REALLY productive big fields for arable crops and fantastic grassland means that East Riding farmer Mark Flint is able to combine the growing of wheat , oilseed rape and roots crops with grazing of the ever more popular Wagyu cattle at Cawkeld Farm , which is situated between Middleton on the Wolds and Hutton Cranswick .

Mark farms around 725 acres at Cawkeld and a further 100 acres at Bugthorpe near Garrowby , land that staddles both sides of the Yorkshire Wolds . It was his mother ’ s father Thornton Ibbotson who bought Cawkeld in the 1950s .

‘ My grandfather was quite a wellknown farming innovator . He introduced clay marling , mixing clay with sandy soils , to allow land to be more moisture retentive and more productive for all kinds of crops .’

‘ We moved here when I was a teenager . My dad , Brent , had married Jillian ( Ibbotson ) and farmed the farm at Bugthorpe , which is where I was born . I ’ ve lived in the same two houses at Bugthorpe and here at Cawkeld twice . ‘ I hadn ’ t seen myself farming until I went through 6th form and studied for my degree at Newcastle University , as I had thought we would just be farming at Bugthorpe and it didn ’ t seem like it would be a big enough operation for me to build a career . I had trained in agricultural engineering .’

‘ But living at Cawkeld in my teens saw me fall in love with this place . When my wife Diane and I married we lived at Bugthorpe , but when my parents moved out of the farmhouse here at Cawkeld we moved back here with our daughter Charlotte and son James . That was 25 years ago .’

‘ Di is from Melbourne , near Pocklington and her father Dick Watson was a student here at Cawkeld in the 1960s .

Most of the land at Cawkeld is ideal for arable cropping and Mark tells of wheat

and oilseed rape being two crops that can grow really well .

‘ We are just off the Wolds and we are on to some heavier lands this side of Middleton on the Wolds . This year we have 400 acres of winter wheat , which will have been harvested by the time people read this article , with half of the acreage grown for seed for Frontier Agriculture which is based about a mile and a half up the road . The seed wheat varieties in the ground this year were Wolverine , a yellow dwarf resistance variety and Gleam .

‘ Our feed wheat variety this year was Gravity . Our sensible aim on yield is around 4 tonnes per acre and that ’ s what we achieve in a decent year . Mortimers are really good at finding local and specific markets , such as for pet food . I ’ d hate to say what last year ’ s average was and we are still recovering from the effects of it , but things are always up and down in farming .

‘ Everything has its advantages and disadvantages . The late spring and early summer prices of around £ 200 per tonne for wheat was down to the bad weather around the world .

Mark believes in trying to keep his wheat as free from blackgrass as it is possible . He operates what he terms as his HTB policy .

‘ HTB is underused but it means you ’ ve got the ‘ Hate the bastard ’ so much that you will do anything to get rid of it . If you ’ re going by on a sprayer and see a blackgrass plant you have to be prepared to stop , get out of the cab and pull the blackgrass out . It ’ s the only way to get total control .

‘ You can ’ t do that if there are thousands of plants because the only thing that can help you then is chemicals , but they still won ’ t get rid of it all , so you have to keep going back , looking and checking – and HTB completely . We do a lot of walking

up and down crops and pulling out of the blackgrass . The effort to pull one plant out is always well worth it .’

Oilseed rape was a crop Mark started growing in the late 1980s and his rotation includes the wheat , vegetable fields and oilseed rape fields .

‘ We operate on a six-year rotation of two wheats and a break crop of either oilseed rape , potatoes or sprouts giving us a cycle of two wheats , oilseed rape , two wheats and then vegetables .’

‘ I approached the East Riding ’ s leading sprouts man John Clappison and he deals with everything regarding the sprouts except a bit of irrigation I do if they are looking a bit dry . We are blessed with our lovely lake for our irrigating . The potatoes are our own and this year we are growing the variety Innovator for chipping for AKP – Arundel Kerr Produce .’

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