Farm of the Week: Milk vending machines, supplying Wensleydale Creamery and selling oats to Quaker

Joe said The Milk Hut, which opened in August, with a vending machine for branded bottles and another that vends milkshakes and whole milk had brought about a feelgood factor to the farm and appreciation from happy customers.

“It has been really nice to engage more closely with our customers and to receive really lovely customer feedback. The older generation say it’s nice to taste the milk how they remember it and younger customers love our milkshakes. We already have a nice core of customers visiting us regularly.

While Clemmie has been adorning flavoured milk from banoffee and mince pie to more conventional strawberry and chocolate over the festive period Joe is well aware that the milk sold through The Milk Hut is a drop in the ocean compared to the daily litres supplied by the farm’s 440 milkers that are 75 per cent Friesian and 25 per cent Jersey.

“It’s wonderful to see people come here to collect their milk and that they enjoy it. We love hearing their comments about the taste of our milk and this Christmas everyone loves Clemmie. We are looking at selling some of our milk wholesale too and already supply a local business The Stables Bistro at Kirklevington, but what might surprise many is that most of our milk isn’t destined for the liquid milk market.

“Ninety-nine-point nine per cent of our milk goes on a solids contract to Wensleydale Creamery for cheese production. Our cows weigh 520 kilos and we want them to produce that in milk solids every year which they achieve by averaging about 6500 litres per cow per lactation through mainly grazing and forage.

“Our cows will graze, if the weather allows, from the end of January. This year we were housed by mid-November. We have focused on cow health, welfare and the right farm infrastructure so we have a good network of cow tracks and that means that they can graze for a few hours a day even in winter.

Joe said the relationship between the dairy herd and the future health of the soil for arable cropping has never been so close.

“We’re much more focused now on soil health and raising livestock to benefit both arable and grassland enterprises.

“One of the ways we are doing this is by outwintering heifers on arable land where we plant kale and short-term grasses. This is allowing us to integrate livestock on to the arable land and it is enabling us to start trying to put some fertility back into the soil.

“We have 700 acres of grassland, of which 400 acres is pasture and this offers us considerable grazing potential. Our swards are made up of late perennial ryegrass and three or four varieties of white clover. We have also just started bringing in more diverse swards with legume rich leys including plantain, chicory, red clover, white clover and various others.

Crathorne Farm Dairy’s cows are smaller than they used to be before Joe came back to the family farm twelve years ago. Joe said it was a conscious decision to head in that direction.

“We want happy cows that have longevity and can enjoy a good life with high health and hygiene. We use a lot of New Zealand breeding and have brought about a smaller animal. We block calve for a tight ten week window from mid-August.

“We AI our dairy cows for 5 weeks up to just before Christmas and to accelerate our genetic improvement we select the top cows from which to breed our herd replacements. We use Hereford and Aberdeen Angus to produce beef calves that go to rearers in East Yorkshire and Masham where the farmer wants calves out of a grazing system, because he’s raising his in the same way.

Joe said the dairy team runs to three full-time and two part-time.

“Milking the herd is only one aspect of the job and we focus on training and benchmarking with other dairy farms and actively encourage the team to get involved. We milk twice daily at 5am and 2pm with a long 36/72 swing-over parlour.

The arable acreage runs to 1800 acres with around nearly half down to winter wheat and the rest of the cropping made up of winter barley, oilseed rape, winter beans, winter oats and a crop that Joe is finding particularly enlightening and interesting.

“Our winter wheat is generally around 800-900 acres and this year half is a four-way variety mix of Grafton, Parkin, Costello and Gleam which we also grow as single varieties, as well as Dawsum. We grew a similar four-way last year. It seemed a more resilient crop against fungal disease, we didn’t suffer any yield penalty and we dropped a fungicide spray.

“Our land type is 80 per cent Grade 3 silty clay loam and a bit of Grade 4. We’ve averaged about 3.75 tonnnes per acre over the last four years. We import a lot of muck. That is the cornerstone of our arable enterprise.

“We also direct drill. We’ve just converted a Simba free flow drill into a direct tine drill and we’ve had some success with that this autumn.

Joe wants to get to a six-year rotation from his present seven in order to achieve his aim of greater focus on soil health and that’s where his newest crop addition may make all the difference.

“I’d like to get to where every break crop is a non-cereal crop. That’s where the Ahi flower crop comes in.

“We are just in the second year of growing what is actually a hedgerow plant called corn gromwell. It is part of our sustainability drive. It is high in Omega 3, 6 & 9 oils and is an up-and-coming alternative to fish oil. We are growing it on contract for a company called Nature’s Crops in York. They’ve got some really interesting projects going on as to why it is a superior product.

“We like it because it is a really good break crop. It’s a broadleaf crop that we can direct drill in autumn, in between starting oilseed rape and cereals, and harvest at the end of June/early July which then gives us an opportunity to plant a multi-species biomass catch crop between then and drilling winter wheat.

“We have 86 acres of Ahi in the ground this time and we are hoping to push on to 260 acres for 2024.

Joe’s other crops for 2023 include 200 acres of winter barley; 350 acres of oilseed rape, direct drilled into long stubble; 120 acres of winter beans and 150 acres of oats for Quaker.