46 BANK HOUSE FARM FEB / MAR 2023 • farmers-mart . co . uk
THE BROOKE BOYS ARE DOING IT IN THE RAW
Chris Berry talks with Sam , James & Matt of Bank House Farm
“ I hadn ’ t drunk milk or milk products for years , as I couldn ’ t stand the taste , but your milkshakes are amazing , and visiting the baby cows is an added bonus .”
This is the kind of comment that Sam , James and Matt Brooke , dairy and arable farmers at Bank House Farm between Doncaster and Scunthorpe , or closer still between Thorne and Crowle , are now used to receiving . Good news about what their cows are producing and what they now sell by the roadside of the A18 .
And it is raw milk in which the Brookes are specialising and appear to have found their niche .
Matt , brother of James and uncle of James ’ son Sam , takes up the story of how it came about . Matt runs the dairy herd .
“ What happened was that during the first lockdown in April / May 2020 everybody was running scared of going into anywhere and wanted to simply pick up what they needed either from drive-throughs or somewhere where they didn ’ t have to come into direct contact with others .
“ We ’ ve a busy road going passed the farm and we ’ d had quite a few people come in , knowing we produced milk and ask whether they could buy it from us .
It was Matt and James ’ mum Mandy who set the ball rolling .
“ Mum said that maybe we should start selling it at the roadside . I spoke to Sam about it , we decided to get a fridge , buy some containers , put a sign up and start a trial . We went with raw milk mainly because we didn ’ t have to use a pasteuriser .
They also didn ’ t go with a dispensing machine for bottles