Farm Of The Week: Variety ends up as spice of the pub trade

To be a bit more precise, he has taken up the lease on The Bay Tree, a country pub with two chefs, a manager and eight or nine casual staff, in Stillington, a substantial village between York and Easingwold, in the heart of the Vale of York.

His grandfather moved into the area as a contractor and his father, Douglas, and uncle, John, got a foothold there, first renting, then buying, then dividing what they had. Mr Sparrow, christened John Douglas after the two of them, carried on with his dad, who died two years ago, under the business name he still uses, D H Sparrow & Son of South Farm.

When he finished college, they owned 90 acres and rented 270. Now, at 52, he owns 320 acres and works a total of 1250, under various arrangements. And he learned a while ago to spread his bets.

Until 10 years ago, the farm included 150 dairy cows. They were sold for the same reasons middle-size dairy herds are still being sold. “There are people still getting the same price for milk and costs have doubled.”

This farm had the advantage of a lot of space and buildings to shuffle around. It is well-provided with big sheds. “I like designing things,” says Mr Sparrow. “If I need it, I just draw it and get it built.”

Some of the shed space became bed-and-breakfast accommodation for pigs. He takes the muck and spreads it. In another corner of his holdings, he put up stables and set aside paddocks where Clare Tessyman runs livery for 17 horses. Through the horsey contacts, he has built up quite a big business in hay and haylage and in straw from his arable crops, which are the bedrock of the business. He grows about 600 acres of wheat, 200 of rape, 150 of barley, 30-odd of maize and 80 of grass for cutting. Some of the wheat was going to the Ensus ethanol plant on Teesside until it bowed out of the business earlier this summer, waiting for the equations between costs and green fuel prices to improve. But he is not too bothered by the hiccup, with grain demand as it is. As a bulwark against the ups and downs of the market, he does some storage for the big dealers, which helps pay for his barns, drier and weighbridge.

Since getting out of dairy, he fattens about a hundred store cattle a year. Beef is another business where the specialists have been complaining for some time. But as a sideline, he reckons it is okay - and picking up a little. He usually sells at Thirsk or York but he goes up to Ruswarp, near Whitby, a market not often spoken of in this part of the world, to do his buying. Otherwise, he is doing nothing unusual. But he is content if he gets £50-£100 a head profit. It is just another little way of diversifying and making use of his assets ... “I hate to see a man or a shed or a tractor idle.”

He is more or less self-sufficient in machinery and labour. Apart from muck-spreading, he and two full-time hands do everything. But with his two children pursuing their own careers, he found himself hankering for something else. “Buying more land at £8,000-£9,000 an acre just didn’t stack up and I was looking for something a bit more direct to people,” he says.

As it happens, his dad and uncle started with a lease on a pub in Stillington, The White Bear, and rented their first land off Sam Smith’s.

With an eye on the catering trade, he bought 30 Aberdeen Angus two years ago and added a small flock of Charollais-cross sheep last year. With a pig supply already waiting, the menu at The Bay Tree can say all its meat comes from the farm. It is slaughtered and hung by Richard Horner at Kilburn, 12 miles away, and brought back for butchering by head chef Pablo Bouza-Causier - born in Uruguay, raised in Majorca and settled in England through marriage to a Derbyshire girl. Pablo is growing herbs, tomatoes and lettuces. Mr Sparrow’s uncle supplies potatoes, from a neighbouring farm. Bread comes from Patta Cakes Bakery at Welburn. Chestnut Fine Foods of York supplies the rest of the veg. The fish comes from Hartlepool. Right behind the pub, as it happens, is the heart of the original farm and old buildings there have been turned into two four-star holiday cottages which overlook the sheep and feed custom into the restaurant.

“I don’t know where else in Yorkshire you can get quite this level of local sourcing in a restaurant meal,” says Bay Tree manager Debbie Bell. “And in an area where a lot of people are connected with agriculture, people do like it.”

Pablo the chef comments: “It is not as easy as just ringing the butcher, of course. You have to find a use for the whole animal. But that makes you think about the menu.”

So far, Mr Sparrow is reckoning the pub an outlet for three Anguses every two months, a couple of pigs a month and maybe four or five lambs a month in winter.

Talking to Pablo has already changed his practice. Last winter, for convenience, he finished some of the Anguses on maize and barley, along with the commercial-cross stores. But they could see the difference in the meat and he is going back to grass and silage only. Meanwhile, Pablo says the Angus meat is clearly superior to most supermarket beef anyway.

Mr Sparrow recalls a trip to Hungary, as guest of a grain company, where he met a rural tycoon who said he had completed his empire by buying the local pub. “I wasn’t thinking of it when I took the lease but I suppose it must have stuck in my mind,” says Mr Sparrow. “I always use local services because I believe you get back what you put in. And this is one way it can come back to you.”

He pays tribute to Northmead Developments of Stillington, for the building work they have done for him, and Langleys of York, the lawyers he uses through another local contact, Giles Scott.

Main course prices in the pub start at £10.95. For menu and Bay Tree Cottages details see www.baytreestillington.com/ Contact John Sparrow via 01347 811394.

• Does your farm have a story worth telling?

Email [email protected] or [email protected] or call 0113 238 8426 or 0113 238 8788.