Kirkby Grange, Tadcaster: Going is good for the Easterby family of winners

‘I grow 200 acres of winter wheat. I’d like to do more, but my sheds will only take that amount of grain. I have contractors that handle everything from cultivation through to harvest. I can drive a tractor, but I don’t, however I’m one hundred per cent invested in my wheat; and managing the crop rotation and the whole of the land.

Want more stories like this? Subscribe to our newsletter here.

‘I also manage the stores, so when it’s harvest I’m on the forklift. I put the grain in the correct bins, weighing it as I’m going along, logging it. There’s a lot of paperwork, and I load it when the grain goes off farm. I walk the crops every two weeks with the agronomist and walk them myself every week. I care about what I grow.

‘I sometimes grow spring barley and we also grow break crops as the regular part of my rotation including such as sugar beet, potatoes and maize. I’ll occasionally grow oilseed rape, but it can be an expensive crop.

Deborah enjoys growing wheat.

‘I’m growing Dawsum at the minute, I really like it, it’s a really hardy wheat. The variety I had before was discontinued. I’d liked that too. Dawsum is good for the kind of land I have, which is mostly lime rich loamy soil over magnesium limestone, that in the past two years has produced the best wheat quality I’ve ever had. I have never finished harvest as early as this year. In common with many other farms we were all done by the end of July.

‘We’re definitely getting much drier, warmer periods in late spring/early summer, and that is changing things quite significantly. I’m no scientist but I take Jeremy Clarkson’s view that it’s a weather pattern.

‘We can go back quite far here at Kirkby Grange and you can see that there’s usually a decade or even longer when things warm up and then cool down. At the minute we’re in a period of warmth. I don’t know whether it’s climate change but by looking at the records my family have kept in the time they’ve been here, there have been quite a few waves of really warm summers and really cold winters.

‘There’s no doubt that the long periods of warm weather are changing things and I see it is being beneficial to me because I grow wheat and that it is helping me produce better quality.

‘Interestingly our yield hasn’t changed. Our grain has become smaller, but it has become heavy. I get an average of about 3.8 tonnes per acre.

This puts Deborah’s overall wheat tonnage just a little under 800 tonnes but the improved quality has meant that much has gone for a premium at biscuit quality over the past two years.

‘All of it went for biscuit last year. Some of it has gone for feed this year just because some of the proteins weren’t quite so good.

‘The figures were really close this year with only a small amount in it between feed and biscuit. I sent quite a proportion as feed because I knew that wasn’t going to get rejected. That also meant I wouldn’t have to pay any extra haulage. It wasn’t that big an increment last year either, but it was quite a nice feeling that we’d produced something a little bit better.

Deborah also sells the straw.

‘It goes straight out of the back of the combine to a straw merchant and a local farmer who has cows.

Conservation has become an interest in recent times and Deborah says she’s also enjoying it.

‘Farming is in a dire state financially and long gone are the days when you grow things just because you love growing things. You cannot do that and survive, so

I’ve quite a lot of land in stewardship, either in SFI schemes or a little I have left in countryside stewardship, until the end of this year.

‘I’ve some SSSI land and I’ve just put in my new SFI application during that short window. Fortunately, I work with someone who does my application for me and I didn’t miss out.

‘I’m now working with Natural England. I said we’ve got these sites that we want to make better, through diversify of plants and encouraging wildlife.

‘I have a species-rich area, a wetland with really well-established grassland next to a dyke. We’re looking at cutting it back to get more dragonflies and make it species-rich for animal life as well as plant life.

‘What we’re doing is protecting our heritage. We can graze it at certain times and my friend has cattle that she now grazes there.

‘I grow quite a lot of wild bird food. I’m already involved with a programme with English Nature looking at species of birds in this area such as curlews and lapwings. We did some research with the RSPB and that showed we’ve more lapwings than others around here.

It was Walter, Deborah’s grandfather, who was responsible for the farming/racehorse dynasty. Deborah says that horses still play a big part at Kirkby Grange.

‘We have livery for 80. I have a great team of professionally selected self-employed girls. Kate Hemingway who’s been with me for 15 years is an exceptional lady. Dad (another Henry) and I ran it together years ago. He then decided he didn’t want to have the breeding side that was called Stockwell Stud.

‘We’ve had DIY livery for about 30 years. We offer services like a menage and a lunge pen but our biggest seller is off-road riding which is popular with our clientele. I have put tracks around all of the fields and we have around 10 miles of hacking.

Deborah says she never thought she’d be coming back and running the farm.

‘I travelled the world after university, got married, had three children and came back about 15 years ago. I consider myself very fortunate to live here. I love it and our landlords are amazing.

Deborah looks back with great fondness about her famous racehorse trainer uncles.

‘Uncle Peter and Uncle Mick came here in their teens. They used to tell stories about what they got up to, like dressing up as my grandfather and taking his car to the pub when they were really young.

Horse racing never seems far away from any Easterby’s mind and Deborah has recently launched a new gambling app Stakemaster.

‘It’s something that my friend Martin (Blakey) and I came up with years ago that relates to a mathematical strategy you can use for betting, on more than one outcome, to make a profit. With the way farming is going you have to look at everything!