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when I came home with them , saying what do I do with these ? We did about 50 turkeys , 45 chickens and 15 geese last Christmas .
“ The Egg Shed is still as it was when we first started but with a lot more stuff in there including chutneys , jams , sauces and oils from local people like Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil in Thixendale , Bracken Hill in Elvington and from a lady in the village who makes jams and chutneys with 50p from every sale going to Atwick Church . We also stock honey from Bay View Bees in Hunmanby where we bought our Hereford bull . We ’ re now also doing small bunches of flowers .
James says the trade has been great ever since they started and shows no signs of letting up .
“ We get a great local trade , as well as a really good holiday trade . We ’ re very blessed that we have holiday parks like Skirlington nearby and Hornsea ’ s population triples in summer . The caravan parks have been absolutely brilliant to us , they have free cash to spend .
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“ They come here to have a nice weekend or week away and they are so positive about local businesses and buying whether fresh or from the freezer . We now have our Meat Store where we have a couple of freezers and a fridge , which is open on a Saturday ( 9am- 1pm ) and Sunday ( 9pm- midday ) or by appointment . A lot of people text us and pop down at a teatime on a weekday get bits and pieces . The Egg Shed is open every day ( 8am-8pm ).
James says there was no original intention to supply their own beef direct from the farm , but demand has brought it about .
“ We just fancied having suckler cows and started with a few dairy crosses but we are now up to a few second crosses from our Hereford bull which everything is put to . I ’ ve five nice heifers to put to it this year , but I am going to lose a couple as I ’ m now looking to put a little bit more improvement back into the herd .
“ We ’ re hoping to get up to about a dozen put through the shop with any surplus popped into Dunswell or York
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livestock markets . We did four beasts through the shop last year . It takes a little while building up the beef and have now changed our calving pattern from November to March .
James says their lambing operation has changed too . And how , both with beef and lamb ! At one time they had 400 head of cattle , rearing and fattening calves for Morrisons and had up to 550 + breeding ewes .
“ We ’ ve swung different ways in the last 15 years . At one time we got rid of suckler cows then ended up with a lot of sheep , then reduced sheep numbers ended up with a reasonable amount of cattle . Now we ’ ve come full circle with 20 suckler cows and followers out at grass and 20 of last year ’ s calves under a shed and few out at grass , and 55 breeding ewes .
“ What we have now is really manageable and it is going through the shop , so that means there ’ s no-one taking anything out of our price .
“ This has made us reconsider how we farm and it ’ s now about The Egg Shed and the Meat Store . Our ewes and their lambs
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are out by the teatime or the morning dependent on when their lambs are born . We still have quite a strong undertone of Lleyn in the flock but with a mish-mash of Charollais and Texel . In the last couple of years we ’ ve put the ewes mainly back to a Lleyn tup after a couple of years running a Texel tup just to try and get a little more carcase conformity . We put 23-24 lambs through the shop last year .
James is clearly very happy with what they are doing at Grange Farm .
“ I ’ m really pleased and can ’ t quantify how impressed I am about what we ’ ve achieved , the key for us is to keep moving forward doing what we can . We are looking at getting involved with Open Farm Sunday next year . What we ’ ve found is that people like coming here to a farm , meeting me and Gemma and Pete , seeing the animals and meeting the kids .
“ And Pete has really got into the whole thing too . Gemma and I do a stall at Hornsea Market and when we do Pete takes over in the shop and loves talking with everyone about the farm . He ’ s always spent more time on it than
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