Beeston Hall Farm
Getting the message
across in a positive way
» » CHRIS BERRY TALKS ABOUT
farming’s future and Salers
cattle with new NFU West
Riding county chairman, Rachel
Hallos
You will struggle to find
a more positive, forward
thinking individual in farming
than Rachel Hallos right now.
She’s relishing her role as the
new NFU West Riding county
chairman and how she and
husband Stephen have turned
around their farming business
at Beeston Hall Farm near
Ripponden.
Rachel is banner waving
for their award-winning, Great
Yorkshire Show champion
Salers cattle, the farm’s
main livestock enterprise;
she’s a standard bearer for
environmental and regeneration
projects that now form the lion’s
share of the farm’s income; and
she’s revelling in getting the
agricultural message across
to the rest of her colleagues in
the industry and those further
afield.
What this doesn’t mean is
that Rachel is so full of life, talk,
heart, soul and belief that she
misses the problems, debate,
heartache and soul- searching
that many farmers are going
through about what to do
next. Rachel might well have a
striking, effervescent, friendly
personality but she doesn’t let
any of this cloud her thinking
when it comes down to brass
tacks. Rachel and Stephen have
faced up to hard decisions,
such as when they came out
of dairying after decades of
family involvement in the sector,
turning the farm on its head; and
Rachel meets every dilemma
squarely on, full face. She’s a
breath of fresh air in her manner
and uncomplicated style.
‘I try to see the good in
everything. I’m a glass half-full
person, but with Brexit and
new stewardship schemes
that don’t offer what the old
ones used to, the reality is that
it can be a struggle even for
someone like me who sees life
52 Summer 2017 www.farmers-mart.co.uk
in a positive frame. I want to
keep farming going forward as
an industry as we have a hell of
a lot to offer whether on food
production or environmentally.
We’ve completely adapted
our business here at Beeston
Hall, but we need to be on
our guard over what happens
with stewardship systems and
Brexit.
‘Stephen and I took over
in summer 2000. We were
a good old-fashioned South
Pennine dairy farm bottling and
delivering our own milk. We
came out of milk in 2002 - that
was the last time a tanker came
into our yard. Stephen didn’t
want to give up milking. It’s all
he’d ever done since being 15
years old, but at 18p per litre
we were losing money. We
had a chance meeting with the
RSPB and put in a stewardship
application with big help from
them.’
The land tenanted from
Yorkshire Water runs to just
under 2000 acres and is
predominantly moorland and
has very rough grazing. The
workable acreage runs to
around 100 acres offering some
green land to take haylage
crops.
‘We don’t have a flat field
on the farm. I’d give anything
for one, but it does make you
a good tractor driver. There
are squeaky bum moments
every now and again though!
The entire farm is on very
steep-sided hills that drop
down into the two water
catchment reservoirs, Baitings
and Ryburn. Where we have
flipped the farm on its head is
by being a part of a massive
heather regeneration project
on Soyland Moor and the Twite
project with a lot of traditional
hay meadows. The income from
stewardship is now the major
part of our business as a hill
farm making up around 60 per
cent. We class it as our farm
diversification.’
One major problem on
the horizon for Rachel and
Stephen and already a source
of immediate concern for
many farmers, are the new
s