Meet the third generation Yorkshire milkman whose family used to deliver in Slaithwaite by horse and cart

“You don’t see many people at the start of the round but about halfway through you start seeing everybody and the milkman is always someone people like to see and chat with.”

Up until the pandemic Richard said he and his fellow milkmen and milkwomen all around the country feared for their future, but it is a different tale today.

“My grandad Milton Sykes delivered milk out of the back of a horsecart that had a churn in.

"He’d top people’s jugs up that they brought out of their houses, but over the years milk deliveries on the doorstep had gradually dwindled from the days when nearly everyone used to have their daily pinta delivered.

“For the past 15 years we’ve said that if we get another five years out of the job it will be as much as we will get but then the pandemic hit and it showed us all that actually there was still good business to be had and that milk delivery on the doorstep wasn’t dying after all.

“Before the pandemic we were delivering to 800 doorsteps and we’re now up to 1,500.

"It more than doubled at first and so we have lost a few, but most have stayed and it proves there is still demand for having milk delivered fresh each day.”

Richard said he gets the milk for his five rounds from dairy farmer, Neil Brigg, just a mile away.

“Neil supplies a number of milk deliverers and he made sure that we were all able to cope with the huge increase in demand we saw. We are now back with the bit between our teeth and ready to pick up the numbers a bit more to make it more viable with the other two full-time milkmen I now have.

"We are still picking up new customers through the power of social media, but we will also canvass the streets where we go currently in Slaithwaite, Linthwaite, Marsden, Meltham, Netherton and Newsome.

“I still enjoy it. Watching the sunrise is just great, makes you feel good, and I like seeing the local people and saying hello. There’s something about being a milkman that is very special.”

Richard said he misses the cows even though it is now over a decade ago since he had them.

“We are a sheep farm today and have 300 ewes. We had 120 milk cows. Milking them was down to me, my uncle and some staff we employed. We had a cowman and a dairyman who bottled the milk for us. We got rid of everything when we went out.

“At the time I probably wouldn’t have chosen to carry on dairy farming if it had been solely down to me, but today if you asked me the same question I probably would have chosen to.

“I’d have borrowed the money and invested it. I do miss the cows, it’s funny but I do.

“I now have the tenancy here at Ainley Place where my great grandfather Frank first came to in the early 1920s, so there has been a Sykes here for around a century.

“Frank had been helping a farmer in Slaithwaite and the tenancy came available here and he took a punt on it. It’s now 150 acres. I don’t think he started with so much. He started smaller and took on a little bit more. It would have been a typical mixed farm and then he started milking cows in a small byre.”

Today it is a different type of mixed enterprise with the farm being home to the flock of breeding ewes, the base for the M&M Sykes milk deliveries, a DIY livery stables and a horsebox/bar/coffee truck business with Richard’s dad Robert out on the road, but not delivering milk.

“Dad is involved a lot less nowadays. He is wagon driving. When we were struggling, he went out and got a wagon driving job that he used to have after the milk round.

"He does haulage for Equi-Trek who make horseboxes at Stocksbridge. He and his brothers David and Michael had the tenancy here before me and had milk rounds. As they gave them up I took them on.

“It’s now pretty much myself and my partner Kerry running the farm, but it is me and my dad who are in the farm partnership.

“Kerry worked at a livery yard where the owner was giving up, so we set up our own livery yard for 25 horses and it is always full. Kerry has also pushed us to get more sheep.

"We finally came away from having any cattle on the farm because she feels more comfortable lambing sheep than calving cattle.

“The flock is made up of Texel, Beltex and some Berricon. We lamb in late March and into April. The farm is all about sheep and grass. We make haylage to support our livery yard and sell a bit to others.”

Richard developed a new sideline just prior to the pandemic.

“While things were quiet on the farm and quieter on the milk rounds I started converting old horseboxes into coffee bars. The idea had been to have one for ourselves and maybe start our own little enterprise, but it got to the point where I ended up taking orders and built twenty of them.

“If I’d had another twenty built when the first lockdown came I would have been able to sell them all with no problem. Everyone wanted them. All of the pubs who couldn’t have anyone inside were suddenly trading outside. We now rent out horseboxes and trailer bars.”

Richard said keeping the farm viable with just the sheep numbers as they are would probably not work out.

“We would have to increase numbers. What we always try to do is put as much into the pot from everything we do as we can.

“That’s where the comeback on the doorstep delivery side has helped.

"We are still a family-run farm and we are still supplying the areas my grandad did all those years ago. I think the role of the milkman is really important.

"The Sykes family has been delivering milk since the 1940s and it now looks like we will be doing it for a good few years yet. Which means I will still get to enjoy those sunrises.”