The Farmers Mart Oct-Nov 2019 - Issue 65 | Page 28

28 LONDESBOROUGH WOLD FARM
OCT/NOV 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk
BLUE TEXELS MAKE A SHEEP
COMEBACK TO FAMILY’S MIXED FARM
Chris Berry talks with Mark Stephenson of Nunburnholme Wold and Londesborough Wold farms.
FARMING brothers Graeme and Patrick
and their nephew Mark are the men at
the helm of today’s family agricultural
enterprise at Londesborough Wold and
Nunburnhome Wold farms that encom-
passes combinable crops, grass, woodland
and shooting across around 1100 acres in
the East Riding. There is also a suckler herd,
pigs on bed and breakfast and a growing
flock of sheep.
Winter wheat, winter and spring barley,
oilseed rape, beans and rye, tried this year
and fed straight to the cows, make up the
combinable acreage. The family shoot is
made up of partridge and pheasant with
Patrick as keeper. The Stephensons have
three or four let days with the rest as family
days. Katie, Graeme’s wife fulfils the impor-
tant role of farm secretary looking after all
the paperwork.
‘Our cropping this year has been 300 acre
of winter wheat growing varieties Elicit,
Gleam, Jigsaw and Skyfall,’ says Graeme. ‘It
has yielded around 4.3 tonnes per acre on
our free draining Wolds land. Our 80 acres
of Craft winter malting barley came in at 3.5
tonnes and goes for brewing in Tadcaster.
The feed winter barley varieties Cassia and
Orwell yielded 4 tonnes across 80 acres.
Spring malting barley Laureate grown
across 100 acres and bound for Muntons
through Anderson Grain yielded 3.2 tonnes.
Oilseed rape using the hybrid Extrovert
across 80 acres came in at 1.7 tonnes
and our 50 acres of spring beans’ variety
Vertigo, grown for human consumption
came in at 2.2 tonnes.’
‘We also have around 80-100 acres of
cover crops including mustard as you can
see in the photograph, fodder radish and
phacelia. In addition we let 30-40 acres for
potatoes and have temporary grass leys for
the cattle.The leys also help with control of
blackgrass.’
The Stephensons work diligently with the
land and have strip tilled for the past five
years. They have a Mizuri drill and also act
as contractors for strip tillage on a further
500-600 acres. They also use the bio-stimu-
lant AminoA Flo that enables ten to achieve
more out of the nutrients.
‘We’ve had decent success with strip
tillage in improving organic matter and soils
structure. It has also brought about cost
savings,’ says Graeme. ‘We are also in the
Higher Level Stewardship scheme.’
The cattle enterprise runs to 160 suck-
lers that are presently mainly Limousin X
and Salers X cows. The Salers have been
taken on more recently for ease of calving,
good mothering qualities and being good
milkers.
‘We’re now trying a Salers X cow, putting
it back on to a Charolais bull to get a better
finish,’ says Mark. ‘At 12-13 months they are
fit and ready whereas with other ways it can
take up to 16 months. We try to get bulls to
670-680 kilos and heifers to 500 kilos for ABP
York to supply ALDI. We don’t push them to
get fit either. We also breed our own
replacements, keeping 25-30 heifers
a year. We also take stock to York
and Selby livestock markets. All our
fatteners are at Londesborough Wold
and for calving the herd is split half
there and half at Nunburnholme. We
fatten using our own barley ration.’
The pig enterprise is all down to bed
and breakfast pigs for Wolds Pigs that
come in at 40 kilos and are taken to
finishing. Numbers have recently been
increased from 300 to 600 due to altering
the sheds.
In numbers sheep don’t figure as highly
as the arable, cattle or pig operations as
yet, but they used to, and they appear to
be on their way back.
Three years ago a flock of Scotch
Halfbred X Suffolk and three-quarter Texel
X saw sheep return to the family’s farming
itinerary. There is now a flock of 70 com-
mercial breeding ewes and in June last
year Mark began setting up his pedigree
Blue Texel flock that currently amounts to
15 breeding ewes.
Contact us for all your
Accountancy and Tax needs
Selby Office
01757 703731
York Office
01904 717260
Proud to be working with
Graeme for 10 years