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he ’ s not done that with his first Fleckviehs .
‘ We will be serving all of our heifers with Fleckvieh and they will all get two servings of Fleckvieh before going to a beef breed on the cows , usually Limousin .’
Joe says he already has a useful source for his beef calves produced from the Holsteins . ‘ Our next door neighbour takes them from us at about 3 months for fattening on a barley beef system and sells in York livestock mart . He does pretty well with them as they are now , so hopefully we can do even better in the future .’
While close to 95 per cent of all milk produced at Red Lodge goes to Yew Tree Dairy the remainder is now sold as raw milk . Joe says he said to himself proudly ‘ we ’ ve arrived ’ when they started retailing at Red Lodge two years ago .
‘ We started by opening on a Saturday for 4 hours from 11am-3pm . We ’ d bottled it in 2-litre plastic bottles . I towed a cattle trailer on the back of my pickup to the top of our lane , opened a hatch , a bit like you would with a burger van and customers came ! I was soon selling 200 litres every Saturday and in three months we were at 600 litres .’
‘ We now open three days a week – Tuesday , Friday and Saturday . The Tuesday came about because customers were saying they couldn ’ t hold enough in their fridges , so could we open another day . Friday came about last year , because of Covid . We had become that busy on a Saturday that customers were queuing back to our electric gate from our timber lodge that we now trade
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from . We thought it would help and now we ’ ve picked up trade from people going away on a weekend who will come on a Friday instead of Saturday . It ’ s evened out the spread .’
Kate looks after the advertising on Facebook including lots of helpful information about raw milk and now the other produce that they sell .
‘ Originally our biggest customer base were people of Asian or Eastern European descent who already know what raw means because it is what they had been used to , unprocessed and natural . It is a big selling point . Customers of British descent have now
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switched on to it too , with its health benefits .’
‘ Our customers are very loyal . Once they find us they generally stay . We also deliver and have built up rounds over the weekend taking in Wakefield , Dewsbury , Bradford and Leeds . We go right up to Shipley and over to Shadwell .’
Joe and Kate are not about to put in vending machines as some milk producers have done in recent times . Joe tells why .
‘ We like the contact , because we are learning what people want . Customers will put in your mind what to supply next . Immediately we started we had questions about supplying eggs
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and we had a few hens , so we did . We soon had to get some more !’
‘ A local beekeeper approached us about having hives on the farm and producing honey . He looks after the bees and we now sell the honey . It ’ s all just happened , but it wouldn ’ t if we ’ d just put a vending machine in . We ’ re now selling bread as well , sourdough from a local GP who has set up a micro bakery . And we ’ ve an ice cream man who asked whether he could bring his van alongside our lodge . It ’ s all working well .’
Joe ’ s parents John and Gill are involved too , they handle all the calf feeding . Joe farms in partnership with his dad . Kate wasn ’ t
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from a farming family but she and Joe went to school together and they became an ‘ item ’ at 16 .
‘ I went to college to study beauty therapy ,’ says Kate . ‘ I became a mobile beauty therapist but came out of it when I was 25 . I came to live on the farm when I was 19 and never left . I love it and wouldn ’ t do anything else now .’
Joe and Kate have a daughter Jess ( 16 ) who has left school and is due to start studying agriculture at Askham Bryan College in September . Jess now works on the farm , bottles the milk and looks after the cows with her dad ; and a son Jacob ( 13 ) who is a natural with animals .
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