Born to farm - Meet the young Calderdale farmer with a love of showing thanks to his grandparents

Stephen, still only in his mid-twenties, has won a breed championship twice consecutively in the past two years at the Great Yorkshire Show and said he owes it all to his grandparents.

The immensely likeable young farmer and sheep showman who destroys the myth that is occasionally purported that there aren’t the characters there once were in the farming community.

“I never had any intention of doing anything else and my grandfather and my gran taught me everything I know,” he said.

"They gave me all the support and encouragement and it’s now me and my mother Elizabeth who have the farm. My mother does a lot of my paperwork for me because I just haven’t enough time to do it all.

“We had some calves on the farm in my teens and cattle still make up the biggest part of the farm, not on numbers of stock but in the contribution to the farm. There used to be milk cows here. I was the first generation to bring sheep. The other generations had never had sheep before me.

“My grandparents had a lot of poultry and I sold a lot of eggs when I was a boy. I saved up my egg money and when I was 10 years old I bought my first sheep. I started out with five ewes.

“I started showing livestock when I was a kid. I used to show Pekin hens, but when I was 14 in 2010, I moved on to sheep. That’s when I started showing Hampshires. Our team was me, my grandparents and my mum. Everything developed from there to what I have today with a pedigree flock of 26 Hampshire Down breeding ewes.”

Highcliffe Farm in Southowram, 1,000 feet above Halifax and looking down on the Shibden Valley, is the base for the farming enterprise that Stephen now runs and has always enjoyed.

“Highcliffe runs to about 80 acres, we bought Hagstocks Farm at Shibden, that now adds another 54 acres, around five years ago and with additional rented ground we farm around 200 acres overall. Our land is quite flat at the top of the hill, but we also have a lot of land that is a long way from flat.

“Our livestock is all cattle and sheep. We have 54 suckler cows that run with a Charolais bull that we buy from the Hayhurst’s Whitecliffe herd at Kirby Misperton. The cows are a mixture of Charolais-crossed and Aberdeen Angus-crossed cows that calve in the spring and we also bucket-rear another 20 calves a year.

“We generally sell most of the calves as stores through Gisburn livestock market, and occasionally Skipton, at 10-11 months as suckled calves and I usually have around 20 followers running on. I will sell some at spring and some of the heifers I’ll keep as replacements for the herd.”

Stephen’s commercial sheep flock is made up of 128 breeding ewes lambing in spring and he will use his pedigree Hampshire Down tups in with his tupping mix as he is confident of their ability to turn out quality butcher’s lambs.

“We tup mainly with Charollais on the shearlings for easy first-time lambing. I buy Charollais tups from pedigree Charollais breeder Charles Marwood. My main breeding flock are Texel-crossed type. I use both the Texel and Hampshire tups on those.

“We sell all of our commercial lambs and pedigree lambs that I don’t consider good enough for either keeping on as replacements or to other breeders, at Gisburn.

“The December-born Hampshire lambs go in March and April and the commercial lambs in August and September with everything that is going, gone by October. Anything that is not big enough I prefer to keep on a bit longer to make sure.”

Stephen’s other farm work includes making silage, usually from two cuts, looking after cattle for another farmer over winter and preparing sheep for showing for others.

“We generally do two cuts but it had been that dry in 2022 that I had to let the cows on to what was going to be the second cut because I hadn’t enough grass and while I normally have enough silage I’ve had to buy in more this winter because of that.

“Getting sheep ready for showing for other folk through the summer and looking after somebody else’s cattle as well as my own over winter makes sure I’m pretty busy all year round."

Stephen said his Hampshire Downs have a real part to play, not just as eye candy in a show ring.

“They are quick growing and have plenty of shape. They’ll get up and go and are quite hardy. We’re 1,000 ft up and they go well. They are a good terminal sire producing a good butcher’s lamb.

“Butchers really do like them and with around 40 lambs on the ground each year I have a good selection to pick through for both the show team and for market.”

Since the pandemic Stephen said he has concentrated his showing efforts a little more than previously.

“I’ve not just done as much showing as I was before Covid. I always go to the Three Counties showground for the national breed show and sale of Hampshire Downs; and other Hampshire shows and sales; and then the Great Yorkshire. Time is so precious now.

“In 2021 I won at Harrogate with a ewe lamb and in 2022 with a shearling tup. As a whole I think we are more of a ewe flock. Ours are quite feminine in their face. We breed some really smart, stylish ewe lambs.”

Stephen’s girlfriend is Chelsea Halliday whose grandfather was a butcher and a farmer.

Stephen is the fourth generation to farm even though there have been five generations involved since his descendants first tenanted the farm from Shibden Hall Estate before purchasing Highcliffe over 100 years ago.

“I’ve always lived here. My mother and father are both accountants. My great-grandad, was Stephen Knight. His daughter Margaret married my grandfather Willie Rushforth and they had my mum Elizabeth who married my father Mark Short.

“As my grandparents got older I did more. They retired and I wasn’t so far off having started afresh anyway. With their assistance we’ve basically started again.

“I farm all the time. I look after some cattle for somebody else over winter.

“Between getting sheep ready for showing for other folk through summer and looking after somebody else’s cattle as well as my own over winter that’s what I do.”