The Yorkshire farmer who has been helping at his local agricultural show since he was 16

Andrew’s contribution to his local show started when he was 16 and when working for farmer John White who was the chief horse steward.

“What used to happen was on Monday morning of show week farmers from Wilton and Thornton le Dale would turn up with a tractor and trailer and get on with what they did every year, getting things out like posts, chairs, tables, marquees.

"We had sheds behind the Old Hall Hotel and would take everything into the showfield and start putting them in place, everybody knew what they were doing.

“These days preparation seems to go on forever because the show has grown so much. I just can’t believe the size it is now.

"Today’s main ring is the size the whole show used to be, but it has retained its traditional parts whilst having moved with the times.”

Andrew says he has a specific role at the show, but he gets drafted into anything and everything.

“It’s usually a case of ‘Ask Andrew’ if anyone wants to know where something is, but on the day I’m the biosecurity officer checking licences.

"My phone usually rings quite regularly, whether it is our chairman Martin Blythe or a multitude of others. We have a great team, but like most shows we’re always on the lookout for new volunteers either on the day or in the lead up.

“My other job is to judge the eggs and this year three generations of my family will be judges as my mum Doreen is judging cakes and my daughter Anna is judging wool. That’s something that may not happen very often.

“Our president this year is Adam Collier, the Yorkshire dialect man. Adam looks after the fur and feather tent, which is a good job because I don’t think anyone else on the committee has a clue what goes on in there.”

Andrew farms across 150 acres he owns and rents a little extra land for his farm enterprise that is called Wilton Gatehouse as the original gatehouse was the gatekeeper’s house for the Pickering to Scarborough railway line that closed in the 1950s.

“I was born at Stape,” says Andrew. “Mum and dad moved to Thornton le Dale which is where I grew up. I got a job with John White who was farming at West View Farm in Wilton. He followed on from his father as a stalwart of the show.

“I’d managed to get hold of this place, which was dilapidated and needed rebuilding and I had also been fortunate enough to acquire 20 acres around it a few years previous to John passing.

“When he sadly passed away in 2015 I took a bit of a plunge and managed to buy part of the farm and carry on. Things have happened over the years, as they do, and I managed to sell bits off for development which has helped.

"I also managed to build a state-of-the-art building to get all my cattle on the land where the gatehouse is and where the chicken unit is.”

Andrew has 10,000 hens laying free range eggs and a suckler herd of around 60 Limousins. His hens give him a guaranteed monthly income.

“My hens are young pullets at moment as we’ve just restocked and in a couple of weeks we open up and let them run outside to start laying.

"They’re at 19 weeks and we will take them through to 76 weeks. I needed something with a regular income and the hens provide that.

“I’m also now an Eggsell director on the producer board. I became a member of the co-operative in 2009.

"What I like about it is that the Elliotts who run it at Bewholme in East Yorkshire make decisions that affect them as well as everybody else. Eggsell is massive now and Eggsell producers account for 5 per cent of the UK’s eggs.”

Andrew sells store cattle and some that go on for breeding at Ruswarp livestock market.

“With the heifers I run up to 60 suckler cattle and the special suckler sales they have at Ruswarp has people waiting for me when I get them there.

"The herd is a closed herd and I’ve followed on from what myself and John White used to do. Neither he nor I have bought a cow since the early 80s.

“I will buy bulls and I use a bit of AI. I had a homebred bull I used for a while. At the moment I have a Garrowby bull, Garrowby Shamus.

"We’ve had a Tomschoice bull and a couple of Rachel’s bulls from Mark Woolhouse over at Dalton. I calve the heifers at two and half years old.”

While cattle and laying hens are Andrew’s mainstays he also has a small flock of 35 Suffolk-crossed ewes and grows cereal crops.

“They tidy up and probably save me a bit of wormer on the cows. We lamb early in January and into February, lambing inside but with them out as soon as we can on plenty of green.

"I buy replacements in already crossed and put a Texel tup with them.

“I grow spring barley and winter wheat. Grass is our break crop. I take advantage of all the chicken muck which is great for the nitrogen and means I can grow without any bought-in fertiliser.

"This year we’ve 12 acres of wheat and 30 acres of spring barley, for feed for the cattle. We are working with going into the new SFI and already include clover in our grazing grasses.”

Visitors to the show can stay at Andrew’s. He has a small five van caravan and motorhome site that now benefits from hardstanding and electric hookups.

“We do get people who book specifically because it is Thornton le Dale Show,” says Andrew. “And the hardstanding really helps, especially with the weather we’ve had this past year.

Andrew’s partner is Caroline Lunn. He has a son, Tom, who milks cows for Sam Howarth and daughter Anna who is a professional sheep shearer and was second in the Yorkshire and Open Ladies shearing classes at the Great Yorkshire Show last month. Caroline has two sons and a daughter - Harry, Ruby and Freddie.

“Harry works for his dad contracting and in winter goes off to New Zealand,” says Andrew.