The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2019 - Issue 61 | Page 48

48 BRICKYARD FARM FEB/MAR 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk HERITAGE BREEDS LEAD THE WAY AT BESWICK CHRIS Berry talks Belties and Oxfords with Ed and Nicola Duggleby. Two large deep paella style pans waft beautiful aromas of slow cooked roast beef and lamb and their meat flies out at food festivals in Beverley, York and Malton. We’re talking Belted Galloway beef and Oxford Down lamb right now – heritage meats packing flavour like no tomorrow. Back home at Brickyard Farm, part of the family’s collective of Beswick Hall Farms, the arable concern that amounts to 500 of the 550 acre tenancy from Lord Hotham’s Dalton Estate still makes up the lion’s share of Ed and Nicola Duggleby’s farm income along with ducks raised on contract that sees six batches of 16,000 raised from day olds to 48 days and batches of 450 pigs on B&B from 30 kilos to finishing, but the sheep and cattle show the couple’s intent to hit new markets with premium produce. ‘We largely took over the running of the farm 12 years ago,’ says Ed. ‘Although my dad John is still the tenant at present. We have three holdings within the farming operation and pretty soon we will be at Low Farm which will make us closer to the livestock. We grow 250 acres of winter wheat presently with the varieties Revelation and Evolution and usually average around 4 tonnes per acre; winter barley for feed using the variety Glacier; spring malting barley that goes to Mortimer’s, oilseed rape, vining peas for Bird’s Eye, spring beans, oats and other break crops. Our land is a mix of loamy soil running down to Holderness clay and Carr land. We use the barley straw for the livestock and the rape straw is baled for the ducks.’ Countryside Stewardship schemes led to the Belties’ arrival at Beswick near Lecon- field in East Yorkshire. ‘We are six years into the HLS scheme, and we’d had ten years before that in Countryside Stewardship. It has seen us put in hedgerows, a wildflower hay meadow and putting in scrapes to encourage wading birds. The Bel- ties came because of a native breed payment for conservation grazing of heritage cattle and both Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Yorkshire Water have been very encouraging since we started with them six years ago. We’ve built up numbers accordingly on rough grazing, wet grasslands and work with Albanwise’s wetland scheme that is across 300 acres.’ ‘What we are aiming for with our beef and lamb is naturally reared, predominant- ly grass-fed heritage produce that exudes quality,’ says Nicola. ‘We’ve a butcher we supply who gets really excited about yellow fat. We like the Belties because they suit our climate that is very open, wet, cold and windy. We needed a beast with a good thick coat that could metabolise the rough grass and the beef is excellent.’ Ed and Nicola’s Belted Galloway herd now numbers 60 cows with around 200-head overall finishing as many as they can before 30 months although they won’t push them. ‘Sometimes we have to accept it will be a lighter carcases at below 30 months and we may lose out on cuts if they go over,’ says Ed who is now on the Galloway council. ‘We started with three bought from Worcester followed by eight from Castle Douglas in Dumfriesshire in 2012. We carried on buying and when Albanwise’s 300 acres was offered we stepped up to the stocking rate Natural England was looking for. We have three bulls. When we doubled the size of the herd we were fortunate that a herd in North Yorkshire was being sold.’ ‘I like to work with quiet stock and that’s one of the good things about bringing everything in at winter because I can spend all winter getting to know them. They start trusting your voice. They go out again in April. We split calving with half in October/ November and half in March/April.’ Recruitment Our clients are moving into the cloud We are now an official partner of Quickbooks, the leading online accounting platform and our clients are already feeling the benefits. Producing pigs for Pockmor; Farrowing house person, potentially manager, required for large family run business in East Yorkshire. Must be reliable, passionate about pig welfare and production and forward thinking. Jackson Robson Licence Chartered Accountants and Business Advisors JACKSON ROBSON LICENCE Chartered Accountants Driffield and Bridlington | 01377 252 195 | [email protected] Good package including a house available on farm for the right person. Please send your CV to [email protected]