CHRIS Berry talks with Sharon Shepherdson of Grindale and Bempton

Sometimes running one farm in one area is challenging enough but running two , although not too far apart , has its own inherent problems . Getting to and from is one thing , dealing with different land types is another and then , when your land is situated close to and not far from the sea you have varieties not just in soil but climatic and marine conditions to cope with .

Sharon Shepherdson and her brother James Thompson farm at the 370-acre East Leys Farm in Grindale near Bridlington and another 200 acres adjacent to the RSPB reserve at Bempton , which their father John Thompson bought in 1991 and that Sharon describes as quite a slow bit of land sticking out into the North Sea .

“ My granddad , Fenell Winter Thompson was at The Grange , Flamborough , which was where my dad was brought up ,” says Sharon . “ Dad had an older brother called George who also farmed at The Grange and in 1963 they bought East Leys at Grindale for my dad John .

“ They split up in the 80s and sold the dairy herd that had been at Flamborough . Since the early 90s we have been trading as partners in JE Thompson Farms . The farm partnership had become between my mum Jean , dad and James , but had then become a partnership between my mum , dad & myself until last November , when we lost my mum .

“ I ’ d gone off to college to get my degree and took up a proper job for a while . James then quit the farm , so I came back in the late 90s and he came back when I was pregnant with son Tom in 2005 .

“ The partnership is still my father and me at present , but it is really now James and myself running it . Dad had a major stroke in 2008 .

“ I ’ d always wanted to farm . I got a degree in horticulture and crop management technology . I then went to Levington Agriculture near Ipswich , coming back in my late 20s .

“ When I came back they had been growing wheat , spring barley for seed , winter barley and sugar beet , but not long after I came back we stopped growing seed barley . We were also given the option to sell the sugar beet quota early , before the York factory closed .

Sharon tells of how today ’ s cropping has moved on .

“ We ’ ve had a recent change around and this is the third year since winter wheat was a major crop . We decided to put continuous spring barley in the largest area of land at Bempton because I was looking at costs and wheat is expensive to grow .

“ We thought we ’ d give it a go that way because the fields at Bempton are quite late to try to put another crop in . We were on a 6-year rotation which was quite stressful whereas now continuous spring barley reduces that stress . As our storage is here at Grindale there are the logistics of getting the crop back , but we have a farming neighbour at Bempton , Steve Walker , who helps

“ Our cropping this year is 257 acres of spring barley variety Laureate which goes to Munton ’ s maltsters which we can see from the fields where it is grown at Bempton ; 40

acres of oilseed rape , 80 acres of Gleam winter wheat ,

80 of potatoes , 40 of Craft winter barley , and then grass , runway and environmental options including field corners and nectar mixes which I lovingly refer to as strips of a word we can ’ t use here . Father finds it really hard that we get paid for not growing things because his generation had to just grow and grow crops .

“ Our land is typical Wolds land of chalk and flint with shallow soil and our yield on spring barley is average . Mark Warkup from Haisthorpe deals with the potato crop . Sharon says that this year ’ s oilseed rape crop has not gone well .

“ We had a poor field in front of the farmhouse which we have now oversown with buckwheat and we ’ ll pretend it ’ s a catch crop .

Another area she and James are conscious of deciding about is min-till .

“ I ’ m on the fence about min-till and no-till , but we need to buy a new drill and you can ’ t really go min-till if you ’ ve potatoes in the rotation , or at least not true min-till . I don ’ t believe going halfway house is the best way forward , so if we go 100 per cent min-till we ’ ll have to kick potatoes out .

Sharon believes that grain drying may be a thing of the past where they farm on the coast , especially since their dryer needs repairing .

“ We ’ ve not had our dryer running for 4 years now , and out of that time there has only been one year we ’ ve had to pay to dry it . Now we ’ re not quite sure what to do . If we ’ d spent £ 25-30,000 fixing the dryer only to have it not needed it would have been a waste of money .

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