Farm of the Week: Adapting to surviving life on the edge

It is Rishworth Hall Farm, on the edge of Rishworth Moor, on the other side of Scammonden Reservoir from the M62, between Halifax and Rochdale. And it overlooks a growing cluster of housing built to reflect Calderdale’s modern function, as a picturesque commuter corridor.

The Hamer family was there when it was still regarded as the back of beyond, and today’s father and son have mixed feelings about the encroachment of suburban Yorkshire.

It does mean that Christine Hamer, wife of the senior David, can sell about 40 gallons a day through a milk round covering Rishworth and Ripponden. But it also means a running problem with dogs. The amount of faeces they dump in the fields is bad enough and costs the farm in rigorous and regular worming. Worse are the owners who scoop up the mess but leave it behind, in plastic bags which either hang in the bushes forever or get chopped into the silage, unless the farmer picks them up.

It is a problem worth mentioning in the hope some will be shamed into doing better. Otherwise, it is a small one in comparison with the financial pressures on small farms.

Four years ago, the Hamers stopped trying to make a living out of selling milk from about 45 cows. There are still smaller herds in the business – left over from the days when every little farm produced milk – but not many. They were in Dairy Farmers of Britain but gave up even before the co-op collapsed – taking a chunk of Mr Hamer Senior’s savings with it, in the form of shares he had had to buy which suddenly became worthless.

His wife buys the milk for her delivery round from John Haigh, at Barkisland. In the old days, the Hamers had a round selling their own green-top milk, unpasteurised, but that is another option which has been closed off, of course.

To stay in dairy, they would have had to invest heavily. They changed the emphasis from producing surplus milk to rearing calves to sell on into other dairy herds. They choose from the range of Holstein Friesian pedigrees with an eye on longevity, keep the heifers to about 30 months old, after they have calved once, and sell 30 to 40 a year at Holmfirth, Skipton or Gisburn, for between £1,400 and £2,000.

There are not that many specialists like them, and the price of good heifers has held up a little more than the price of milk, thanks to everybody’s hope of better times around the corner.

The nature of the business means they are running a few more animals – up to 70 at a time – but they are smaller than the commercial milkers and do not eat as intensively. So the farm can meet the new NVZ requirements with its old slurry storage. The cattle are housed for winter but live mainly off grass and grass products all year, from the farm’s 115 acres – 70 owned, plus grazing rights on the moor.

For the time being, the business pays. But it would not do without Single Farm Payment. And Mr Hamer the Younger needs to work 18 hours a week for Kirklees Council as an animal health inspector, looking at catteries, kennels, pet shops and riding schools as well as farms. He has a degree in agriculture with animal science from Harper Adams College.

He is also an activist, politically and socially, in the Calderdale Young Farmers Club and, as cattle secretary for Halifax Show, vice-chairman of the West Riding NFU and a member of the NFU’s north-east livestock board.

There is no question about the issue of the moment. It is TB – suddenly and dramatically relevant in this part of Yorkshire, owing to a number of imported cases which have pushed Defra vets, at Animal Health in Leeds, into reclassifying a lot of parishes which were previously on four-year test intervals.

The Hamers expect they may be in a two-year zone very soon, as some West Riding farmers already are. The classification carries with it a requirement for pre-movement testing when animals change hands.

The Hamer in the NFU hat is not entirely unhappy about this. “There might be some advantages,” he says. “People are becoming very wary of buying from four-year zones, because that is where problems build up unnoticed. Pre-movement testing at least gives the buyer some assurance.

“I think Defra in Leeds are doing their best. I think it is up to farmers to try harder. They have to be much more cautious about what they buy in. And they have to do everything that is necessary to contain TB when it does turn up, even if that means taking out animals which are only under suspicion. If you want wildlife control, you have to deliver cattle control too.”

Key to the business he and his father are now in is the use of sexed semen, from Genus. It costs £50 a go but is worth the extra when it works. However, because it is a dilution of the natural thing, it does not take as easily. The Hamers will try it no more than twice before taking pot luck with full semen, which means they end up with half-a-dozen bull calves a year. They have been keeping them to fatten as stores but the bottom has dropped out of that market too, thanks to static beef costs and soaring feed prices.

Once again, the younger Hamer sees no alternative but to trust in government. EBLEX thinks it can find new export markets and there is no reason, he suggests, why British beef should not do as well as British lamb has done over the past couple of years.

Like a lot of farms in Calderdale, this one is harder than summer visitors would guess. The farmstead is at 800 feet and the grazing goes up to more than 1,000. No crop other than grass is practicable. The choice for farmers is between cattle and sheep and neither are going to grow easily.

The Hamers have developed an under-standing of the plight of the twite and are putting together an application for Uplands ELS on the basis of it. And they are hoping for a new Common Agricultural Policy which will value their land as a carbon sink.

“You have to recognise what people want and adapt what you do,” sums up one David Hamer. And the other agrees.

Call them on 0781 768 1286.