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.’
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