FiPL programme gave me “chance to be successful”

James Newhouse is producing beef and lamb on Meg’s Farm in Long Preston, Craven.  A couple of weeks ago he told me that participating in the Farming in the Protected Landscapes programme (FiPL) had helped his farm business and supported his aspiration to be a nature friendly farmer. We headlined a preview of this blog post last month as “Cometh the soil people“. Here is the fuller story.

James Newhouse said:

When we started five years ago, we didn’t really know what we were doing. I’d spent 20 years working at Rolls Royce in Barnoldswick. We were fresh into farming.  Then a farm officer from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Tarja Wilson, came out and helped me.  She told me what cows do for the land, what nature does for your land, and she advised me on how best to farm our land.  She then talked to me about grants and stewardship and all the other things that come with that. 

She put me forward for a FiPL-funded “Pasture for Life” project.  That was about giving people like me a mentor.  The FiPL programme has allowed me to talk to many, many different farmers. All those people, I’ve been to see them, and we’ve used all their knowledge to come up with what’s best for Meg’s Farm. 

FiPL then supported us to pay for fences, hedges and water troughs.  So, once we had the knowledge, we were supported to get the equipment to go forward.

Our land when we first got it was four fields:  four big blocks, 130 acres of grazing land.  What we’re trying to do is split the land up.  Instead of 30 acre fields, we want six acre fields.  Once we do that, we can move the stock ever four days and they’ll always have a fresh bite of grass. 

Our Belted Galloway cattle need 3% of their body weight in dry matter a day. Roughly, our cows will weigh 500-600 kg. So what we’re wanting is 25kg of dry matter per cow and calf combination per day.  FiPL enabled us to buy a “plate meter” which measures the dry matter in each field. 

What we want is for the grass to be about 3000kg of dry matter per hectare when we put the cows on, and about 2400kg when we take them off. The cows will eat some, trample some, leave some.  By doing that it increases soil health, all the goodness, and starts to improve carbon sequestration.

FiPL has also allowed us to do a baseline survey.  We wanted to understand the soil health, the ecology side, what the different grasses are.  Now we know what we have, we will be able to see in a few years’ time what difference the way we are farming has made.

Tree squares are really important as well.  When the cattle are up high, when it’s hot weather they need the shelter from the sun.  In the summer when it was really hot all the cows were stood under the one tree that we had.  Now we’ve planted more with help from Yorkshire Dales Millenium Trust.  FiPL has enabled it all.

It’s very hard as a farmer to set up a business.  Without the Yorkshire Dales National Park, without FiPL, there’s no chance we would be where we’re at.  Now the farm on its own will make a profit. 

FiPL is something that allows farmers to take a step back, look at their farm and say, ‘how can I change it to be profitable and sustainable?’  Having the programme is really, really important for farmers at the moment.  You are giving farmers a chance to be successful.  And at the moment they need it, unbelievably need it.

Mr Newhouse told us his next step is to set up a vending machine, in partnership with neighbouring farmers, to sell meat directly to the public.