Meet the first-time Yorkshire farmer supplying chickens and eggs to local buyers

It has proved quite a journey for Rebecca starting from a point of no knowledge of farming, no land and no stock. Last year she produced and sold over 800 chickens and over 1000 eggs from the nine acres of land she is farming regeneratively that she now terms as being, powered by passion and supported by the community.

Rebecca said she is gearing for another modest increase this year, having started Yorkshire Pasture Poultry on one acre in 2020, and that she has plans to extend her farming range beyond poultry.

“I believe in small, local circular economies. The only way I can make money is by selling direct. It will be at least another couple of years before I can commit to this full time and that means having another job, which I have.

“Working for myself is probably the driving force behind it. I have never quite suited a desk job, nor working for others, even though I’ve done my fair share of them. I now love what I am doing and there’s so much more I want to do in the future.

“I’d coasted along for years. I’d been to university. I’d been a marketing manager, but it was when I came across a volunteer opportunity on a dairy farm that I found something that interested me. The idea of being outdoors working with animals drew me in.

“I started going up every Saturday then every Sunday, working for free on this local dairy farm, learning the basics, doing manual labour, getting stuck in. The first farm I went to was quite an eye opener and I just loved it. I thought if I could do this for a living I’d be happier and that’s what I did. I worked on a few before starting Yorkshire Pasture Poultry.

Rebecca said the idea of having some land of her own had appealed for some time before she struck lucky with a little land in January 2020.

“I’d been looking for land for about six years and eventually somebody offered me just over an acre to work on. I found it through having advertised that I wanted land on Facebook. Obviously, you can’t get many cows on an acre, so I chose something smaller. I’d read about pasture poultry in the United States. I spent a little time managing it, getting the grass suitable for the chickens and I was away.

“I chose poultry because chickens are small, even though everything I had learned about farming had been to do with dairy cows, but I also wanted my farming enterprise to be something that was welfare friendly. Going this way was to me more forward thinking, especially in some of the principles of how animals should be reared, and the way food should be produced that are coming up now among younger people.

Such has been Rebecca’s success that she soon outgrew her one acre and in April last year she struck lucky again on the land front.

“I’d reared and sold 500 chickens that year and had been running short of grass. I needed somewhere else, so I started asking around and one of my customers knew a local farmer who has this bit of land in Holmfirth. It’s nine acres that hadn’t been touched for twenty years, as it is right in the town and away from the rest of his farm.

“It was a bit daunting seeing it at first, it was all just wild, but I’m now using two acres for the chickens that I’ve worked into a manageable state and my plan is to get the whole nine acres done as soon as I can. Once I’ve this years’ chickens working well and I’m meeting my increasing egg demand I intend to add a couple of pigs to root through the land and turn it over so that I can re-seed it.

“It is difficult getting hold of land to farm and if I hadn’t been able to get this I might have had to quit. What I really do appreciate is that trust placed on me by the farmer, Scott Hall, to take it on and manage it. It wasn’t advertised.

Rebecca said that going ‘woofing’ has stood her in good stead with her chicken farming.

“As I’d never had chickens before I took myself off down to Somerset and did a bit of ‘woofing’. That’s a term used by those involved with the Worldwide Organisation of Organic Farming. You stay on a farm and work and in return you are put up, you’re fed and you learn on an organic, regenerative farm for a month. I then came back and put all these things into practice.

“I only rear the meat birds seasonally. I get my first chicken around April as day-olds. I put them under a polytunnel. They are there for two or three weeks, dependent on the temperature outside and then they go out into the field in mobile coops. They are slow-grown, taking between eight to ten weeks to reach processing weight.

Rebecca was once a marketing manager in a completely different environment, now she finds herself back in marketing her own produce.

“When I started in 2020 I was doing the farmers markets quite heavily to try and reach people and get my name out there. I especially enjoy meeting those who appreciate what I’m doing, but it zaps a lot of time, so I started getting into the Community Supported Agriculture model and I’m now set up so that customers can come direct to me and pay into it and get their share of produce.

“My aim this year is to be 80 per cent Community Supported Agriculture and 20 per cent farmers markets. Some of the markets I go to are proving quite successful. I go to York Food Circle held at Tang Hall Community Centre every few months. Really good for me as it is a social enterprise and other producers that go are like-minded. The customers are very well informed and understand what you’re doing. All of my chicken and the eggs carry a high welfare certification, and that’s what I’m concerned about, farming with passion for the animals.

Watch out for this young lady. Rebecca has plans afoot on the nine acres at Holmfirth.

“I don’t just want to offer people chicken and eggs. Who knows what’s next!