Ryan Howe

Matt Howe

FIFTY-NINE is a very significant number right now for the Howe family at Daisy Hill Farm , Flouch on the Yorkshire / Derbyshire Peak District border .

Arthur and Vera Howe came to Daisy Hill in 1959 , Arthur passed away at 59 years of age and his sons , who took over in their mid-20s , are either in their 59th year ( Andrew ) or 59 already ( Chris ).

“ Chris and I dived in at the deep end when dad passed away . We were 26 and 27 at the time ,” says Andrew . “ Now our sons Ryan and Matthew are around the same age as we were when we took it on , and they are now playing their part in the farm ’ s future , as well as our daughters Lauren and Rebecca and our wives Sally and Sue ”

Arthur and Vera rented the farm originally and then bought it outright in the 1970s . “ Over the past 15-20 years we have kept purchasing more land . We bought some of my father-in-law ’ s land down at Thurgoland which is a lot better than up here at The Flouch .

“ We now have 450 acres either owned or tenanted and grazing rights across 7000 acres of moorland in the Peak District National Park even though our farm itself isn ’ t in it .

The farm is a livestock enterprise of beef cattle and sheep with any arable crops grown to feed the stock , but Andrew says the larger proportion of the business revenue now comes from agricultural contracting , which has grown substantially in the past five or six years .

“ Chris ’ son Matthew is the driving force behind the agricultural contracting . We bought a secondhand Claas forager from a neighbouring farm around six years ago and as a measure of how far we have come we traded it in last year to afford a brand-new John Deere self-propelled forage harvester .

“ We are now working on 3500 acres of silaging and wholecrop ; we are muckspreading and handle all kinds of contracting . We ’ re also engaged with heather flailing to regenerate heather up on the moors .

“ Because of what we do now , and because we cannot afford downtime if machines go wrong , we try to keep all of our machinery as new as we can . We are always buying new kit . Sometimes it can be quite frightening , but the last thing we want is to ever let anyone down . Reputations take time to be gained and are very easily lost . We don ’ t intend that to happen .

“ I ’ m sure it looks to others like we ’ re doing well on the contracting side when people see us with new kit like the new John Deere self-propelled forager , which has been our biggest machinery purchase , and our Case Pumas , but we plough everything back in to improve ourselves even more .

The arable cropping on the Howe ’ s land includes winter wheat , winter barley and oats that are rotated with spring barley and turnips .

“ It ’ s all there to feed the cattle and sheep ,” says Andrew .

“ Everything we do is destined for the fat market . Our cattle operation is made up of 180 mainly Limousin X and Belgian Blue X suckler cows . We put the Limousin X to a Belgian Blue bull , of which we have two at the moment . One bull goes on all the Black Limousin X . We like black cows . A black one always seems to do well at market , but that ’ s not why we do it . A field full of black cows looks good .

“ We put the Belgian Blues to the Limousin bull . All of our heifers are put to an Aberdeen Angus bull for ease of first-time calving and they are also much livelier and up on the teat much quicker . They have a lot more about them .

“ Our bulls are all pedigree . We make a point of buying quality whether Limousin , Belgian Blue or Aberdeen Angus .

“ We also have the odd Simmental cow from a dairy herd that goes to the Belgian Blue bull .

“ We ’ re after cows with plenty of dairy about them and we keep all our own replacement heifers at the rate of around 25 a year . If we ever lose a calf off one of our sucklers we go to a neighbouring dairy farm and get a Limousin or Belgian Blue X heifer calf to go on to the cow . If it ’ s okay it will be retained for the herd .

“ We try to keep a three-quarter bred suckler cow and we keep a note of what the cows are having and giving in terms of milk for their calves . Continentals can sometimes run short of milk the older they get . That said we have cows in the herd that are 10-12 years old and some even older that are still doing a great job , but those that haven ’ t calved for 12 months will go .

“ Our main calving period is at spring stretching to summer although we do also calve some in autumn . Calves born earlier will spend all summer with their mother and we like to send them out for at least a second season on grass taking them through to finishing at anywhere between 18-30 months . Andrew says the game is all about achieving the right end result for a range of customers .

“ It ’ s all about getting the conformation and size to match the appropriate markets as we have different outlets for the different animals we produce .

“ We don ’ t generally go to livestock markets as we supply some good wholesalers as well as many other outlets including where my daughter Lauren works at a small butcher ’ s shop where we supply some really smart little heifers .

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