The Farmers Mart Apr/May 2015 - Issue 39 | Page 39

J C Lister Farms Proud to be supporting JC Lister Farms Limited With accountancy, tax and strategic business advice. Call Peter Molyneux on 01609 702000 E: [email protected] www.armstrongwatson.co.uk Grace has more plans including a playground and picnic area for families with small children and will also be putting on special farming attractions in line with farming’s seasons further to connect the farm and farm shop with the public. David Lister, Grace’s father, runs what has grown into a massive agricultural enterprise with his brother Richard. It currently sees them farming across 6,500 acres. The catalyst for where he and his brother have got to today started with their father, John. “My father moved to the 341 acres at Ellenthorpe Lodge as tenant on what is a Crown Estate farm in 1957. He had come from Hampsthwaite where his father was a dairy farmer milking Ayrshire and Friesian cows. When he moved he became a pig farmer but his big expansion came when his herd became the northern nucleus for PIC (Pig Improvement Company). He spent much of his life around that time taking pigs around the country, selling breeding stock and showing people the modern way to keep them. Father bought a farm at Zion Hill near Boroughbridge in 1965, took another tenancy on another Crown farm next door to Ellenthorpe and bought the field situated behind the farm shop in 1970. What he did laid the foundation of where we are today.” John Lister sadly died in 1972 when David was just 13 but the business carried on, thanks in no small part to David and Richard’s two uncles Joe Swires and Robert Chester. David studied at Writtle College and younger brother Richard at Newcastl