A packed room at The BW Garstang Country Hotel enjoyed the thoughts and experiences of three of our members who had diversified their dairy farming businesses.  

 

Mr Colin Price of the Jackbeck herd,  Mr Tom Stable of the Boltonmanor herd and Mr Carl Grimshaw of Carldanton and their families had each moved into very different enterprises on their farms with the Price family becoming organic a few years ago and also running an agricultural contracting business at Clapham near Ingleton, the Grimshaws run an open farm, Smithhills Open Farm, near Bolton and Toms family had the newest business: Cumbrian Cow ice cream.  

 

All were very successful businesses but not without a great deal of hard work, much thought and an understanding of the publics perception of farming. Questions asked dealt with the pros and cons of diversification....all agreed the need to do research...look at other enterprises that were similar and ask questions, what worked and what didnt. Carl was very keen on the need to interact with the public,  people genuinely love to know about farming and generally are on our side he said, and we, ,as farmers, are poor with our relationships with the public. He sees their enterprise as educational with eight school parties a day through the week visiting the farm and also a fun place to visit for families. Carl said the first year they had 3,000 visitors and last year this number had grown to 135,000.

 

Tom was of the same opinion and ice cream buyers were just as keen to learn about farming. They hoped to expand their business this year with yet more facilities under cover for people to sit down, enjoy their ice cream, and watch events taking place round the farmyard.

 

Colin said that OMSCO had secured a very good market in the USA for organic produce and it was such a shame there were not more organic producers in the UK as there was huge potential for this post Brexit whereas currently there are not enough suppliers; something that maybe some dairy farmers may want to consider going forward to the 2020s.

 

The evening proved to be a most interesting one and made a good change from only talking about cows, milk price and Holstein breeding.

 

Mr Stephen Garth proposed the vote of thanks to our panel members and to NWF Agriculture for sponsoring the evening.

 

Janet Whitlow