Farmer Callum Stark of Sutton-on-the-Forest set to serve up padel tennis in empty barn

“We’ve seen the rise in Padel Tennis, the fastest growing sport in the world,” says Callum. “There are courts in York, Thirsk, Scarborough but they’re all outdoor. We have a potato store that lies empty half of the year. We put it on social media last week and immediately had 300 followers. We have all the car parking space you could ever need.

“We’re starting with two courts. We’re offering bookings on an app called Playtonic. We will have a qualified coach here for the opening, a DJ, refreshments and the Yorkshire Burritos stand. Anyone can come along and play for free on the day and for the first week to find out the rules and how to play.

Callum played wing for Malton RUFC, enjoys his sport and uses a cricketing simile for the position the government has put his family farm, with his dad Stuart now semi-retired but still active on the farm, his own young family, plus the team headed up by farm foreman Simon Clark all involved.

“We’re on a bit of a sticky wicket. My gran’s in her 90s and she’s a shareholder with a fairly sizeable shareholding in the farm, so if this Family Farm Tax does come through we’re in a spot of bother really.

“Potatoes are our largest crop and our potato harvesters alone take us over this £1m threshold, but it’s also a sector where margins are becoming tighter all the time. When we’d unloaded the 1600 tonnes of potatoes in the store we’re using for Padel Tennis I calculated my growing cost per tonne at £264 but my sales were at £256 per tonne. That means the store made me a loss of £12,800. That was on an average yielding crop. The margins are just not out there, but potatoes are still the best crop to grow on our sandy land.

“If you scale everything down to one potato produced it means farmers are getting paid about 4p per potato, whereas a packet of crisps is about 500 per cent mark up.

“That’s why if Padel Tennis takes off here and then we go with the next idea, which is

putting in fast charging EV chargers for cars, fully charged in just 20 minutes, we will look at the possibility of turning Fridlington into a bit of a wellness centre.

Callum says it’s early days as yet and that if Padel Tennis doesn’t take off he will just take it as at least having tried.

“If I’m getting the throughput the Padel courts will remain. At the moment it could be referred to as a pop-up business but we’d obviously love it to do well and it looks like it will judging by the response we’ve had so far.

Fridlington Farms has solar power and Callum is always looking at how best to farm both regeneratively and in stewardship initiatives.

“All our pigs and potato stores are powered by solar energy. At present we have up to 750 KW and we are looking to expand to 1.2 MW which will assist with the venture into EV car chargers.

Fridlington runs to 3000 acres owned and with other land rented for potatoes they farm a total of around 4000 acres, 600 of which is grassland for the 2500 flock of Highlander-crossed ewes. A pig breeding unit of 1000 sows is run in conjunction with Ian Mosey.

“Our potato acreage is 850 acres,” says Callum. “Ninety per cent goes to crisping, and the rest chipping. Sixty per cent of our crop goes to Walkers; the rest to KP.

“Winter Wheat runs to 500-600 acres dependent on rotation. Our wheat varieties are Extase, Dawsum and Skyfall. It was that wet from October 2023 and spring last year that if we were stood out in the cold and wet for that amount of time, I don’t think we’d grow very well either. We farm on top of clay and the rain just doesn’t go anywhere.

Callum tells of a far reduced cropping of oilseed rape being down to the same as everybody else.

“It’s just such a high risk crop. We still have around 120-150 acres but it is too high a cost to see it wiped out with flea beetle, we’ve cut back so that if we do get a loss on it it’s not a massive hit on the farm.

“We grow 250-300 acres of winter barley to get into oilseed rape early enough. It’s all Tardis feed barley; and we have 200 acres of spring barley, all Laureate for malting.

“Our other crops include 150 acres of linseed that mainly goes to France to feed cattle; and fodder beet which we strip graze with the sheep over winter. We rent some land out for peas.

Callum pays tribute to his team.

“Simon Clark is an absolute workaholic and this place would not run as well as it does without him. Then we have Dave Hatfield, Andy Powell, Brian Hern, Merv Fosdyke, Chris Morley, Jamie Knaggs and Rob Johnson who all play their part.

It’s getting closer to another massively busy part of the year at Fridlington.

“Our spring barley goes in in mid-March; and potatoes are usually planted in the last week of March and first week of April dependent on weather. We try to get everything in the ground as soon as we can because our yield can drop off a cliff when going into May. Last year our mid-April planting did 24 tonnes per acre, but the May spuds only did 12-14 tonnes. If you start getting 14 tonnes you might as well pack up.

Livestock plays an important role with the sheep and pigs.

“We have a new shepherdess, Becky Hern, Brian’s wife, and she’s doing a very good job,” says Callum. “Our New Zealand Highlanders breed outdoors, lambing in April. They are good mothers. We cross them back with the Texel and Suffolk for conformation with everything destined for Dawn Meats.

“We came out of pigs a few years ago but have now gone back in with top pigs man Ian Mosey of Gilling.

“It’s a joint venture. We found that we really could do with the slurry to keep our fertiliser prices down. It’s a breeding unit which is run by Glen Dam.