The Farmers Mart Jun-Jul 2019 - Issue 63 | Page 58

58 WILDON GRANGE
JUN/JUL 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk
SUN SHINES ON OPEN FARM
SUNDAY AT WILDON GRANGE
Chris Berry talks with
the Banks family
near Coxwold.
OPEN Farm Sunday continues to be one
of the countryside’s most important an-
nual events and has maintained a steady
growth as farming families embrace the
general public like never before, under-
standing the importance of imparting real
first-hand knowledge rather than letting
media hype generated by non-farming
people put a sometimes quite different
inflection on agriculture.
Brothers John and Roger Banks farmed,
since their teenage years, alongside their
father Cliff, who passed away ten years ago,
and are still together now having expanded
their dairy operation substantially from 340
cows to 600 and with a view to increasing
to 800 soon on the farm that runs to 1000
acres with wheat, barley and maize grown
in addition to grassland.
They dipped their toes in the water of
Open Farm Sunday in 2013 when they
assisted Roger Hildreth at his dairy farm
in Hessay and took the plunge with their
own the following year at Wildon Grange
between Coxwold and Kilburn. They are
now OFS regulars.
‘We’ve just completed our fourth,’ says
John’s wife Sally. ‘And what a day we had
with over 400 visitors. We had several cows
due to calve that weekend and some of
those who stayed until 4pm managed to
see a calving when one duly obliged. We’d
had a calving just before OFS started too.
We’d had a calving one year where we
had an audience of around 50 but with this
year’s coming at the end of the day I’m sure
there will be something like 375 at least who
will tell you they didn’t see a calving while
they were here!’
‘It’s always a fun day,’ says Charlotte, one
of Roger and his wife Angela’s two daugh-
ters. ‘People who come like to know when
the calves have been born and sometimes,
if we tell them the calf they are looking at
and stroking is just two days old they are
amazed at how big it is by then. Becky
(Charlotte’s sister) and I will show them the
calves and how we milk the cows in the
rotary parlour.’
The whole Banks family is involved in OFS
and many friends too. Roger tells of the
looks of glee on the faces of grown men as
they clamber the steps to sit in the cab of
the Claas Lexion combine harvester.
‘People love to see big shiny machines, but
to get to sit in them is something they really
get a lot of pleasure out of and it’s great that
we are able to let them in some cases fulfil
a dream. We’re also fortunate in having our
agricultural contractor Paul Roe who brings
his tractors and our good neighbour Maurice
Duffield who brings his vintage tractors. That
way people get to experience the old and the
new and how farming used to be.’
‘We also have the full support of Arla,’
says John. ‘They bring a team who talk
about our products and serve samples such
as Cravendale milk, cheese, protein pouch-
es, yogurts and milk shakes – and the Arla
tanker drivers bring the tankers too.’
One of the highlights has to be the
60-point Westfalia GEA rotary parlour that
can milk 300 cows per hour with a wonder-
ful part-time and full-time team. John and
Roger have no desire to milk more cows
than anyone else, they’ve simply gone for
the figures that make economical sense. In
order to get to 800 cows they will have to
extend their shed space.
‘The rotary parlour is so efficient it will
allow us to go up in numbers. We milk
three times per day and our cows are all