Farm of the Week: Award-winning Yorkshire sheep man who also has a degree in wildlife conservation

“I was always going to do something connected with agriculture, whether it was farming or not. I went to Bishop Burton College around the time of Foot & Mouth Disease just over twenty years ago when everything was up in the air about farming.

“My degree is in wildlife and countryside conservation as I thought the conservation aspect was probably going to prove useful, but by the time I’d finished my studies I had decided I wanted to be more involved with farming.

“My father upped our sheep numbers and so there was a job to come back to and I also worked for a local fencing contractor and drystone waller Paul Atkinson to make sure I was earning enough. I was working part-time for both the farm and for Paul.

Ian now farms in partnership with his parents Ray and Liz. His wife Anna, who he met while at Bishop Burton, works for a local veterinary centre two days a week. They also have a 10-year old son Joseph, and everything about their life revolves around sheep, but while obviously proud to have received his award Ian has the same opinion as many others in his position.

“It was a real honour to be nominated and then to pick up the award but I think we farm fairly normally, doing what we do to the best of our ability.

“We manage to pay the mortgage every year, the farm pays for the house and leaves us a bit of spending money, but the most important thing is that I’m doing what I want to do, I can control my own hours and as long as our bank manager is happy, then I’m happy.

While Ian said that he doesn’t see their way of farming as that different to others there have been some significant changes to both where the family lives and to the sheep Ian now favours.

“We have 575 ewes that are put to the tup. They could be classed as largely Texel and Texel-crosses of various descriptions. There’s a fair bit of New Zealand Texel in the flock now, which we have brought about through using tups from Easyrams in North Shropshire.

“We started using Easyrams’ tups four years ago and we are on our fifth New Zealand Texel tup and have had a New Zealand Sufftex as well. They are more maternally based than a traditional Texel. They haven’t got the shape and conformation of a traditional Texel but they grow a lot quicker on a grass-fed, easy system.

“We are using the New Zealand Texel and New Zealand Sufftex instead of the Mule and it is working well. Apart from bringing in the odd tup from Easyrams I want to run a closed flock, and we will also breed our own tups too. I’m always concerned about keeping any diseases out.

Ian is now in the thick of lambing time for what scanned as 995 lambs to be born from a fortnight ago in hopefully six weeks through to mid-May.

“We started lambing on 1 April this year and we scanned at 173 per cent. That’s two per cent down on last year, but twelve per cent down on two years ago. We have a lot of shearlings with no lambs in them. It’s probably down to the weather and lack of grass, but we are not on our own from what I’ve heard.

Looking after grass and providing the right crop rotation is another prime consideration for Ian.

“We do what we can to ensure we look after our grass. Everything is brought in for lambing. We are on some fairly heavy land and so I’d rather bring them inside and give the grass a chance, so that I can turn them out to good grasses in spring. We bring them all in around Christmas and turn them out within 48 hours of lambing.

“Around two-thirds of our grass is permanent pasture, with the other third in the arable rotation which is two or three years grass, two or three years barley and then into either red clover or stubble turnips, then spring barley or red clover for two or three years and back into barley. We have a bit of a grass weed problem, brome, and so the worst fields are into longer term grass leys to manage it.

“We have 35 acres of winter barley in the ground this year and another 35 acres of spring barley. It nearly all goes to a local beef unit for animal feed.

“We’re not on the best land and so managing your soil and putting good breaks into it is important. We scrapped growing oilseed rape some years ago because we couldn’t grow it very well and decided to put grass into the arable rotation to help the sheep. We upped our sheep numbers and dropped barley numbers.

“I’d like to go on to a min-till system for direct drilling but with only 60 acres of arable cropping the cost of buying a new drill is prohibitive and getting a contractor to come in at the right time is also tricky. Hopefully we have the balance just about right at the moment.

Ian said his lambs, other than those kept for replacements, usually around 150 ewe lambs and 10 tup labs will generally go as fat lambs either to Kirkby Stephen livestock market or direct to Dunbia at Carnaby.

“Our best quality lambs, the more Dutch Texel-cross-Beltex type, about 75-85 will go through the live market at Kirkby Stephen, but the larger amount will go through Dunbia to Tesco. I’d say we now don’t really have a specific breed, they are crosses of different things. We try to use the best bits of everything to make things work. There are bits of Beltex in most of the tups. Everything goes at between 40 to 45 kilos.

Seven years ago the Wilsons moved lock, stock and barrel to a new-build farmhouse just across the road from where the family had farmed at Hall Farm since 1932.

“We were tenants of Middlesbrough Council but the council wanted to sell the farmyard and 5 acres of land for development. We got the chance of buying the rest of the farmland and built a new farmhouse.

Anna has her own flock of 17 Kerry Hill ewes. She shows at such as the Great Yorkshire Show and is now also a Kerry Hill judge. Joseph has his own small flock Llanwenog ewes.