The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2015 - Issue 42 | Page 39

The Bradley Family

foot & mouth year that followed
their leaving farming behind,
they were also involved in farm
clean-up operations.

‘The milk prices
were terrible and
we had invested
heavily in cows’
Anthony missed the milking
of the dairy cows. But Andrew
didn’t.
“I would have gone back
into dairying again as I like
cows and enjoyed milking,”
he explained, “but like other
people have said, once you’re
out that’s it. It’s not because
you don’t want to go back in,
it’s just that the practicalities
and the scale of capital
required make it a non-starter,”
says Anthony.

“My feeling was that why
would I want to get up at 6
o’clock every morning again,’
says Andrew. “Don’t get me
wrong - for the first week or two
I was thinking that I should be
getting up earlier but not long
afterwards I was thinking how
good it was being able to have
a lie in for longer!”
Their drystone walling
business came out of the
building work and it led to
a useful income by which
they were able, with the land
letting, to get back on their feet
again.
“We’d always drystone
walled on the farm and with
not having livestock to tend
we were able to concentrate
on that as work came in. We
started by building for a mate
who worked for the National
Parks and wanted some
garden walls. We eventually

www.farmers-mart.co.uk Oct/Nov 2015 39