Meet the couple who have moved to Yorkshire to farm cattle after tying the knot

They brought with them their as yet small but soon to be expanded pedigree Limousin herd from Boston in Lincolnshire to North Yorkshire and within weeks were purchasing foundation stock for a second pedigree herd, of Aberdeen Angus, from Skipton livestock market. Their initial target to get to thirty breeding cows, twenty Limmies, ten Angus.

Last weekend Josh and Charlotte tied the knot at the church in her family’s home village Grindale, in the Wolds, and celebrated afterwards at the farm where Charlotte’s love of cattle was nurtured through her relationship with her father, Robert.

“I was my dad’s shadow growing up. I’d be outside with him whenever I could,” says Charlotte.

“Cattle have always been a passion. I’d walk around the shed with dad. I’d check on the herd out in the field and whenever anything was calving I’d be there, learning and watching. As a member of Bridlington YFC I also did a lot of stockjudging.

“When the opportunity presented itself for Josh and I to farm together up here it was definitely what we wanted to pursue.

"We’d had a smallholding in Lincolnshire and started our Dalehead Limousin herd there, but we’d outgrown it and since our day jobs now both involve talking with farmers in Yorkshire, we were on the lookout for somewhere."

It was Charlotte’s maid of honour Henrietta Wells who put them right.

“Josh is an agricultural manager for British Sugar and his area includes a lot of growers in Yorkshire that supply the Newark factory,” says Charlotte. “I’m an area manager covering the county for Syngenta working with growers and agronomists, predominantly on crop protection and seeds.

“We had been looking for months and had wanted to get our numbers of cattle up, so we wanted somewhere with a greater acreage. Henrietta sent me the details of this beautiful farm, part of the Settrington Estate, and when we came and Josh said ‘yes, this is the one’ I thought if Josh likes it, it must be good.”

Josh and Charlotte met through the Young Farmers organisation, responsible for so many couplings over the years. Josh had worked on farms in his local area in Lincolnshire for years. They are both farming people through and through.

“We met at a Young Farmers Annual Convention in 2015,” says Charlotte.

“We were introduced by friends on a balcony of a Wetherspoon’s in Torquay and nine years later here we are, married and on our farming journey. That’s the power of Young Farmers.”

Charlotte tells, in all good humour, how a little subterfuge brought about the start of their herd.

“With Josh it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission because if I ask if I can get something he just says no. It was 2019 when I bought our first Limousin. I had told Josh I was off to buy a heifer. He said, ‘No you’re not’. I said okay.

“I’d gone to Melton Mowbray livestock market with a farmer who just happened to have a trailer and came back with this heifer from Michael Morton’s renowned Blackfriar herd.

“We’d always had Limousin genetics in the commercial herd at mum and dad’s either through Limousin bulls or crossbred cows. I’d always seen the benefits of the Limousin as an all-round beef animal. I liked the idea of establishing a pedigree herd.

“Once I’d got one I thought excellent, he can’t stop me now. We then started going to sales, often to Carlisle, picking up one here, one there. We had our first calf on the ground in Covid year, in the January. We’ve had a few ups and downs like everyone. It has been an interesting learning curve, but we’ve always bought high health animals and maintain good health status.”

It's clearly growth time for the Limousin herd now that the couple have the capacity.

“We have half a dozen breeding cows in the Dalehead herd at the moment. We will be trying to buy a few more in the next few months. Ideally, we’d like to get the breeding herd up to 15-20 in the next few years, so we can provide a consistent supply of stock of both bulls and heifers for commercial and pedigree herds.

“We’ve mainly been retaining animals so far. We were fortunate we had a run of females at first. We had one bull a couple of years ago and then this year we’ve had two bull calves. We have also had our first homebred heifer calve this year. Olive, the first heifer I bought, her first born calf calved this spring and has a lovely bull calf at foot.

“We’d like to double our Limousin numbers this year, that’s the plan. A dozen cows. We currently have a few females to keep and bulls to take forward for breeding. We’ve tried to go with females by, looking at breeding families when we buy semen to get a spread of genetics.

"Milkiness for us is really important and a bit of power behind the female to rear a good calf. And for us temperament is critical because we work full time and everything for us is about being efficient and easy, straightforward cattle.

“We’ve enough space here to keep the ones we want to bring on, but it’s also handy having Malton livestock market only 10 minutes away, which is a great market for quality stock if something isn’t quite what you wanted but still makes a good commercial animal.

The move to the pedigree Angus is a conscious decision on crossbreeding and in keeping with the farm’s grassland.

“We have some rougher grazing that benefits a native breed,” says Charlotte. “The Angus is a great all-rounder. You attract a premium for the beef, it’s a milky breed with the size and growth and the No 1 native breed in the UK. As well as having pedigrees we also need to do a bit of crossbreeding to bring the best out of both commercially.

“We bought three in-calf Angus cows from the Airedale herd at Skipton recently and then bought two cows with calves at foot and an in-calf heifer from the Embrook herd in Horncastle, privately.

Charlotte says her parents Robert and Anne and her three brothers and Josh’s family are a major help in their new beginnings at North Grimston and their hopeful return to showing stock next year.

“We are so grateful for the support we receive from our families and friends as we go forward together in our farming future. Our plan is to get back to showing at Driffield and Lincolnshire Show and a few others. I helped my friends Rob Mawer and Emma Benge at the Lincolnshire this year. You can’t beat showing.

“In the meantime we’re loving it here at Bellmanear with barn owls flying around, lapwings. It’s very peaceful and the villages of North Grimston and Settrington are lovely.”