Dear everyone who came on the Forward Farming Group evening here.
Thanks so much for coming, and sorry you didn’t see the farm at its best. Chris, Sarah and I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
With so many people, some didn’t hear what we wanted to say about the farm. I thought this could make up for it. (Also, we forgot to say half the things we wanted to.)
I’ve written more than I intended, so skim through to the bits you’re interested in, or don’t read it at all if you’re too busy.
All the best, Tortie (and Chris & Sarah)
West Ilkerton Farm
The farm is 91 ha , with 78 1/3 units if common grazing on Ilkerton Ridge. The land is about 300m above sea level and 3 miles from Lynmouth and the sea. About 20% of the land is too steep to cultivate. The soil is generally thin, stony and mineral deficient. (Dick French used to say West Ilkerton was the place where deficiencies were invented, because it was where a Professor of Soil Science from Cambridge University did a groundbreaking study of mineral deficiencies in sheep in the 1920s!)
Grandma bought it from Ada Tucker in 1968 for £23,000. She also bought 80 Exmoor horn ewes and 10 Devon cattle, and carried on breeding Exmoor horns and Devons from them. She obtained grants for tarmacking the private lane into the farm (1/2 mile), putting up farm buildings, buying new farm machinery, grubbing out hedges and draining a couple of boggy fields. She employed a resident farm manager.
Grandma died in 1984. Mum owned the farm for 2 years and then it passed to Chris and me by ‘Deed of Family Arrangement’ when we got married in 1986. At that time it was valued at £197,00.
We had to pay £33,797 Capital Transfer Tax (Grandma had other properties that went to other family members, so CTT was high) and nearly £50,000 for the livestock and machinery.
Son George was born in August 1987. He is now head stalker on the Rannoch Estate in Scotland, where he lives with partner Ann and daughter Meghan.
Daughter Sarah was born January 1990. She rents half the farmhouse and works part-time on the farm and part-time in the ENPA Centre in Lynmouth.
Mum lives in the Tallat, which was converted by Grandma to house her farm manager.
Cattle: When we were first married we kept up to 26 Devon cows (we sold the calves as suckled calves). Then we ran a Charolais bull for several years. (Suckled calves worth more, but calving problems, cows didn’t last as long & relied on bought in replacements so herd quality deteriorated because farmers generally don’t sell their best breeding stock.) Tried having a Charolais bull and a Devon bull, but it was tricky and expensive, so went back to Devon cattle and started upgrading to pedigree.
Now the whole herd is pedigree. There are 25 cows and 4 in-calf heifers this year. The bull is Dira Magic. The heifers are in calf by AI to Boskenna Ferdinand. If this is successful, we intend to AI some of the best cows in the future to improve the herd.
For the past few years we’ve been keeping more cattle on for finishing or selling as breeding stock, partly because of disappointing prices for Devon youngstock. (They made good money when people were buying for HLS schemes, but not any more.) We also select 2 or 3 bull calves to rear on as bulls.
Touch wood, we’ve never had bTB. Probably luck. Closed herd may help. Also, we always try to minimise stress (eg gradual weaning) and don’t vaccinate or bolus the cattle. The cattle did well with minimal inputs when we were organic, so we carried on.
One bull failed its 2-year-old Devon Cattle Breeders’ inspection last year, and wouldn’t have made much at market, so we sold boxed beef via Facebook. A lot of demand, so we’ve decided to sell all the cattle not destined to be breeding stock in this way. Combe Martin abattoir is local and has an on-site butcher who cuts and packs the meat as required. After all costs (including travel and our time) we reckon they make £300 + more per animal than we would selling them at market or direct to an abattoir.
Now there are almost 80 cattle at West Ilkerton during the summer. The cows are completely grass fed. Only the bulls and youngstock get concentrate feed.
The herd generally calves from January – March, but there are always a few that calve in April or May. If the box scheme is successful we’ll want to spread calving out to give a year-round supply of finished cattle. Alternatively, we could invest in a few freezers.
At the moment nearly all the cows and calves have to be turned out by mid-March, which is stressful all round, because the sheds have to be mucked out for lambing at the end of March. Planning permission is currently being sought for a new cattle shed, which will be built in the bottom of the field by the back yard. The buildings Grandma put up in 1969 are getting old now but will have to carry on a little while longer!
Sheep: When we were first married we kept about 400 ewes (Exmoor horn nucleus flock and a larger Exmoor horn x Border Leicester flock put to Suffolk rams.) Those were the days of headage payments. The lambs were mainly sold as stores. Buyers liked Suffolk x lambs but they never did well at West Ilkerton – deficiencies and dirty backsides were a problem. Also, we needed Exmoor horn, Border Leicester and Suffolk rams running with different ewes, and enough of each to get a fair selection of lambs for replacements. It was a fairly complicated system.
For a few years we bred Friesland x Exmoors and got good prices for them, but then the fashion changed to Exmoor mules. Bluefaced Leicester rams have to be looked after carefully here, and the lambs don’t do particularly well. Tried going back to pure Exmoors, but found there’s a reason why they’re rare! Now thinking of breeding Exmoor x Border Leicesters again – perhaps with Chartex terminal sire.
Sheep numbers were halved when the farm was organic in the early 2000s. Sheep didn’t do well under an organic system. Worms, feet and minerals were all problems, together with ticks, fly strike and clostridial diseases. (The Soil Association was much stricter about things like worming and vaccinating back then.)
Chris has always been much keener on cattle than sheep. Environmentalists also prefer cattle. The farm’s HLS agreement stipulates no grazing by sheep in some fields. We now lamb down about 100 ewes and 30 2T ewes per year. Will sell boxed lamb this autumn.
Exmoor ponies: These don’t make money, but they’re my hobby and serve a useful purpose grazing the common land and getting HLS grazing payments on the farm. A herd of 13 geldings are on Ilkerton Ridge all year round (very useful, as they can stay out there the whole time, remain in good condition during the winter and can’t get pregnant) and three mares plus their foals are back at the farm. There used to be up to 15 mares on the common, but they kept escaping onto Brendon Common and getting in-foal to unregistered stallions. Finding homes for the foals was a real problem. Now all the foals are handled before being sold.
Holiday cottage: Until 2013 half the farmhouse was a self-catering cottage sleeping up to 6 people. Now Sarah rents it. Not as much income, but no more changeover days! Hurray!
Horse-drawn tour business: We ran a horse-drawn tour business with Shires and Clydesdales on Ilkerton Ridge from 1990 – 2007. It was enjoyable but very time-consuming and extremely weather-dependant. Also, it became increasingly expensive in terms of insurance, complying with rules and regulations etc. I provided cream teas in the farmhouse.
Farm Tours: For a few years we offered Land Rover tours of the farm. We may start this up again this summer holidays & September. Good for promoting boxed beef & lamb.
Writing and Publishing: I started writing articles for magazines in the 1990s. Then, in 2001 during the foot & mouth crisis, I wrote her first story. It was about a girl and her Exmoor pony growing up on a farm like West Ilkerton. Chris did the illustrations. I published the book myself, and it sold so well that I wrote two more based on Exmoor and one on Lundy, illustrated by Chris. Then, in 2011, a big London publisher called Orion asked me to rewrite my existing books and also write five brand new ones. The advances paid for a new tractor! Chris was asked to illustrate the books.
Orion has now been taken over by an even larger company called Hachette and the people I used to work with have left. Brexit has caused a lot of uncertainty in the industry.
I’m still writing for magazines, including the Exmoor Magazine, and am also working on a novel for adults plus two picture books for young children.
Renewable Electricity and Heat:
Wind power: Evance R9000 5kW turbine installed 17/12/2010
Cost £30,345 including planning, groundworks, electrical work in farmhouse, Immersun system and interest on loan.
Insurance is now so high (cheapest quote is over £1,000 a year) that we don’t insure it.
Annual income after servicing costs, including saving on electricity = £4,829
Solar Power: 16 Sanyo HIT Solar PV panels (3.84 kW in total) installed on the Tallat (where Mum now lives) 25/11/11.
Cost £13,420 including electrical work in the house and planning permission.
(We wanted solar panels on the livestock sheds, too, but as there’s only single phase electricity to the farm we were limited to a total maximum output of 10kW. Installing three-phase electricity would have cost over £30,000.)
Mum’s electricity bill has gone down by two-thirds.
We get the Feed-in Tariff (FIT). No maintenance costs, no extra insurance.
Annual income from FIT (not allowing for Mum’s free electricity): £1,792.00.
Biomass Boiler: Solar Bayer 60 kW log boiler commissioned on 2/6/14.
Cost £21,548 to install, including planning and groundworks.
We were told it would use 30 tons of wood a year. It uses double that.
Majority of the wood comes from farm, but some bought in. Together about £4,000 spent on getting and processing enough wood to fuel the boiler. Save £3,000+ per year on oil for heating and hot water for all three dwellings. Servicing approx. £300. Extra insurance approx. £250.
Average of £5,400 RHI per year.
Annual income after deducting costs and adding oil saved: £3,850
.
TOTAL MONEY GAINED FROM RENEWABLES per year = approx. £10,000
So all together there’s an approximate payback time of 7 years. (Slightly less for the biomass boiler, but it’s a lot of work!)
All the time we’ve been farming West Ilkerton, we’ve tried to play safe. In general we’ve only bought things when we could pay for them, and we’ve tried not to put all our eggs in one basket. With the benefit of hindsight we should have taken a few risks, eg. bought some moorland when it came up for sale soon after we were married, but we could have lost everything with the rise in interest rates in the 1990s.
For many years we were in the Exeter University Farm Management Survey, and every year we were told our gross income from the farm was below average but our costs were so low that the profit of the farm was easily in the top half. Our machinery and labour costs are particularly low. Also, our farm is unusual in that it rarely has borrowings.
At present we’ve got no debt at all, but that will change if we put up a new cattle shed in September / October this year. It’s a risk, especially with the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, but we really do need a shed if we’re going to carry on livestock farming here and look after our animals, and the land, properly. We feel if we don’t do it now we never will.