The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2020 - Issue 67

62 HOME FARM FEB/MAR 2020 • farmers-mart.co.uk HORNY COW IS ATTRACTING PEOPLE TO WILTON Chris Berry talks with Richard & Lucy Lunn of Home Farm. UNDERSTANDING how to make the best of your markets has always been something farmers have embraced, after all, there’s little point growing something or rearing stock otherwise. Sure, there is a very noble feeling that all farmers love the countryside, breathing fresh air and caring for wildlife, but the crux of the matter has always been about being able to sell livestock for meat or to others for breeding; and grain and vegetables for consumption by animals of the general public. Farmers markets, farm shops and online sales have added to the farmers’ armoury for selling produce massively in the past two decades and among the latest to try their hand are the Lunns of Wilton near Thornton le Dale in North Yorkshire. Richard and Lucy are a young farming couple with three teenage offspring and they have shown how you can get started in the farm shop game without huge investment but with a fabulous catchy name. They have also made the most of their location, or rather the location of one of their fields. Home Farm, that’s not the catchy bit if you’re wondering, in Wilton is the base for their farming enterprise that ‘ up at the A170 we’re now getting people pulling over to have their photographs taken with The Horny Cow sign and our Highlands. Everyone loves a picture with a Highland cow ’ includes arable cropping and livestock across around 600 acres of which they own 150. It has been all-change at Home Farm in the past twenty years as they went out of milk cows in 2000, they married in 2002, the arable land is now contracted by Lucy’s family RE & A Dowson of Middleton near Pickering and Richard and Lucy now concentrate their efforts on livestock. Richard is a regular buyer of cattle at livestock markets, buying strong stores at 15-20 months that they then finish for Dovecote Park. The arable cropping is over 250 acres and includes winter barley, spring barley, winter wheat and fodder beet. ‘We are mainly livestock farmers,’ says Richard. ‘We have our beef fatteners but it is our suckler herd of native and rare breed cattle that has brought about the farm shop.’ Let’s deal with the catchy name at this point. This is where Lucy picks up the tale. ‘I didn’t want to call our farm shop Home Farm Meats as I didn’t think people would remember that. I wanted something catchy, that if you are driving along the A170 where we would have a sign you would remember it as you passed. That way you might remember it and maybe Google us when you get home, or someone else in the car could find out about it, or you could simply follow the directions and come straight to us.’ ‘We called it The Horny Cow, inspired by the horns of our Highland cows that now graze in the field on the A170 but also because of whatever that name brings to mind. I tell people now to be A & J Fencing Contractors For all your agricultural fencing needs Proud to supply Home Farm - wishing Richard & Lucy continued success For a great service at competitive prices call 07846 365542

The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2020 - Issue 67 | Page 62