West Shields Farm
Public still getting
food on the cheap
So says David Smith, host of this year’s North
Sheep, who gives his thoughts from Tow Law.
» » WHEN DAVID SMITH WAS 1500 ewes, predominantly produced from across having a cup of tea with his Mules that are bought in and 320 acres. father, John in the midst of with a couple of hundred being finding out their sheep had homebred Texels; and 300 contributor to the farm foot and mouth disease back mainly homebred suckler cows is energy. There are wind in March 2001, he could never largely out of an Angus bull, turbines, a biomass boiler that have imagined that some but with a few out of Shorthorn heats three houses and solar autumn from either Hexham
16years later, West Shields and Charolais bulls. Winter panels. Their biomass boiler is Mart or privately out of
Farm (situated between wheat, winter barley and spring fed by woodland on the farm as Northumberland. Ours are out
Satley and Tow Law in County barley is grown across around it has 160 acres of forestry. of the Scotch Blackface type
Durham) would have played 100 acres along with roots crops host to North Sheep in June, and two-thirds of the farm is scheme at the moment but Our fat lambs are sold finished
the largest gathering of sheep ploughable. Straw in the swath, we are under a woodland also through Hexham Mart.
farmers in the UK this year. protein, molasses and soya meal management plan and use Lambing usually starts in the
are the only bought-in sides all our home-grown timber, last few days of March for
1250-acre farm enterprise - of the farm, plus contracting processing it on the farm. a mid-May finish and we’ll
that includes South Shields services for spraying and The waste and dead wood generally have around 2200
Farm and West Carr Farm - sees hedge cutting, otherwise it is goes into the boiler as metre lambs on the ground each year.
the family partnership running a self-contained unit. Silage is length logs. We had already We buy the majority of our tups
been burning logs on log- from a farmer in Allendale.
Today, their approximately
The other significant
‘We are out of a stewardship
burning stoves previously but ‘Texels were brought in
when the payment scheme for because we felt the Suffolks
biomass boilers came up it was had lost a bit of ground. When
a no-brainer for us. Renewable I left school it was all Suffolks.
energies are providing us This is the first year we’ve
with an income and saving on lambed everything to the Texel
heating bills. We have a little tups. We tend to keep the Texel
wind turbine that powers our ewe lambs out of the Mule.
workshop. We also cut our own When we restocked after foot
fencing materials. and mouth we initially went
‘We’ve had Mules all my
64891 - VickersandBarass - QUTR.pdf 1 21/09/2017 13:28:53
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
V ICKERS
Chartered
with Scotch Blackface as they
life and we buy our ewe were handy to get but we soon
lamb replacements during became all Mules again.’
B ARRASS
Surveyors
01388730095
www.vickersandbarrass.co.uk
84 Autumn 2017 www.farmers-mart.co.uk
ewe rather than the Swaledale.
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