Long-running saga of real farming life

IN 1965, four Yorkshire farmers were invited to contribute in turn their first-hand working experiences for a new colum we would call The Year Round. Reflecting the diversity of the Yorkshire agricultural scene, we had lowland arable, Wolds cereals, hill sheep farming and West Riding producer-retailer. An intensive pigs and poultry farm was added later. Two of today's team inherited the contributor's baton from their fathers.

I was a freelance countryside writer farming at Fair Hill, Bilsdale, north of Helmsley in the North York Moors and I was given the job of organising it all. The formula was for me to telephone the farmers early in the week, ready for Saturday publication. Mostly this worked okay but there were some hiccups. I recall reporting that one farm, "White Smocks", would be drilling spring barley the following day, only for a sudden overnight snowfall to delay sowing for a fortnight.

Despite the caution I learned from that experience, there have been other reminders that the weather and machinery breakdowns can upset the "best laid schemes o'mice and men".

The fundamentals remain constant. Nothing is included that might affect the business adversely, though one of the main planks of The Year Round is the admission of errors made, including financial ones.

The sharing of setbacks is part of the appeal of the column. In my farm worker days, problems were seldom mentioned in press reports. I was an avid reader of the very limited agricultural magazines of the time, and came to the conclusion that I must be working on some poor farms, as something was always going wrong on them.

Then I moved to a leading Ayrshire herd, featured regularly in the press, but with never a mention of the difficult calvings, fertility problems and disagreements with staff which were part of everyday life. This made me realise my former farms were pretty typical after all.

Until recently, the longest serving contributor was Dick Addison of "Friar's Hagg" – in reality West Stoney Keld Farm in the North Pennines at Bowes, near Barnard Castle. Dick, who died aged 88 in late summer, received a long service award from the Yorkshire Agricultural Society in 1996 and continued almost to the end. He was one who watched the weather as keenly as any sailing ship's master. His three square miles of moorland grazing, three miles from the steading and home pastures, is a place where the sudden storm can wipe out droves of sheep in a single night.

The sheep are "hefted" on to their own areas of grazing, which means their homing instincts are harnessed by their shepherds, so they live without fencing. Hefting has been practised by generations of hill farming families, but is seldom understood by the rest of the world. "To generalise about lowland farming is foolish; to generalise about hill farming is criminal," said a Lakeland farmer, George Wilson, and we will continue to give readers an insight into this way of life. Candidates to replace Friar's Hagg are now being trialled.

WHITE SMOCKS is a 76-acre intensive livestock holding in the Northallerton area – Mount Pleasant Farm in real life. It nowadays carries neither sheep nor cattle but soil fertility is well-maintained by manure from 210 breeding sows, their offspring to bacon weight, and 30,000 laying birds, producing eggs for hatching for the broiler business. Ken and Betty Donald married in 1959, and bought the farm with 37 acres, house and buildings. Ken had worked on his father's tenanted holding and did many improvements. This made him determined to own his own place, however small.

By 1969 the acreage had grown to 45, with 40 breeding sows, 3,000 laying poultry and 100 sheep. Buildings and facilities were constantly improved, and new projects successively planned. Ken and one man did all the work. Son Colin has since taken over a lot of the farm work and responsibility for the Year Round contributions. After he and Ken went to a European Poultry Show, they decided they needed automatic egg collection and the sheep were sold to help finance the investment, in 1991. In more recent times, a major investment in a new poultry shed has been a theme of the farm's reports.

Young pigs all go as baconers to the factory, apart from a regular supply to the local farm shop, which the Donalds regard as a boon. Customers appreciate knowing where the produce comes from and the family enjoys selling meat to a high standard. All sows are home-bred, using artificial insemination, from hybrids based on Large White and Landraces blood.

The main worry at the moment is the variable cost of soya bean meal, needed for both pigs and poultry.

CW 30/10/10