The Farmers Mart Jun/Jul 2014 - Issue 34 | Page 33

WOOD FARM

YORKSHIRE’S LEADING MULTI AUCTION CENTRE

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We are proud to be suppliers to Claire & Helen at
Wood Farm and wish them continued success for the future
his final decisions was that
they were going to get out
of dairying as it was going
through another bad patch at
that time; but Helen decided
she wanted to carry on with
them when Nigel sadly passed
away and, in fact, she only
gave up milking in 2005.
“We had three children,
Claire and her brother and
sister, and they were all
doing different things,” Helen
explained. “So I did worry
about what would happen to
the farm when Nigel passed
away of course. But I was too
young to sell it and I actually
didn’t want to either. None of
our children was married at
the time and I felt that - if and
when they did marry - there
may be another generation
that might want to farm, so I
carried on.”
Claire had helped on the
farm when she was younger.
She started up a catering
business after studying
at Harrogate College, but
the lure of the farm and
the prospect of running it
alongside her mum proved too
strong.

WOMEN IN A
MAN’S WORLD
“I’d always fancied farming
and love working with cattle
so I joined mum on the farm in
1997,” she said. “It’s not easy
and we do get a bit of grief
because we are women in a
man’s world but we’ve always
been of the opinion that you
can’t rely on others - which is
why we’ve maintained a handson approach.”
Helen’s own father was a
farmer in Flaxton so she knows
just how the tough the job can
be. She is full of admiration for
the way Claire has embraced
so much of the physical work
that also takes up so much
time.
“Claire turns her hand to
anything - whether feeding up
the cattle, bedding them down,
putting our own feed mix
through the mill, vaccinating
the cattle, weighing barley,
driving a tractor, baling,
ploughing, power harrowing,
she does the lot,” she smiled.
Wheat varieties being grown
this year are Santiago, Duxford
and Grafton across 160
acres.

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07970 805370

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Nev Kirby
07970 80536