‘ Proud to be associated with Trevor Hodgson & Marfit Head Farm ’

T . ELSEY TYRES LTD “ TYRES MALTON ”

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4.8 per cent butterfat and 3.5 per cent protein . They average around seven lactations and are not pushed . My main concern is that they calve from May to the end of August as we need that fertility and I don ’ t want to be calving in winter because of pressure on shed space and increased possibility of disease .

“ We have Hereford , Charolais and Friesian bulls and surplus calves go at

5-6 weeks , mainly to Andrew Fletcher in Goathland and Tom Turnbull in Marton . Trevor has gradually increased his farmed acreage .

“ We own 340 acres , 240 of them here at Marfit Head and another 100 acres at Great Habton that we bought in 2013 to make silage and wholecrop . In 2016 we started renting another 500 acres behind us . We grow wholecrop , spring barley

or wheat , going around the land with wholecrop and then reseeding .

“ We are freshening up our fields that have had cows and slurry on regularly to try and rid the land of compaction and weeds .

Trevor grows around 80 acres of arable crops each year and this year that has been 20 of spring barley , 30 of oats and 30 of beans . He moves the arable block around and puts in more red clover .

“ It ’ s a simple rotation - one arable crop and then straight back down to grass and then it can be grass for 20 years . We try to grow what we can to keep down feed costs , but ideally , I ’ d just like to be grass .

Currently , as for all dairy farmers , the milk price has never been as good but with increased fuel and fertiliser costs rising exponentially Trevor says it need to be even higher .

“ We ’ re at 43-44ppl and talk is of it going even higher in the coming months , but increased costs means we need that to

get to 52-53ppl to be able to reinvest the way we have to .

“ Fuel costs last year here were £ 21,000 and this year in the first six months I have already spent £ 14,000 just on red diesel .

Nonetheless , Trevor is happier than he was a few years ago when he felt that his dairy farming days were coming to an abrupt end as the milk buyer he had been supplying went belly up .

“ It was a small dairy in Wakefield which sold to schools . It was a good idea but when it went we were in very real danger of losing everything . It nearly put us under . I was culling cows that I would have culled the following year just to pay the bills and we went down from 420 cows to just 200 . I had 240,000 litres of milk go into the slurry pit until Carl Woodcock of Yew Tree Dairies in Skelmersdale was mentioned to me .

“ Without Yew Tree Dairies I ’ d have been finished . We ’ re now back to 420 cows . It ’ s much better than it was .

“ My dad always said , in his latter years ‘ I don ’ t know when it ’ ll happen , lad , but some point you ’ ll see milk catch up ’ and now it ’ s finally moving . In all my time we ’ ve always seen it move up , when it has , by no more than 1ppl . In the past nine months it has started moving by 3-4ppl . It ’ s about time .

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