and oversees it all.

Chris and Lisa came to West Farm from Appleton Roebuck four years ago and now farm around 350 acres. Chris has taken on a bit of summer grazing just past Malton in addition to the tenanted farm.

“We have around 310 breeding ewes made up of 60 pure Suffolk ewes; 100 pure Charollais ewes; 25 Beltex and 25 Texel; and a herd of 100 suckler cows made up of 75 pedigree Aberdeen Angus and 25 pedigree Charolais. We start lambing in the first week of January with 100 Suffolks mainly and a few Charollais. The rest lamb in April. It’s about shed space and management.

Chris has spent considerable time developing his own composite breed called Yorkie that is fast gathering a reputation among buyers.

“We now have 100 Yorkie ewes. I brought them about by putting the Beltex tup on to the Charollais ewe and then using a Texel tup from there. We’ve now had five generations and nearly got them fixed out as a pure bred of their own. We’re 75 per cent of the way there with them.

“They’re good enough and I now just keep bringing a fresh Charollais female line and then breed a tup back out of that. Two crosses on gets your new blood into being a Yorkie, which is a white-faced sheep. We select for quick growth and easy lambing and look to grow the lambs from nought to forty kilos in the shortest possible time.

“Our crossbred and Yorkie tups have now come to the fore. Our 110 shearlings sold last year averaged £895 per tup and our 100 females sold in our production sale at Melton Mowbray averaged £198, which were mostly ewe lambs. We want to produce quality commercial tups to breed quality fat lambs. That’s where our bread and butter is.

“We have 120 shearling tups to sell this year at various sales such as Bentham Rampage, which is the first in mid-August, Kelso, Builth Wells, Melton Mowbray, Rugby plus we sell a lot privately; and we also have 100 ewe lambs to sell at our female production sale at Melton Mowbray in the first Saturday of September.

Chris’ two titles earned at last weeks’ Great Yorkshire Show came, highly appropriately, in the butcher’s lamb class and the lamb carcase competition.

“I’ve been trying to win the champion pen of butchers lambs for 8 years,” says Chris.

It is working at his breeding lines of sheep and cattle that is Chris’ farming signature and he gives a nod to a man who has assisted.

“A lot of the cattle success we’ve had is due to a very good semi-retired stockman John Morton who comes down from Scotland once a month to help. John is still the stockman of his generation, was with Gretna House Farms and is very well respected.

“We are conscious of genetics and success is 50 per cent luck and 50 per cent skill. You keep putting these cattle and sheep together and you study figures, genetics, bloodlines. The female is always the dominant entity at the end of the day whether a Beltex, Suffolk or Angus cow, Charolais cow. If the female isn’t right they won’t breed, but if it is then you do well.

“We sold a home-produced 13-month old Angus bull for 9000 guineas in May last year which was supreme champion in the Carlisle pedigree sale and this year we sold a home-produced Charolais bull, Wensleydale See The Stars, at 10,000 guineas at Stirling.

Chris enjoyed the King’s visit.

“He spent half an hour chatting about family farming and wanted to know how good the house was. Next time he comes back he wants to come inside. He was genuine, down-to-earth and surprisingly easy to talk to.

Chris and Lisa’s young children Alice, Izzy and Oliver already have the same work ethic of their parents and Chris says the butcher’s shop has a young man already invigorated for the future.

“Alice has just got herself a little job; Izzy says she wants to be a sheep farmer and Oliver wants to be a butcher now.