The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2015 - Issue 42 | Page 40

Mearbeck Farm

took on work on the Settle
to Carlisle railway route and
rebuilt walls that had to be
taken down while pipelines
were being laid. I also spent
some time shovelling dead
livestock during 2001. In
addition to this we had the
income from other farmers
who were grazing cattle and
sheep on the farm.”
BACK TO LIVESTOCK
– AND OWNERSHIP
Livestock farming was still
where they wanted to return to
and owning the farm rather than
tenanting. They succeeded in
buying it in 2006 having shown
they were making enough to
get the loan they needed.
“We soon reached the point
where we bought so many
sheep that we hadn’t the time
to go out walling. We had a few
cattle too, but how The Blue
Pig Company started coming
about was through a comment
made by Anthony one day as
we’d been out walling,” says
Andrew.
“He’d seen an advertisement
for some Gloucester Old Spot
pigs for sale just three miles
away. I swore at him at the time
asking him, and not so politely
as this, just WHY we would

want them! You can make up
your own words for how I really
said it, but two days later we’d
bought half a dozen of them!”
Little were the brothers to
know at the time just how
significant a purchase the pigs
were to become.
“I just thought that if we
couldn’t sell the pork then we
could eat them ourselves, but
we got a tray of sausages off
the first one and we sold out
straight away. We got a few
more, including some British
Saddlebacks and all of a
sudden we were breeding and
committed. That’s when we had
to start marketing them properly
because with them being rare
breeds you can’t really take
them to the regular weekly sales
at an auction mart.”
Andrew researched rare
breed pigs to try and find
something he could use as an
angle, to stand out from the
crowd at farmers’ markets,
which at the time were running
at their peak.
“I found that in the 1930s
there was a Yorkshire Blue pig
that had been a cross between
a Large Black and a Large
White, in cattle terms like a
Belgian Blue as a pig, and it
was famed for producing great

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

bacon. Our Gloucester Old
Spots and British Saddleback
were largely white and largely
black respectively. I also knew
that nearly every butcher or
anyone who sells meat tends
to go for a red stripy apron and
nobody was using blue. That’s
when the Blue Pig Company
was started.
“We now have eight sows
and a Saddleback boar. The
sows are still either Gloucester
Old Spot or Saddleback. If
they rear nine piglets each
they’re doing well. We process
everything here on site and
can make whatever cuts are
needed. We offer pork, bacon,
ham and always sausages. We
have 13 flavours of sausage
at the moment and one of our
current favourites is pork with
chunks of black pudding sold
as pie meat.
“We still attend Kirkstall
farmer’s market in Leeds
but most of our business
now is selling to pubs and
restaurants as well as online
sales to the public. The pubs
and restaurants we supply are
looking for great traditional
British breakfasts for their B&B
customers and love our bacon,
sausage and black pudding.”
A GOOD TEAM
The Blue Pig Company
and the butchery end of the
brothers’ farming partnership is
Andrew’s domain. Anthony is
the farmer.
“We have 200 Mule ewes
and we also have some
Mashams and Lleyns,”says
Anthony. “We start lambing in
March for five weeks coming in
with an average of around 180
per cent. We replace at the rate
of around 16 per cent, which
means each ewe is giving us
around six crops of lambs.
We trade everything through
Skipton livestock market which
has up to 14 individual buyers
around the ring, each buying on
several accounts.

“Our herd runs to 30 mainly
pedigree Beef Shorthorns with
some dairy bred calves that
we grow on for market. The
Shorthorns are very easy care.
They seem to live on fresh air
(and grass) and we’ve never
had to calve any ourselves.
The pedigrees sell as stores. I
keep heifers as replacements
and the bull calves go to
Gisburn livestock market. It’s
a great market on a Saturday
morning where the world
and his wife are there and
it provides buyers for every
class of stock, including some
serious beef finishers from the
Vale of York.
“I buy dairy bred calves in
the winter. As a young beast
their feed conversion is at its
best and they convert your
grass into something to sell. By
the next winter I’m starting to
get rid of them and getting the
next lot in. I’m playing around
with rotational grazing at the
moment as part of my grassbased feeding system.”
Everything that Andrew and
Anthony now try to do is aimed
more at controlling their own
destiny – far more so than
when this was HZ\