Farm of the week: A heady brew of success for one farming family

During the decades the family have practised pretty much every kind of farming you can think of, with crops, cattle and pigs all having been found at some point on Great Newsome Farm.

Today it is run by Laurence Hodgson and his sons Matthew and Jonathan, who between them represent the fourth generation of the family to farm there.

Today it is a mixed use cereals and pig farm, spread over around 1,000 acres alongside some contract work the pair take on around the area.

However, for the last four years Great Newsome Farm has also been home to a small but very successful brewery operation, with the brothers now brewing real ales which are being sold across Yorkshire and beyond.

Great Newsome Brewery was born out of the Hodgson family passion and support for real ale. Based in some old abandoned grain storage buildings it is now selling to pubs, clubs, retail outlets and supermarkets.

However, Great Newsome Farm very much remains an agricultural business.

"When my family took control here, like all farms at that time was mixed arable and livestock," Matthew recalls.

"At some point in the 1960s it specialised into poultry but this was phased out when the family decided to move into pigs. Around this time another farm was bought at Halsham."

The family stopped keeping cattle in the 1990s when mad cow disease reared its head and prices were down and concentrated more on the pigs and cereals.

"The arable side of things has grown over the years," he said. "Our main crops are wheat and oilseed rape but we also do some vining peas which go to Birdseye."

The farm is also home to some 4,000 pigs.

The brothers have worked hard to make their farm as successful as possible, turning to technology and science to augment production.

Recent experiments with the oilseed crop in particular have yielded good results, with alterations to nitrogen levels having resulted in what Mr Hodgson called "a fantastic harvest".

"The weather has been kind to us," he said. "The cereal crops have turned out really well."

However, like so many Yorkshire farmers, the Hodgsons began to look increasingly to other streams of revenue, as farming became more and more precarious.

Matthew said: "In the late 1990s, after we had gone out of cattle, cereal prices were not particularly great and we knew the return on pigs was very unreliable.

"We knew that with cereals we were always at the mercy of commodities. We began looking at ways we could justify the family being able to live and work on the farm."

The family's long-standing interest in brewing ultimately proved to be the key to success. "We looked at a number of things but the interest in brewing kept coming up again and again," said Matthew.

"My parents are really enthusiastic about real ale. We always took our holidays in this country and wherever we went they would seek out real ales from that place. In early 2000 ale started to become fashionable again and we started looking at it."

By 2006, an increasing growth in interest in both locally produced food and real ale convinced the Hodgsons to take the plunge and begin brewing their own ale.

With help from a grant from Defra and advice and guidance from the Growing Routes initiative, managed by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, the family were able to get their operation up and running.

Their first beer came off the production line in 2007 and the family have not looked back since. The beer is now sold widely throughout the Yorkshire region, with new markets in Lincolnshire being set up. Cask ales are sold to many public houses around the region with bottled ales being sold to farmers' markets and specialist outlets across Yorkshire.

A recent deal with Asda has also led to the ales being sold at 11 of their stores.

The business has proven a great success for the family. The first few months of this financial year have already generated more income than the first full year of business for the brewery. However, despite the success the operation remains very much a family business, with Mr Hodgson's mother handling much of the sales work for the beer and other members helping out at farmers' markets. Meanwhile Matthew's wife, Donna, plays a key role in the administrative side of the brewery.

Matthew said: "At harvest, most of the time is spent working on the farm and I am looking for any opportunity to get out on the tractor. At winter time it is not so busy.

"It was a shock to begin with and you end up realising skills you did not even know that you had before. And if you didn't have them, you learnt them pretty quickly. Hull is a large market on the door-step and we have places like Driffield to sell to."

The farm is even licensed so people can pass by to pick up a few bottles if they are in the area.

The brewery recently launched a seasonal beer for September which celebrates a migrant visitor to the farmland home of the business.

Wandering Wheatear is named after the wheatear, a small bird from the chats and thrushes family which passes through East Yorkshire at this time of year on its way to wintering in central Africa.

The farm attracts a wide range of wildlife, and is an ideal stopping off point for migrant birds.

"We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and the farm is part of the national ELS environment scheme," Matthew said.

"The result is a farm landscape alive with birds and the insects they feed on, both migrant visitors like the wheatear and other year-round inhabitants like barn owls, grey partridge and yellowhammers."