Building a new cattle shed has helped ensure the future viability of a beef and sheep farm in the heart of the Lake District.
John Birkett's family has farmed in the Lake District for generations and now he and his wife Maureen farm two holdings under numerous constraints at Little Langdale in the beautiful Langdale Valley near Ambleside.
They have a herd of 30 registered Limousin cows at the owner-occupied 65-acre Wilson Place as well as running a total of 1,200 sheep, mostly Herdwicks between Wilson Place and Birk Howe, which is tenanted from the National Trust.
The running of Birk Howe was taken over from John's father George in 2000 and the Farm Business Tenancy stipulates that the farm's 240 acres carry no more than 10 cattle alongside the Trust's flock of 535 Herdwick ewes – and no cattle from the end of October to the end of May.
Until 2005, all the cows and calves were housed in traditional stone buildings at Wilson Place.
"We had invested money in the farmhouse at Wilson place where Maureen ran a bed and breakfast business for 25 years and when we got Birk Howe we knew we could keep more cattle in order to get more money from farming," said John, who runs the farm with weekend help from son Andrew, who is keen to farm and who works for a neighbour. Daughter Julie is a compliance planner for the national park.
"We had been thinking about a new building but we were always so much short of the money to pay for it.
"I read about Farming Connect Cumbria and I decided to apply for planning permission early in 2004 before I made a grant application.
"Without the new building we would have either had to reduce cow numbers or get rid of them altogether and we would not have been able to increase our sheep numbers to compensate because we are in the ESA. We wouldn't want to give up farming."
The Farming Connect Cumbria programme, managed by Harry Martin and run under the umbrella of Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency, draws to a close this year after injecting almost £7.5 million of capital as well as technical advisory work into the county's farms since its inception just over three years ago.
