Tori & Ben's Farm: A traditional farming story

Ben Stanley with a prize Longhorn bull.

Charles Meynell (CM): I'm going to start now because otherwise we'll never get going! So in summary, Ben, Tori, could you describe a typical day here on the farm and what are the key tasks involved in caring for your Longhorn cattle?

Ben Stanley (BS):

Cheers, Charles. Well, the great thing about farming, and the worst thing about farming is that every day you haven't got a bloody clue what you're going to be doing from the start to finish. So you start with a great plan of what you're going to do, and that changes immediately. So you walk out of the door and you see that 10 of the steers in the field down the drive are in the hedge, not in the field. So you chase them around for an hour, get them in, swear a lot, drive the quad around like a crazy lunatic. They crush all the wheat as they charge around in the wheat and won't get stuck in the ditch. You get them loaded and lift that one out of the hedge and then you get them all back in.

And then you get back to what you thought you were going to do that day. For example, today was silage making. But that all didn't go to plan either because my mower broke down. That meant a trip to the mechanic man and the mechanic man couldn't fix it. So then I had to find another chap's mower and beg, steal and borrow a tractor that fits the alternative mower. And I suppose to summarise over again, we got back here and instead of then going mowing, we calved a cow. And Tori and I sat there like crouching tiger, hidden dragon, watching Lofty birth her calf. Lofty, who's been part of our story and we care a lot for and we don't want it to go wrong. So you're glued to that. And then finally I buggered off and went and drove a tractor and that's all happened just today. And but my point being is that no day is the same.

CM:

So it's true to say there isn't a typical day here at Park Farm?

BS:

There is never a typical day.

You plan and you do have jobs you have to get done. Feeding the animals, checking the animals, checking they've got water and they're doing what they need to be doing now, where they need to be. That all has to happen. But actually any number of things mean that your day can become very unpredictable. Actually, that's what I like about farming. A lot of people aren't that lucky. Drives me mad, but a lot of people go to and do the same thing every day monotonously. Great thing about farming is you've got hand grenades thrown into it the whole time and it sort of means you live a little bit.

CM:

OK, so this leads me to ask you, what inspired you to raise Longhorn, Longhorn cattle specifically, and what do you find most rewarding about working with that breed?

BS:

Well, that's a lovely question. Longhorn cattle have been in my family for 50 or 60 years.

My parents have farmed Longhorn cattle and as a family we've shown Longhorn cattle all over the country for decades. Stanley-bred Longhorn cattle have been exported around the world. It's something that's ingrained into me as a little Stanley that Longhorns were important, but I think what we've really discovered was the eating quality of the Longhorn. Being a native breed that that grows slowly, puts a lot of lovely fat into the muscle and that means that you get this beautiful texture and flavour to the meat. Modern cattle can be very hard. They grow very quickly and they're very efficient converters of energy, but they put it all down into muscle and that that can be very tight, whereas Longhorns tend to have lovely wobbly bottoms that make them very tasty!

CM:

Tasty? I can attest to that! It's absolutely delicious!

BS:

That's very sweet of you. And they've won lots of awards for that fine quality.

There's the family background, there's the docility, which helps with the meat tenderness because they're very calm cattle. That also helps with my young family. That's also very important to us and they're very beautiful animals aswell. I think you eat the view, don't you? I can't think of any sight I would rather see than this Parkland out in front of the house with those beautiful majestic Longhorn cattle with their wonderful horns roaming as they would have roamed at Calke Abbey and Staunton Harold, in this landscape 400 years ago.

CM:

That's amazing because you lead me on to my next question, which is the land you farm here. How does it suit the the cattle? Is it particularly is it special to them or is it is it just like any other part of the countryside?

BS:

The Longhorn has been a particular part of this landscape on the Leicestershire, Derbyshire border for a very, very long time.

In fact, Robert Bakewell at Loughborough used Longhorn cattle as his ‘improved breed’ 200 years ago, actually the 300th anniversary of his birth is in about two weeks time. Back in the day. You would have had a cow, you'd have milked the cow, it would have pulled your cart when it died you would have eaten it. So it was a very dual purpose thing and it was all rather grim. Whereas Bakewell decided that he was going to make a breed to feed the Industrial Revolution and he chose the Longhorn. And at that time, they were the breed of the moment and they were exported to the Antipodes and all over the world. They were the breed to have.

They were superseded ultimately by the Shorthorn and the Angus. But the Longhorn are suited to this environment. They're very good at grazing from grass. These modern breeds graze from cereals. And our cows especially are good for climate change.

CM:

That's very interesting.

BS:

They take a lower type of ‘fuel’, which is the beautiful grass they eat.

CM:

OK. This is a pretty obvious question. What are the biggest challenges you're facing as a beef farmer at the moment?

BS:

That's a really interesting question at this time. There's a lot of change going on in farming at the moment. The beef price as we were just discussing about earlier, Charles, is actually as good as it's been in a long time and our costs necessary haven't necessarily gone up.

It's happened quite fortuitously because the national beef herd is been reducing so rapidly because so many people are getting out of beef farming. So we farm in a subtler way. We have one calf to one cow. It is the oldest form of farming, you know, since the Nile. It's been going on since age memorial. Today the majority of beef comes from either imported beef or from from dairy cattle as a by-product.

So it's the byproduct of the dairy industry and they're wean the mothers very quickly and it's to me it's an inferior product. It's not that same two summers at grass like our cattle have.

The biggest challenge, I suppose, is to deliver that animal weight via an environmentally friendly process, and through the wonderful grass based system that we do sustainably. It is also a fact that our farm subsidies have gone - which is fine.

That's fine because I voted for Brexit. We have to evolve that [post Brexit] policy. However, what we grabbed with both hands post Brexit and post the subsidy world, the then (Conservative) government created a subsidy scheme based on environmental farming.

Now that suited us beautifully so we could stop the scorched earth farming. We did. We got rid of the chemical farming, we're growing a lot less crops and we've done a lot more regenerative farming.

We were encouraged to do that with a more modest subsidy, but it was a subsidy worth having.

CM:

The Sustainable Farming Incentive?

BS:

The SFI, yeah.

However, the Labour government as with along with a lot of other things, they have taken a chunk out of farming, and they have recently cancelled that scheme. So we've actually only got a year left of SFI.

And not only that, they've withheld some of the money that we're already due on that scheme. And another thing, we had a capital grant scheme which helped us invest in fencing and water. They've also come out of that as well!

Also, they're very, very difficult about paying into the scheme which we're already in! So the government are a bit of an issue at the moment. They don't know which direction they want to take farming and also they don't really know what to do with farming. I think the Labour government often finds itself in this position.

CM:

Thank you, a very good answer.

Moving on, I know both of you, I know you're both involved in this business and I know you sell your beef directly to consumers through the farm shop and through other channels. Whatever you do, Ben, I don't know which is the better, or isn't there one?

Park Farm with the herd.

BS:

The right answer for that actually is that we are still young and developing. So I'd say Tori's side of business [the farm shop and catering outlets] is the better business. Tori and I, we started farming on our own, from nothing. To do that, Tori's side of the business had to happen first to pay for the farming to really start to happen. So when we first farmed, we had a little 40 acre farm and we started literally with a couple of pigs, a few sheep and a cow. We had a sausage machine in the kitchen basically.

The butchery started with a hot bucket of water and a knife. But we had to sell direct to generate enough cash flow out of each animal. And that's how it all started. Ultimately the margin is much better in the retail part of the business. And what we found as we went along, we had control over it.

We also went down to London, and did the farmers markets in London for 10 years. Then we did all sorts of food fairs and festivals, didn't we? From that there's come a great deal of pride in what we produce. So a lot of farmers produce beef and they don't really care what it tastes like - and it tastes like iron.

We really need to produce a good quality product because every single time an animal leaves this farm, we're going to meet and look the customers who eat it in the eye.

So financially the retail is good, the catering is better and each time you take it up the chain it becomes more profitable. The farming side itself is often, you know, difficult to justify. However, it's what our passion is. It's whatever our heart is.

CM:

But without the farming, you haven't got the shop and you haven't got the catering.

BS:

And we haven't got the story either.

Farm

Tori Stanley (TS)

You could just cut corners. We could just run a shop.

CM:

You could buy the beef in for the catering business?

TS

Buy everything in, yes …

BS:

But we're not doing that. We're not prepared to cut corners.

And we're never seen to be either.

TS

We're doing it from start to finish. All the way through.

BS:

We've never seen ourselves as butchers or caterers. We are farmers. We always said that first and foremost, we're farmers. That's what we are in our heart. We never want suddenly to find ourselves being, you know, a butcher or a retailer.

CM:

That's a nice way of putting it.

Bearing all that stuff in mind, what are the most memorable and interesting experiences you've had whilst being here farming your Longhorns? Any good anecdotes?

BS:

The best, I think the most enjoyable thing, one of the most enjoyable evenings we hosted was the MasterChef winners dinner filmed by the BBC on our land.

CM:

Oh gosh, I remember that.

BS:

You were there? Yeah, I remember now, of course! That was a lovely thing.

CM:

Wasn't it fun? Describe it again for the readers.

BS:

We've got this beautiful avenue of beech trees, which is strange as its actually called the Chestnut Avenue. But during the war the then tenant removed all the chestnuts so he could put a plough through it. But the landlord came back from Scotland and went absolutely crazy. The tenant put new trees back in, but stupidly put beech trees in instead, which made the landlord get even more crazy, but he let it go eventually.

But there's this beautiful avenue of trees where the cattle graze and it's so beautifully Derbyshire, so beautifully English, with Melbourne's church at the bottom of the slope with Saint George's flag flying from the top. You couldn't get a more wonderful scene and Sven-Hansen Britt did the MasterChef finals of the decade here.

He used our beef and did this wonderful tasting menu sourced al from local ingredients.

CM:

I remember it well. Eighteen courses if I recall correctly!

BS:

Sven-Hansen Britt. He had won Masterchef of Masterchefs. He won the whole competition!

CM:

He certainly deserved it.

BS:

Yeah, that was a real highlight. We supplied the Goring Hotel for many years with our sausages….

CM:

I know it, very well regarded and still family run - which always makes difference.

BS:

I'll never forget getting an order from Sir Nicholas Soames. I tried to look out for it the other day. We had this most amazing letter from him appraising our sausage and then we had to send it to his home. Six strings at a time, horribly expensive for us, but you couldn't turn down Churchill's grandson, could we?

We did that, not a brilliant fortune in doing it, but it was just the most wonderful thing to know that you've supplied someone like that.

CM:

(laughing) And Breedon Hall, of course ….

TS:

… for their breakfast menu…

BS:

What else have we done? There's been some lovely things actually. The journey. I hate that word actually, but it's the farmers markets in London were memorable. We've served anybody and everybody, from the bottom end - the Ben Fogle's - to the top end Ronnie Wood, Oasis, Noel Gallagher, Emma Thompson, Dumbledore and Gandalf! The actors I mean.

TS:

But I would also say in all of that, which is all very exciting and the names and everything for the social media, … but just bringing it back to today, we weren't expecting a calf, but she poked out her head didn't she? We went, oh goodness, we can see some feet, and the joy!

I had it on camera and visually checked progress in this gorgeous sunshine that they're having at the moment. And no one can take away from that moment of watching that calf come into the world

BS:

It was so vigorous, wasn't it?

TS:

It was, but it was strength. But just being part of that as Lottie [the mother cow] starting, as you can see some feet and as it starts to deliver all the way through and everything happens naturally. And if everything happens naturally, you have an amazing product.

BS:

Lottie's been with us from the start, pretty much.

TS:

She's 14 years old. If you intervene, you can screw the whole job up. And we just let it be. But we kept an eye on her and we just sat together.

BS:

Charles, our cow is from the Irmine family and Tori bought Lottie in the one of our first purchases of cattle, and some cows succeed for you and some don't. She wasn't a fancy looking cow, but she's left a great family and our herd of 70 longhorn cattle is made-up of six cows, six families. You buy all these different cows at the start, but you end up with just six cows that have done you well, that have consistently bred at the right time, that have produced the right calf, etcetera, etcetera. The one thing I would finish on with memorable moments, I think, it goes without saying how many amazing local people support our business. And if they didn't, we wouldn't have a business. And actually, I would trade any of those highlight moments we talked about for always being pleased to see a local person who's prepared to come to us and spend their money with us. And it's hard earned money these days. And we're not selling cheap products.

TS:

I love those days in the shop when you see the customers, and all these people coming in and out.

BS:

Like friends aren't they?

TS:

They are just friends, yeah, coming through the door.

CM:

And, and you're right, it is hard earned money these days.

I'm going to finish with asking you both what are your hopes and plans for the future of your farm here?

TS:

Wow, that's such a big question, isn't it?

BS:

(laughing) We're going to set up and open up a B&B in Breedon on the Hill.

CM:

(wryly laughing) A good quality one I'd hope!

BS:

To be honest with you, I know it sounds crap actually, but, if you said to me in 15 years time, we were still doing what we were doing now, and delivering, the business was still succeeding and we were still here farming and doing a good job, the children had grown up in a good way and had some lovely experiences from farming … I'd be delighted with that. What about you, Tori? The second husband will be a lot more handsome, a lot more aspirational?

TS:

I think we want to keep making sure that our kids are happy and working well. The business keeps growing in any which way from what it is, whether that's through the catering or through the farm shop or the farm continues to grow. But basically it's just continuing to keep doing what we're doing, really working hard.

I think the catering, the catering side has got to be the way forward.

BS:

Forward. Yeah, it's,certainly the where the best growth is for the business. The farm needs to not not lose too much money, that the shop needs to do what it's doing and serving the local community, and doing a good job, but the catering probably has the best scope of growth over the next couple of years. And we've just bought another catering trailer and toddles off to Goffs next week for the bloodstock sales. So we'll see how that goes and hopefully I'm going to bring in some success with that.

TS:

And buy a fourth thoroughbred…

BS:

Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what'll happen. We go and sell a few burgers and bring a fourth thoroughbred back. I mean that's our business plan!

CM:

So you're going into horse flesh business now?

BS:

Yeah, probably be the horses, probably the thoroughbred horses. Probably be cheaper than bacon.

CM:

I wouldn't be surprised!

Right, well, that's it guys. That was great. That was just fascinating.

Thank you both very much.