Family diversifies to stay ahead 

Steve and Fiona Peck of Stockwell Farm, Egging­ton, Bedfordshire, have turned what was a strug­gling dairy farm 20 years ago into a thriving retail business, while retaining an agricultural pres­ence in the landscape. And maybe there is something to be said for opt­ing out while you sti.ll have the energy and willpower to make ago ofit.

Steve’s parents, Rob and Doreen, started the farm just after the second world war as part of a Govern­ment-funded initiative to create new council farms to help reduce the country’s reliance on imports.

 

Subsequently the family was able to purchase the farm and a Holstein Friesian herd was established.

When Steve came back from college in the late 1970s, he set up a doorstep milk business to run alongside it, milking, bottling and delivering to customers in the nearby town of Leighton Buzzard and the 20 or so neighbouring villages.

However, by the 1990s, with a cost of milk production of 22ppl exceeding the 17ppl sale price, the farm was struggling and it was time for a change.

 

 

“Steve and I married 25 years ago. I had no experience of farming at that time,” says Fiona.

“I did not even own a pair of wellies. I was a city girl. I ran a pen­sion fund in London, but I had come to Leighton Buzzard to help with a satellite company when I met Steve at a tennis club.

“I looked over the farm’s accounts and saw it just was not working. The banks were not helpful at that time and Steve and his parents were work­ing extremely hard. We decided to outsource the bottling of our milk and, as Steve’s two herdsmen were coming up for retirement, the time seemed right for a change.”

This meant Fiona leaving her city job to devote all her time to the establishment of a farm shop, but Steve was determined that they would retain a farming side to the enterprise, says Fiona.

She says: “We have two sons, Henry and William, who love farm­ing and Steve felt it was important we kept the cows and the knowledge of them so we could pass it on to our sons and their children.

“Once that knowledge is gone it is lost forever. However good coll­eges are at teaching it, first-hand knowledge built up over time is unbeatable,” she says.

The decision was taken to create a 30-cow follower herd, breeding calves and taking them up to the age of weaning at 10 to 11 months before selling them off to a local dealer for fattening up for the meat trade.

“We have not been able to invest in an expensive pedigree breed, so we have done it gradually. We currently have a Blonde d’Aquitaine bull and we are trying to produce a beefier sort of animal,” says Fiona.

The cattle are housed during winter and grazed on the farm’s pastures in spring and summer.

A total of 100 tonnes of haylage is cut in early summer as winter feed for the cows.

 

The link with the farm’s dairy past has not been entirely severed. “We still supply all types of milk – full fat, skimmed, semi-skimmed and organic, but the old milking parlour has now been converted into an office for the farm’s retail side, while the 100ft (30-metre) by 40ft (12m) cow shed is home to the vast range of delicatessen, sweet and drink products.

This bright, attractive space, with its seasonally changing displays is a measure of how successful the enterprise has been, but it did not start that way,” says Fiona.

“We literally had no money to begin with. So, for two years Steve planted a maize maze and I sat in a cattle trailer with a big sign advertising it.”

Helped by the farm’s high visibility roadside location, they raised £700, which enabled them to put up 10 telegraph poles and a makeshift roof to make what is now the smaller farm shop which sells fresh fruit and vegetables.

Fiona says: “We went to a local grower who advised us what prod­ucts to sell, things like locally grown potatoes, cabbages and carrots.

Advertised

“We got some pallets with false grass and I advertised in a local paper and sat out the front, often in the freezing cold with a duvet wrapped round me. It was hard but you need to have that innate belief that you are going to succeed.”

To get an idea of the farm shop market, Fiona attended a lot of trade shows and, back on the farm, ran tasting days, where local growers, cake and bread makers and artisan producers were invited along to test their wares on the public.

Conscious of the need to never rest on your laurels, last year Fiona brought in a local artist, Joanne Stone, who across six months spent several days on-farm, sketching its man-made and natural features and animals.

 

 

She says: “I wanted her to capture the essence of this farm which has huge oak which stands at the front of the farm, the daffodils of early spring, Hissing Sid the Goose and Sabrina the Cow. I now have prints of all of these, which I put on all our jams, pickles and biscuits.”

Recent additions to the shop’s wide range of offerings are pick­your-own hampers, as well as local gins, ciders and artisan beers, goose pates, cherry and nut nougats and gluten-free products.

Clearly Steve and Fiona’s differ­ent skills have combined to make a successful business partnership.

“I have a completely different perspective,” she says.

“When I gave up my city job to work here, I computerised all the records, for instance. Steve has such tremendous knowledge and a terrific affinity with the environ­ment, the land and farming.

 

“My role is to look at how we portray that to the rest of the country, and how we connect with different echelons of people.

“Many farmers do it not to make huge amounts of money, but for them farming is a way of life because they love the land and their animals, and that applies to Steve, as it did his parents.

“About 20 years ago, he planted 100,000 trees to create 32 hectares of woodland, the

biggest project of its

type in the south of England

at that time. The Forestry Com­mission and a woodland consultant John Niles helped us design three areas of woodland, one of which was planted up with trees indig­enous to Bedfordshire and grown within the county.”

With Bedfordshire the least wooded county in England, which in itself is the least wooded country in Europe, this act has not gone unrecognised, with the farm winning the campaign for the Pro­tection of Rural England’s Living Countryside Award in 2011.

With two sons currently gaining work experience on other farms but ready to take up the reins when their parents finally retire, Fiona is opti­mistic about Stockwell’s future.

“The boys will bring their own slant and their own skills.”

Reflecting on the squeeze to build houses in the county which has seen many neighbouring farms disappear under bricks and mortar, she says: “They do not make pieces of old England anymore and it needs to be used wisely. We are so lucky to still have this.”