The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2015 - Issue 42 | Page 16

AWSM Farming Ltd

AWSM – A lot more
than just contracting
»» North Yorkshire-based
AWSM Farming Ltd is renowned
as one of the North’s most
progressive Agricultural
Contracting businesses although there is a lot more to
AWSM than just contracting,
as Ian Wilkinson discovered
when he went to meet assistant
manager Andrew Yarrow
recently.
Andrew joined the company
in 2002 initially as a relief
operator, but as the business
has grown so has Andrew’s
role. He is now assistant
manager and a director of
the contracting side – it is not
difficult to see why because
he has a wealth of farming
and contracting knowledge

under his belt – as well as that
vital ingredient when you are
juggling multiple contacts,
machines and operators: a cool
head.

‘renowned as
one of the North’s
most progressive
Agricultural
Contracting
businesses’
During my visit, he managed
to deal with constant phone
calls and emails juggling
queries and sorting problems in
his unerring “Cool Hand Luke”
manner.

16 Oct/Nov 2015 www.farmers-mart.co.uk

AWSM was initially set up By
Adam William Simpson Metcalfe
(hence the firm’s name) in
1996 after he graduated with
his NDA from Askham Bryan
College. He started by taking
over the small family dairy farm
at Dalton.
But after looking at the
numbers - and with his
knowledge and experience
from Askham Bryan, Adam
decided to convert to arable
– wheat, barley, oats, oil seed
rape, fodder beet, potatoes this was also a better fit with the
small contracting operation as it
then was.
In 2005, as well as retaining
their original 265 acres, they
moved to Lane Head Farm

after out growing their original
base at Dalton Fields. With this
move came additional land to
contract farm, and Adam has
since installed a weight bridge,
state of the art grain drying
and storage facility, a large
machinery yard and they have
just been granted permission
to build a complete set of new
offices and large workshop for
their ever increasing inventory
of machinery. They have also
moved into the contract farming
business as well, so this, coupled
with their own land and the
general contracting means they
now have an operation that spans
both North Yorkshire and County
Durham and means they are
now working some 3,000 acres.