The Farmers Mart Dec-Jan 2019 - Issue 60 | Page 52

52 STAMFREY FARM
DEC/JAN 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk
Get your running
shoes on and
enjoy Stamfrey
Farm’s latest
Chris Berry talks YORG with Sam and Angus Gaudie.
RUNNING has become a major participa-
tion sport and having been similarly hooked
as millions of others I now appreciate stuff
like energy and recuperation drinks before
and after a run. At the Run For All events
held throughout the north of England that
include marathons, half marathons and
10Ks one of the pre and post race features
is the proliferation of milk based drinks and
now drinkable yogurts.
Sam Gaudie of Stamfrey Farm, West
Rounton near Northallerton has come up
with a drinkable yogurt marketed under the
name YORG from his family’s organic dairy
farm that I have to say has a great consist-
ency and tastes delicious, so much so that
when I visited I mentioned that Sam should
get involved in providing it for running
events.
Sam’s parents Angus and Sue started
their diversification from producing purely
liquid milk in 2003 when clotted cream pro-
duction was added and they started with
yogurt back in 2008. It is Sam’s return to
the farm that has brought about drinkable
yogurt in bottles rather than the yogurt pots
his parents used until earlier this year.
‘There was nothing wrong with the yo-
gurt,’ says Sam. ‘Mum and dad won a Great
Taste Award in their first year of production
and we won it again this year with our
new drinkable yogurt. At present we have
raspberry and original yogurt flavours but
others will be added. We’ve also recently
started supplying Morrisons.’
Angus and his brother Robert, who was
working with him at the time, converted
the dairy farm over to organic between
1999-2001.
‘Our father Martin thought we were
doing the wrong thing, but he was fabulous
and just let us get on with it,’ says Angus.
‘At that time the organic movement was
gathering momentum and the whole ‘food-
ie’ thing was on the up and care for live-
stock was high on the agenda. I stopped
registering pedigree Holsteins in 2001 as I
felt the breed wasn’t best suited as a graz-
ing animal. I wanted something smaller that
could graze better and so we’ve almost
come full circle back to his original type.’
‘Dad had started with Friesians in the
1960s after buying the farm in 1963 and
originally having run a menagerie of chick-
ens, turkeys, beef cattle, sheep and pigs as
well as arable land across what was then
138 acres. Having quickly realised he wasn’t
making any money he chose specialism in
dairying.’
‘Today the farm runs to around 300 acres
with around two-thirds of it owned and is
all down to grass. We rent or contract farm
what we don’t own. We have a herd of 150
milkers that have involved quite a bit of
crossing. Initially when we went organic
I crossed the Jersey with our Holsteins to
reduce their size and then I have used a
combination of Norwegian or Swedish
Reds and Friesians. Our beef calves leave
the farm at between 8-12 weeks with
Friesian bull calves sold to a neighbour and
Aberdeen Angus X calves to another local
farmer.’
‘Our cows are now small in comparison
to the big Holsteins and average around
6000 litres per year. Our Holsteins aver-
aged 8000-8500 and were never extreme.
We give them as little concentrate as we
can and we push them to achieve what we
need. Last year they grazed from February
until November, but it all depends on the
weather. We brought them in at the end of
November this year, which helped be-
cause with the hot summer we’ve had we
will be really short of forage.’
Angus is an advocate of the New Zealand
grazing style as followed by other dairy
farmers in Yorkshire.
‘I’m a bit of an anorak when it comes to
being analytical about grazing and im-
proving figures and quality. I’m in a grazing
group with James Waterhouse at Fourth
Milestone Farm near York. There are eleven
in the Yorkshire Grazing Group and we are
known as the Yorkshire Plonkers because
we have a measuring tool that measures
the amount of grass in each field.’
‘Every arable farmer knows exactly the
tonnage he gets from his fields. We’re trying
to bring more technology and maths into
grassland farms. I’ve learned so much and
measuring and monitoring the grass we
produce has been successful as what we
have done since has shown an increase. We
started looking at new methods four years
ago and results have been largely very
pleasing apart from this year’s dry spell,
which knocked us back.’
Having come back to the farm in 1987 at
22 years of age and having increased cow
numbers from 80 to 100 there were plans
at one time to go to 250 cows while Angus’
brother was involved.
The liquid milk leaving the farm all goes
to OMSCO and attracts a price that is fairly
stable of around 40ppl.
‘We’ve been very fortunate. OMSCO does
a really good job of marketing the milk and