'It can be amazing what you see in a morning, specifically at some of the times we’re up and about'
Getting up at 1.30 in the morning is nothing fresh to Hovingham-based Christina Dunn or her father Stuart, but what is fresh is the milk they deliver to the villages and hamlets between Hovingham and Helmsley and although starting out as simply a means of making ends meet, this lady who has always lived within a few miles of where she was born admits it’s a job where she’s very much at home.
Although starting out as simply a means of making ends meet, this lady who has always lived within a few miles of where she was born admits it’s a job where she’s very much at home
“When I took over the round of milk deliveries, newspapers, other dairy produce, eggs and potatoes it was very much because I needed a job, something flexible to work around my daughter Jess, who was 7 at the time and Tom who was 4.
“They used to come with me on deliveries and my customers have seen them grow up. I’d always said I’d give up the round when they got to secondary school, but then I had Joe, so I now need to be flexible for him.
“But I now sometimes ask myself what I would actually do differently because I love working outside, I couldn’t be tied to an office or work inside anymore and I do like seeing the people that I see and running my own business here in a wonderful part of the world that I also love and where I’ve lived all my life.
Christina says her connection with milk goes right back to when she was a child.
“I’m originally from Coneysthorpe near Castle Howard just a few miles from Hovingham and I spent lot of time with my grandparents at Scackleton Grange where I used to help my granddad milk his cow by hand, and we’d then then take its milk into the house to run through the separator ready for drinking.
“So, I’ve been delivering milk nearly all my life, originally for a handful of people and now to 500 customers.
“My dad took on the round from a family friend of ours Andy Mennell in June 2009 and I started by doing some office work for dad and then started helping with deliveries with Jess coming along in the van. When dad decided it was too much for him my then husband Malcolm and I took it on together in 2010.
Christina has been running it on her own since 2015 and her dad now works three days a week.
“We’re out six days a week. We have Sundays off. We do three big days with milk deliveries and newspapers, starting at 3 o’clock in the morning til 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We have an early section where we only deliver the milk and second section where we deliver the newspapers as well, the arrival of the newspapers dictates the time.
“We’ve always had about 500 customers, word of mouth seems to get round when one leaves and another comes on. We really took off during Covid. I was getting 40-50 calls a day of people wanting us to deliver and we probably could have trebled the milk round but I just decided it wasn’t feasible and stuck with what we had. I’d just had a baby, I had two kids at home, was trying to home school them. We did gather a few more customers in villages where we already went.
Christina says that the largest type of milk she delivers is now semi-skimmed and that she has noticed quite a development in the requirement for other than cow’s milk in more recent years.
“About 60-70 per cent of our milk is now semi-skimmed, although we do see times when patterns change a little on ‘doctor’s orders’. We also seem to have more people who have allergies and want oatmilk, lactose-free or goat’s milk. We’ll supply it all. We get about 95 per cent of our milk from Dales Dairies in Grassington and organic milk from Gillamoor Organics just up the road from Hovingham.
“We deliver either glass or plastic bottles. Glass has gone quite big since Covid and we now deliver near on 800 glass pints but some people who went back to it then realised they found a plastic bottle with a handle a lot easier.
Christina says the range of other produce delivered is typical milkman/milkwoman fare.
“We deliver the always favourite, fresh traditional orange juice in glass bottles which is still a very popular product, but we’ve also just added new juice flavours in glass to our lines including peach iced tea, cloudy lemonade and grapefruit.
“Our eggs come locally from Johnsons of Terrington. Farmer Paul Johnson delivers them directly to us. We deliver butter, cream cheese, double, whipping and single cream and yogurts all from Longley Farm in Holmfirth; and we have potatoes from another well-known local farmer Pete Stark from The Wall in Coulton.
Christina’s newspaper deliveries mainly include the Yorkshire Post, Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Guardian and the Daily Mail, plus the weekly Malton & Pickering Gazette & Herald.
“We sometimes have our own local news too,” says Christina. “As, in common with other milkmen and women we end up being a community neighbourhood watch.
“It can be amazing what you see in a morning, specifically at some of the times we’re up and about.
“Malcolm found somebody that had died, just by noticing curtains that hadn’t moved for a few days; we’ve had a few people that have fallen that we’ve helped, and when we’ve come across poachers or people being where they shouldn’t have been we’ve reported them.
Christina says another aspect of her business changed dramatically at the time of Covid.
“Up until Covid we were still very much still cash and cheques but that was the time when the world seemed to change over to paying by BACS and now over 90 per cent comes that way.
Christina also has her own community sponsorship involvement in her home village as she donates free milk to the Hovingham Farmers Market café every month.
“It’s not a bad life, delivering to so many lovely people.