The former tractor factory manager who now farms in Yorkshire and sells his own meat

Nick said he thought retirement had beckoned early after a successful business career that started in tractor manufacture and eventually saw he and his American business partner sell their consultancy business that helped streamline others to success.

“The idea when we sold the business was to retire but here I am today, ten years into farming. I’m now looking at how I might semi-retire.

“The reason I still wanted to farm was that I’d never figured out how to apply the principles of lean management to farming, that were practised by Toyota and other companies, and that my business partner Ed Constantine and I had extolled in other industries.

“We had worked closely with the Ministry of Defence, where it was reported in the RAF national audit that the Harrier jet production line overhaul where we had consulted had made savings of £1.2b.

“People say you can’t make any money off a 100-acre farm. I wanted to prove that you could, and we have done so using some of the lean principles.

Nick said his university studies were the nearest he could get to farming without doing so.

“I started at David Brown Tractors in Meltham. They sponsored my degree studies. When they were taken over by Case I moved to their Doncaster base at Carr Hill where they made gears and shafts for the Case Magnum and became production manager of 350 people. I worked in Europe which brought me in contact with Ed who had introduced the lean principles brought about by Toyota, to other businesses. The company we worked on together was called Simpler Consulting.

“Around the time we were selling the business I started buying land, initially 20 acres. I took advice from my cousin who is still dairy farming in Lancashire. Two years ago we bought Smaque Farm just a few miles from where Deb and I originally set up farming at Curlews House.

“We now farm around 110 acres with a small acreage at Curlews and rent 12 acres around Smaque where Ben lives. Ben has a full-time job selling Unimog tractors with South Cave Tractors. His passion is farming, which he does on evenings and weekends.

“We currently have 35 cattle at any one time and grow wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape as well as having 16 acres down to grass for grazing.

Nick said he has used the principles of lean management to create a viable, profitable farming business, but that he has also learned from farming industry specialists.

“Lean principles are what drive efficiency, getting as close as possible to what is called one-piece flow.

“In farming and manufacture people normally deal in big batches. In most cases an animal can pass through several different hands from when it is born to when it is consumed. The idea is to take on as much of that value stream.

“I attended a presentation where it was said the more you can shorten the time raising cattle and expending less energy put into feeding, the more efficient you become.

“Our cattle have about a 15-month lead time from being born to going into the food chain. What we had to figure out was how you can have a farm where you process one beast a month. What it means is that you have to buy one calf a month and have to keep putting them in at one end of the chain at the same rate you’re taking out the other which can be difficult because if demand shoots up you’ve that 15-month lead time before you can react to that demand change.

“We now have 35 cattle at every age group from two weeks old. We used to buy two calves every other month but around 15 months ago I started buying two calves a month. We buy dairy cows’ calves that have been put to an Angus bull.

“They are grazed rotationally in summer and in winter we feed them on ad-lib barley that we produce ourselves.

Nick said one of the principles of Middleton Meats is low food miles.

“We use a local processing facility Mounfield in Bubwith and Rob Raper handles our butchering.

“Our latest new venture is selling direct from the farm via a small shop. We opened eight weeks ago with a locker box machine and a conventional vending style machine. The reaction has been phenomenal. 23,000 people saw it on social media. It adds to our existing offering of boxed beef with vending for such as a bag of mincemeat or a couple of steaks for tea.

“Mounfield is also a high class bakers and so Rob brings pasties and sausage rolls for the vending machine. Having complimentary products is also attracting more people to come.

“Deb is responsible for the butchery products and all packaging of meat and puts the orders together, and in summer preparing harvest meals for farmers whose staff wanted something more wholesome than takeways. Deb’s passion is cooking and the vending machines are also giving her a new outlet in making her own pies.

Growing cereals has led Nick to apply similar lean management principles, taking the crop to animal feed on the farm, and selective targeting.

“We’ve deliberately aimed at smallholders and we have got to stage where everything we are growing on the farm is going out in 20 kg bags.

“Ben and his partner Amber drive that part of the business. We sell oats, wheat and barley all either rolled or whole.

Finding new ways of doing things is where Nick’s production management career came in again.

“There’s a method called ‘Seven Ways’. You get a group of people and they come up with ideas of getting a product from its original, raw state to finished state. Normally people think of two or three ways easily, by the time they reach idea five they are struggling, but by idea seven you get really inventive ideas.

“Myself, Ben and a friend tried this in a pub one night to design our way of rolling barley to a feed. What we came up with actually cost us very little.