The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2015 - Issue 42

The Fort Family 1930-2015 Serving farmers for over 80 years Reliable family ﬁrm, focused on farming, pleased to be supplying the Fort family with Jameson’s STOCK BLEND Please contact Jake Lakin: 07740 409826 Dairy Cake • Blends • Sheep Feed Nutrition Advice • Seeds • Fertilisers Animal Health • Livestock Equipment Masham Office: 01765 689662 Billington. They have recently upgraded young stock facilities and changed their diet with nutritional advice and heifer feed coming from local firm Jamesons. They believe this has been a tremendous success and transformed their young stock. Edward has not had to achieve this alone: along with the help of his wife, who is very good on the financial side as well as rising to national level in the WI, eldest daughter Rebecca has worked on the farm 20 years and they have ‘the appalling foot and mouth crisis presented a real challenge as overnight the herd was reduced from 188 to 30’ just converted a barn into a house for her to live in. His son Andrew works for Bentley’s builders in Skipton where middle daughter Jayne works for them as a site agent. He also has the help of the couple’s youngest daughter, Georgina, who has always been involved in the farm since school days, loving farm life and animals. Georgina only joined the farm full time three and a half years ago after having studied at Craven college and also doing a degree in performing arts at Hull university, after which she became a background artist on Emmerdale, as well as doing many things in the amateur theatre. She began to find it more and more difficult to be available for filming at short notice when being involved day to day on the farm particularly at the all-important calving and lambing times. As with ‘built up to 250 head again with a hundred young stock breeding from their own and of course choosing the best bulls’ www.farmers-mart.co.uk Oct/Nov 2015 45

The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2015 - Issue 42 | Page 45