East Riding Finalist for Tye Trophy Award
Conservation projects need not be a drain of farmers’ pockets, schemes such as
Stewardship can provide a significant portion of an arable farm income. This has been demonstrated by a Yorkshire farm that has been named
as East Riding area finalist for the prestigious Tye Trophy.
The award recognises the contribution of farmers in Yorkshire and the North East
to wildlife conservation and environmental protection and, for the first time,
it has been organised by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and the region’s Farming
and Wildlife Advisory Groups (FWAG).
Pat and Michael Rhodes of Holme House, Holme on Spalding Moor together with their
daughter Catherine Thompson are jointly one of the five area winners, and now go forward to the final, with overall winner announced
at this year’s Great Yorkshire Show at Harrogate. The Show, the largest annual
agricultural event in the region, runs from Tuesday 10 – Thursday 12 July.
All the area winners have the option of going forward to next year’s prestigious
Silver Lapwing Award. The five areas represented are North Yorkshire, East Yorkshire,
South & West Yorkshire, Northumberland and Tyne Tees.
The awards will be presented on the morning of Wednesday, July 11, by Mrs Alison
Saville, who gave the trophy in 1989 in memory of her grandfather Howard Tye,
founder of Tye Trailers, and also her father Kenneth Tye. She will be assisted
in the presentation ceremony by Michael Woodhouse FWAG Director for England.
As Catherine Thompson explains “as a family farm we have always been interested
in wildlife and conservation and over the years we have taken great pleasure from
the beauty of the countryside in which we live and work.”
Catherine has been involved in the running of the 400 hectare farm for the past
20 years and has continued to operate a traditional varied farming system, with
35 pedigree Charolais cows, 150 Lleyn ewes and a 350 sow pig unit producing baconers.
The pig unit, based on JSR genetics has been a “closed” unit since 1999 meaning
no new stock have been bought or brought onto the farm for the past eight years,
and all the female cattle and the sheep are also home bred.
The farm has many soil types from heavy clay to blow-away sands has led to a
mixed cropping rotation system with pasture on the carr land supporting both suckler
cows and sheep. Rotations with spring root crops and vining peas on the sand
land and cereal rotations on the heavy clay give a great start to biodiversity
on the farm; and small river, the Foulness, and its tributaries, run the length
of the farm forming wildlife corridors supporting a variety of birds, and now
even otters..
The family have been members of East Yorkshire FWAG from its launch in the 1980s.Various
Stewardship Schemes have been joined, and advice taken, to enhance the environmental
features of the farm.
Hedges with oak and holly trees are a feature of this part of the East Riding
landscape. The big hedges also help to protect the sand land from wind erosion.
The past 30 years have seen a careful regime of rotational cutting of hedges,
whilst some 7,000 new hedge plants have been used to fill “gaps”. A varied mixture
of hedge plants has been used to give variety and colour to the hedges.