Taking on the complementary challenge of SPS and environmental stewardship

Wiltshire Horns and Longhorns come in, plus arable reversion project and overwintered stubble

Jon Birchall isn’t a man to let an opportunity pass him by. Charged with the management of Offley Hoo Farm, he saw the arrival of the Single Payment and later the Higher Level Stewardship scheme as a complementary challenge and an opportunity, which he grabbed with both hands.

With subsidies no longer linked to production, he threw a wheel of change into motion. He began by analysing every aspect of the farm while the environmental stewardship scheme offered further prospects from taking land out of production for the benefit of wildlife.

The farm’s 1,800-acres are part of the 7,000-acre Kings Walden estate owned by Sir Thomas Pilkington. Previously home to a dairy unit it became predominantly arable when increased cereal prices and IACS arable area payments encouraged farmers to cultivate grassland. But this ‘new’ arable land included a fair amount of marginal land.

“They are lovely landscapes but not the most productive,” says Jon, who realised it was time to address the issue once the Single Payment Scheme was on the cards. “It made us look long and hard at what we were doing and we started to question the profitability of everything on the farm.”

That included re-examining the livestock enterprises – a fattening cattle herd and a 600-ewe flock of North Country Mules.

He knew the loss-making cattle had to go, yet on the surface the commercial sheep seemed to be making a healthy gross margin. It was only when his meticulous attention to record keeping revealed that this was not the case. When labour was taken into account the flock was actually losing money.

With no animals, he was then left with the problem of finding others to graze the chalk grassland and historic parkland. With livestock numbers few and far between in Hertfordshire, one of the only counties without a single abattoir, Jon’s problem was intensifying.

There was already a Countryside Stewardship Scheme agreement but he could envisage more opportunities with the new Higher Level Scheme, particularly for the grassland and marginal land.

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Improving the landscape for generations to come is one of the main aims of the HLS agreement.

“There were rumours that the uptake for the Higher Level Stewardship scheme had been low so I made enquiries as to whether we could enter,” he says.

The answer was ‘yes’ and after spending many hours preparing an application, the stewardship was granted.

The farm’s existing grassland was put into the HLS low input option, with the native breeds at risk option on a substantial amount too. The agreement included an arable reversion project for some of the marginal land, while the rest was used for overwintered stubble.

As labour was a big input with the previous flock, he chose to replace the commercial ewes with Wiltshire Horns.

Recruiting a shearer had become an increasing headache following the decline of livestock in the county alongside the costs which were no longer covered by the fleece. For Jon, the natural shedding nature and easy care attributes of the Wiltshire Horns was a big draw as well as their ability to lamb outside with little assistance.

Finding sufficient stock has been a challenge and he and wife Sarah found themselves collecting a few ewes at a time to build up to their current status of 190 ewes. “We are woefully understocked,” says Jon, who plans to increase the flock to 400 ewes.

“There are only about 3,000 breeding ewes in the country, a lot of which are with smallholders,” says Sarah, who plays an active role on the farm.

They recently started selling lamb in boxes, advertising the business through leaflets.

Originally, their intention was to sell to a butcher but after changing his mind at short notice the couple were left with finding their own market. Luckily, some friends with a farm shop stepped in and offered their services to butcher the meat after the lambs are slaughtered in Oxfordshire.

So Jon and Sarah set about finding their first customers and within a few weeks had already sold 50 lambs.

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The fattening cattle have been replaced with a herd of Longhorns, a breed chosen for its looks, marketability, temperament and relative availability.

“This is not a livestock area and if you are selling commercial lambs you have to take the price you are offered, but rare breed meat is too good for that,” says Sarah.

At 1.25, this year’s lambing ratio wasn’t as high as he would have liked but he believes this is partly due to 40 per cent of the flock being ewe lambs this year, and the fact that the small numbers of females available meant no room for selecting the best – something he intends to do in the future.

All the ewes are electronically tagged, which helps maintain his detailed records and grass-fed with minerals but no concentrates.

The fattening cattle have been replaced with a herd of Longhorns, a breed chosen for its looks, marketability, temperament and relative availability. “We were also thinking about direct sales of beef from the start and as a breed, Longhorn have acquired a good reputation already.’’

The current herd stands at 30 females with the aim to increase to 50. Like the Wiltshire Horns, the cows will be overwintered with just the young heifers and store cattle being brought in for the colder months.

Inevitably, the arable unit has seen some major changes with the start of the HLS agreement in November last year. Efforts to improve wildlife habitats include six metre margins, field corners, fallow and skylark plots, pollen and nectar mixes, wild bird seed mixes and over 137-acres of harvested fertiliser-free margins.

“We tried to target all the areas of the farm that weren’t really producing,” says Jon. “We looked at all the yields for all parts of the farm and tried to come up with a sensible plan.”

This plan included putting chalky land, which is drought-prone and suffers from a heavy rabbit infestation, into over-wintered stubble. There are now some 380-acres of overwintered stubble, which will be in continuous spring barley.

The move has encouraged a better gross margin and spread the workload dramatically. It has taken 380-acres of autumn drilling out to allow the team to concentrate on drilling the heavier pieces of land ahead of the new season.

The remainder of the heavy, better yielding land is cropped with a rotation of beans, wheat, oats, wheat. Oats in particular are a popular break crop among Hertfordshire growers who often struggle with oilseed rape, he says.

“Naked oats have been quite a valuable component of the rotation. We have had quite respectable yields of 2.25tonnes/acre so they produce a comparable gross margin with some of the poorer crops of wheat.”

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As labour was a big input with the previous flock, the commercial ewes were replaced with Wiltshire Horns.

The farm has struggled to establish crops of oilseed rape because of the heavy land and pigeon problems because of the woodland, but Jon refuses to let this put him off.

“Rape prices have climbed so we want to conquer the difficulties and put it back into the rotation,” he says. As testament to this, he has planted 17 acres as a trial and with use of a subsoiler the crops are going well.

Although preparing the application for HLS was complicated, he received ‘fantastic support’ from the Countryside Management Services of Herts County Council, who compiled the Farm Environment Plan and helped him plan the application.

“It is an enormous amount of paperwork and we couldn’t have done it on our own,” he admits. “ELS is easy but to put the environmental data together for HLS is a specialist task in my opinion.”

Communicating the aims of the scheme to the farm’s staff of two full-time men and other part-time workers is essential, he says.

“I work with a super group of people but the potential for getting something wrong within the scheme is enormous so I have given them all laminated maps.”

The HLS project has seen other improvements to land and landscape. Wildlife is already benefiting with the chalk grassland rich in cowslips in the spring, and harebells and scabius now cropping up too. The gamekeeper is seeing more healthy populations of partridges “and during lambing this year I had lapwings screaming overhead,” says Jon.

The agreement has also provided resources to invest in other areas of the farmland, including 24,000 metres of fencing and gates for extra grassland, 7,500 metres of hedge-laying and 4,000 metres of hedge-planting. “We are improving the landscape for generations to come.”

The second year of the agreement will begin by encouraging educational access, including walks and visits for schools and local groups.

Jon sees this as an opportunity to improve people’s understanding of farming as well as a chance to promote the Wiltshire Horn lamb and Longhorn beef. “As an industry it is agreed that we are so divorced from the public so we are keen to do more to connect with them. If we want to sell our meat to the public we do need to reach out.”