COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING
life
Above: One of Tonys finest specimens.
support them. We finish selling last year’s
lambs in March and we don’t start to sell
this years’ until August, but the bills keep
coming in. I now have to find £1000 to pay
for Blue tongue vaccine.”
Tony started farming with his wife
Sarah’s father, Robert. “Robert managed
the things that grew standing still while I
managed the things that ran around and
grew.” Robert’s death two years ago meant
some hard thinking was needed. Then,
wheat was just £60 per tonne so the arable
machinery was sold and Tony committed
to expanding the sheep flock. Now the
wheat price has tripled. “It was still the
right decision; people eat meat as well as
bread, and the land needs the fertility that
only stock can provide.”
Meeting Tony, you realise that farming is
as much cerebral as muscular. The mental
juggling is constant. At 39 he is unusually
young to be a farmer. He enthuses about a
mobile sheep pen that has revolutionised
his life, yet he is as cynical as any wizened
old farmer about the paperwork that
accompanies his every activity both on
and off the farm. “Nine separate pieces of
paper are required before I can load the
lorry with sheep. Just give me a certificate
in common sense!”
With the paperwork go the costs.
Obtaining a sheep health accreditation
www.wightfrog.com/islandlife
cost £4500 last year, but this will allow
him to put his sheep in front of buyers
at the Breed Society sales at Exeter,
Ross-on-Wye and Carlisle, where he hopes
they will be worth a bit of extra money.
Tony’s last sale trip last Autumn was
jinxed by a sheep trade decimated by the
Foot and Mouth outbreak. He brought
half the sheep back home, unsold.
The 2001 outbreak of Foot and Mouth
caused a similar crash, so the family got
involved in Farmer’s Markets and direct
selling. “We made a large disaster into
a slightly smaller disaster,” he says. But
the time and money spent selling direct
isn’t cost effective, although as a learning
exercise it has been invaluable. Now, as
Tony says, “we don’t sell lamb, we let
people buy it.”
Instead he concentrated on building up
his flock. And for all that the stock are
related to the money they bring in, Tony
dotes on his pretty, whiter-than-white
Lleyns. “I think they’re fascinating
creatures. They’re a bit like me: stubborn
and independent.”
Hill Farm Lamb is available in boxes.
Call Tony on 01983 527138.
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