How Stewart Elliott turned a former Butlin’s building into a successful farm

Stewart purchased a building from the defunct campsite that he turned into what was at the time one of the biggest hen sheds in Yorkshire, allowing 3,000 egg-laying hens the freedom to roam both in their new home and outside on the lush grasses around the farm.

Today, it is Stewart and his wife Caroline’s three sons, Tom, Mark and Philip who run the farming enterprise that now includes a substantial arable acreage, an agricultural contracting business, their own Elliotts Eggs branded produce from their 40,000 hens and in addition the management of the free range egg producers cooperative, Eggsell, that sees three quarters of a million eggs processed and packaged every day in this little corner of the county near Hornsea.

“It’s very much a family effort all round,” says Tom, the eldest of the three brothers, who came back to the farm in 2002 after studying at Bishop Burton College and having worked on various other farms. Tom’s wife, Ell, and Philip’s wife, Rebecca, also work in the family business.

“Dad moved here with his parents, Rex and Muriel, in 1959. It was originally a tenanted farm of 210 acres that we purchased in 2008. We bought a further 20 acres and in total with our rented acreage we now farm around 800 acres growing wheat, barley and oilseed rape. The cereal crops are grown directly for feed for the hens.

“We started milling our own chicken feed in 2004, that’s when we began increasing our acreage with 100 acres at Skipsea. You can make huge savings on having to buy it in and it means you are not beholden to the vagaries of the wheat or barley prices as none of it goes on the open market. The only crop we have to buy currently is soya. We are actively looking at growing something ourselves to replace that protein.”

The arable farming operation at Manor House is focussed on the hens. The hen muck is used as fertiliser on the crops, which is another saving using an organic source as opposed to buying in manufactured fertilisers; and the wheat and barley crops provide the raw material for the feed mill. “Dad had pigs, calves and poultry during the years prior to our concentration on the free-range egg laying hens. We are now all about hens that have a happy life here on our farm. Our philosophy is a happy hen with freedom to roam in grassy pastures and a welfare-rich life creates a tasty egg.”

Having initially supplied Goldenlay with eggs, Stewart and Caroline set up their own free-range egg producers cooperative called Eggsell in 2007 with a couple of local farmers. Tom has now been managing director of this side of the operation for 10 years. Eggsell now supplies around 2 per cent of the UK egg market.

“The cooperative now has 35 producers predominantly in the East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire areas but as far as Leicester and Newcastle on the east side of the A1. We have articulated lorries out on the road each day that haul in the 750,000 eggs we grade and pack using up-to-the-minute technology.

“We installed our first grader in 2008 and a larger one the following year. Each cooperative member producer is paid for their eggs through the cooperative based upon the negotiations we have with supermarkets we supply including Lidl, Morrisons, Asda, Waitrose, Booker, plus restaurants and schools.”

In addition to Eggsell, the family has its own more localised distribution channel through Elliotts Eggs, advertised on their egg boxes as Yorkshire Free Range Eggs.

“When Mark came back from university he set up the Elliotts brand to sell to butchers, farm shops and other local outlets.

“We had decided we needed to add value to our eggs and that’s when we took the plunge into building a small packing station. At that time we would grade the eggs, roughly a pallet a day, then he’d go out and sell them. That’s how we came to start packing eggs here.”

It’s now quite a set-up at Bewholme where more than 40 are employed on both the packing of Eggsell products and Elliotts Eggs.

The farm provides the bedrock for all of the egg activity and this is Philip’s domain both on Elliotts’ owned and rented acreages and the agricultural spraying and combine work he conducts for others. He’s also responsible for the hens’ welfare.

“I graduated from Harper Adams in 2011 and spent some time working with an agronomist before coming back to run the arable side in 2013. Our pockets of rented land are all around this area of East Yorkshire including North Frodingham, Driffield, Brandesburton and Hornsea.

Philip qualified as a BSc in agricultural crop management. He had all his sprayer qualifications by 16 and is BASIS and FACTS qualified. He’s also very precision farming minded using variable nitrogen rates on the sprayer, variable seed rates on the drill and yield mapping on the combine. The family added an agricultural spraying contracting business in 2015.

“We took on the business run by local contractor Patrick Heald when he retired and I’ve since added a number of new customers. We also have a combining contracting business that we have run for a number of years.

“This year I’ve sprayed 19,000 acres, which is down on last year only because of the amount of wheat established was less due to weather conditions.”

Self sufficiency and being as green as possible is all very much tied in with the Elliotts’ enterprise that includes solar panels, wind turbine, water from boreholes and a straw burner to heat the packing centre and offices.