MARK Dobson knew that he wanted to farm while he was still at school in Whitby . He had his dream of having his own place one day , but having not been born on a farm he knew he ’ d have to work at it to get there .

Today , he and his wife Gemma have the Whitehill herd of 60 pedigree Hereford cows and a flock of 350 Texel X Mules on their 200-acre tenanted Raikes Farm at Hartlington , near Burnsall in Wharfedale .

‘ I can ’ t deny that in the first three to four years when we came here in spring 2013 it was hard ,’ says Mark . ‘ We were building up our herd number with a limited cashflow , but we had a clear business plan . The only way we could make it pay was to both carry on working full-time and then farm here on an evening , often in the dark .’

‘ Gemma carried on with her personal training and sports massage business which she had set up in 2006 , relocating it here ; and I continued working for Henry Rowntree at Gisburn , who I had started with as stockman , looking after his Angus herd , in 2002 .’

‘ Our focus was always going to be around the Herefords . It ’ s a breed we like and having a pedigree herd selling breeding stock was the only way we could see of making a business plan work on a modern-day rental .’

‘ We came here with 15 in-calf pedigree Hereford heifers , which we had started with the month before we were married in 2012 . We bought them with a tenancy application in mind as we felt it would look better and prove that we were already farming . It would then just be a case of how big a farm we were offered and a case of tweaking numbers accordingly .’

Mark had already worked for wellknown pedigree beef and sheep farmer Edwin Pearson in his home village of Aislaby near Whitby before he left school and then for three years after leaving and before studying at Bishop Burton College for two years from 1999 .

‘ The only thing I could see when I was younger was that I was going to have to work on a farm , while always having the dream of having my own , but we have both worked so hard at achieving that dream and we will always be immensely grateful to our landlords for giving us the opportunity here seven years ago .’

‘ I was aware there could have been safer bets than us , but we had youth and enthusiasm and they backed us with the tenancy .’

The Hereford breed has undergone a resurgence in the past decade and so far as Mark is concerned it is the perfect animal for his and Gemma ’ s farm enterprise .

‘ The breed ’ s temperament and easy calving ability are some of its best traits . They are so quiet . Our first stock came from three noted herds – Heather Whitaker ’ s Coley , Bernard Rimmer ’ s Barbern and John Kemp ’ s Auckvale . We now operate a closed herd bringing in different genetic lines through AI , which we conduct ourselves . We are running three stock bulls this year . We select our elite group of cows which we AI and get good

conception rates . By doing it ourselves we have the flexibility of administering it any time of day . They get one chance with AI and then go to the bull straight afterwards .’

‘ We are now up to our limit on breeding cows with the buildings we have , and we ’ ve been that way the past four years . It would take serious investment to increase that number . We bring them in during October and operate a very simple system of starting calving on May 1 . We find it healthier if the cows are calved outside and turn them out as they are approaching calving , one or two days before .’

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