|
eye candy but Chris stresses it is the educational aspect of what he and Sue provide that has proved extremely rewarding .
‘ Sometimes when schoolchildren are arriving they think what they are seeing are elephants when what they ’ re looking at is cows . That ’ s why bringing them here is great . They can see what cows look like for real .’
‘ It ’ s not always the kids that don ’ t know either . It ’ s the parents and sometimes even the teachers who you would expect to know . I had a lady on one of my tractor rides who asked at what age I determined whether a calf was male or female . It ’ s all quite frightening really , what people don ’ t know .’
This past year has been a difficult time . Easter is normally Hesketh Park Farm ’ s busiest time of the year and they have now missed two of them . The farm park opened in July 2020 to restricted numbers and a booking system , went weekends only during September and October ; and opened for October half-term before lockdown came again .
|
Since May they have been open again for weekends with cheaper admission prices because everything is currently outdoor . Various business grants have helped keep everything ticking over but , as Chris says , they have only stood still rather than move forward .
Chris , Sue and Tom farm in a farming partnership across their 600 acres tenanted from Bolton Abbey Estate .
‘ The sheep are the main livestock of our farm ,’ says Chris . ‘ We have 1100 breeding ewes . We did away with Swaledales and went on to just Mules . Then we started keeping the Texel gimmers out of the Mules and began using the Beltex tup on to the Texels . We are now mainly Beltex on to the Texels – and we buy-in 400 + Mules that we put to the Texel tup for our own replacements . We have 50 pure Beltex that we breed our replacement tups from .’
‘ Our Mules scan at 200 per cent and the Texels at 190 per cent . Lambing starts at the end of March and is all indoor . We were one of the first to go that way . All of our lambs , apart from replacements , go as stores
|
through Skipton Mart where we have a good following . We sell around 100 every fortnight from the first store lamb sale in the second week of July right through to Christmas .’
In this past winter Chris and Tom sent most of their ewes away on to stubble turnips on lower land around Wetherby , Boroughbridge and Lincolnshire , with them coming back a fortnight before lambing when they went straight inside .
‘ It was a new thing we tried this time . We sent around 800 , which saves on costs at our end and does some good for the farms where they go . Our sheep came back in really tip-top condition and lambed really well .’
‘ We were all concerned about Brexit and how the export market would fare . We did what we would normally do and all our lambs had gone by Christmas .’
The farm ’ s cattle operation is nothing like the scale it once was .
‘ Our suckler herd is now 30 cows which are Belgian Blue X Limousin put to the Limousin bull . All of what we do with
|
the cattle is really now for the public to see and learn . In addition , through the Hesketh Park Farm business we buy monthold calves through Skipton or Gisburn marts . The children feed them . We rear them to 20 months and sell back through Skipton as stores or bulling heifers .’
‘ Belgian Blues and Limousins fit the bill for being both excellent farming stock and good looking for the visitors . We bring in about 15 calves at a time and put around 60 through the mart each year .’
Pigs also feature as both a good-looking animal and as meeting a ready market .
‘ We have 15 Hampshire sows and the butchers seem to like their pigs . We like to have sows giving birth every three weeks so that we can show the different stages of sows with piglets through to weaners and when they are ready to go .’
Hesketh House is a grassland farm made for grazing of animals . Chris and Tom also produce silage . They go for one cut of around 100 acres and see what they have . They will usually go for a second cut of
|
perhaps 20-30 acres dependent on the grass growing on what they need .
‘ A lot of our top land is very rough and doesn ’ t suit the Mules but the Texels do pretty well there . The Mules go for the bottom land .’
‘ Tom now handles most of the farm work . We also have James , who lives in London and is a buyer for Sainsbury ’ s ; and Sarah , who is a buyer for Aldi in Leicestershire . Tom went to Harper Adams and worked for 12 months as an agricultural adviser for Harrison & Hetherington in Carlisle .’
‘ Coming up with Hesketh Park Farm enabled Sue and I to be able to put our children through university . Our attraction is now one of many great ones in this area including everything Bolton Abbey estate does , the camp site next door , walks next to the river , Billy Bob ’ s Ice Cream Parlour just up the road , Embsay Steam Railway and of course The Devonshire Arms .’
‘ It ’ s all a lot different from when my great grandfather John Geoffrey Heseltine first came here in 1926 .’
|