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COLE SLAW MIXES, SOUPS, stew packs, fancy garnishes, red amaranth: these are not perhaps the kind of things you’ d associate with a farm set in the beauty of Harwood Dale near Scarborough- but that’ s only because you’ ve probably never visited Ellis Close Farm, where Phil Train runs one of the leading wholesale fruit and vegetable businesses in the area.

Every day his fleet of vans delivers to shops, pubs, hotels, schools, tearooms, restaurants and farm shops as far as Whitby, Bridlington, Driffield and Rosedale Abbey. Phil farms and loves his farming but it is the fruit and veg and ready prepared food that makes up at least 70 per cent of the income, employs a team of five and requires four vans on the road.

“ Some of the lads are from a farming background and one or two of them will muck in with the farm work too. We usually start around 5 o’ clock each morning with our prep list and pull all the orders together. We get a lot of them on the answer machine. We used to work out

of two old stone barns but we outgrew them and I had this new purpose-built building put up including a prep room. We now do a lot of ready prepared hand cut chunky chips and machine chips as well as still selling lots of potatoes.”

The Trains moved up from their 60-acre farm at Preston in Holderness in 1982. Phil’ s parents Arthur and Val, both now sadly no longer with us, had purchased the 150-acre farm in Harwood Dale on the basis that it offered greater potential than where they had scratched a living previously.

“ It was good land at Preston and we grew corn and quite a few vegetables including

cabbages and cauliflowers but mum had a brother up here who made dad aware that this farm was available. He came up and fell in love with it. I was just at leaving school age and my plan had been to go to Bishop Burton College. All of a sudden we came here and I never ended up going.

‘ I remember driving 50 miles in a Massey Ferguson 165 with a trailer load of stuff from there to here and it seemed like I was going to the other end of the world! I brought a load of old implements. Dad and I came up first so that we could sow, as it was spring. That plan was soon scuppered too as it rained solid for a month and we were

stuck in the bungalow that had no heating, but we soon got to know a few people by warming ourselves in the local pubs. We wanted to grow crops here but it’ s a grassland farm and the land wasn’ t what dad had been used to. It was quite a change and we moved on to livestock. We’ d had a few pigs in Preston but up here we went up to having 45 breeding sows. We also had about 60 Mule ewes, but store cattle was our main thing.”

Phil realised that another income stream was needed and he began wholesaling fruit and vegetables.

“ I used to deliver a few vegetables for dad just before that, and worked out that others we were delivering to were getting more out of it than us. I thought I could develop the business a little more by expanding the range and taking greater profit by selling direct to the outlets. It’ s grown from there to how it is today and now we’ re shifting probably as much as anyone else in the area, from what I’ m told. I gradually built up the

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also at: Malton Show, Aldborough & Boroughbridge Show, Driffield Show, Ryedale Show, Egton Show, Wensleydale Show, Stokesley Show & Nidderdale Show