Lakeland Farmer Credits NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales
22nd August 2018
The NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales are credited by one of the UK sheep industry’s main players, John Geldard FRAgS, as having provided the impetus for his career development.
The acclaimed Lakeland farmer, entrepreneur and agri-politician first visited the Royal Welsh Showground in 1981 and is a familiar figure at the Show and the Main Sale each September. He says his decision to specialise in pedigree breeding followed and in turn enabled John and his wife, Rachel, to buy their own farm and progress to a family business employing between 25 and 30 people and now run by their sons, Richard and Charles.
A former National Sheep Association Chairman, John serves as a Vice President of the organisation and is a Board member of the farmer-owned meat company, Farmers First, and a director of L&K Group, representing North West Auctions at Junction 36 and Lancaster. The family farming business comprises mixed pedigree livestock, including 150 pedigree Stabiliser suckler cows along with the sheep and egg production, as well as a farm shop.
The farm shop and Lakelands Food Park is now run by John and Rachel Geldard as a separate business. Plumgarths Farm Shop is now owned and run by their daughter, Victoria Hodgson.
He says: “In the late Seventies/1980, it was made clear to me by the likes of the late Joe Raine and one or two other northern stalwarts, along with a chap called Brian Nuttall, a local ADAS senior officer who then moved to Wales, that there was going to be a real opportunity for the Blue Faced Leicesters to improve the Welsh sheep industry.
“So I took a trip to the second NSA Wales & Borders Ram Sale to have a look and the third year I entered and exhibited my first Blue Faced Leicester rams. I believe I had the top priced yearling ram at 470 guineas.
“We’ve exhibited there every year since, initially with the Blue Faced Leicesters. I then started going back to the Royal Welsh Show to see our customers. As a National Trust tenant on a hill farm in the Lake District, it was quite a day out as I’d set out from the Lakes to the Royal Welsh Show and back in the same day!
“And in 1982 I was at the Royal Welsh Show and I remember seeing a little Welsh ewe on the Charollais sheep stand with a Charollais X lamb on it, which was nearly as big as the ewe. It was of such interest to me that the following week at Sheep 82 at Malvern I ordered my first French imports of Charollais sheep.
“So the NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales and the Royal Welsh Show were responsible for John Geldard starting the Wraycastle flock of Charollais sheep, which were then exhibited on many, many occasions at the Builth ram sale. They won the National Charollais Flock Competition in 2008 with other numerous accolades.
“Probably one of the biggest accolades was topping the NSA Ram Sale in 2003, when we had the Champion pen of ten Charollais ram lambs. We had the Overall Champion Charollais ram lamb and Richard my elder son, who was in charge at that time because the boys had been taken into partnership in 2002, made 4,600 guineas for a Charollais ram lamb, an all time record for the sale at that time.
“The very same day in the Lleyn sale, the younger son, Charles, who was in charge of the Lleyns, had the champion ram and made 2,000 guineas. It was again the top price at the NSA Wales & Border Ram Sales.
“You could say that the NSA Ram Sales and the Royal Welsh were also responsible for John Geldard standing back, looking at his sons and seeing that it’s important to stand back and let the young ones get on with it.”
Getting on with it originally saw John Geldard and his wife, Rachel, establish their farming business in 1975. They had left the family farm, Low Plumgarths, taken on by his grandfather in 1920, because of the Kendal by pass and took the tenancy of a National Trust farm on the shores of Lake Windermere.
They specialised in pedigree Charolais cattle, Charollais sheep and Blue Faced Leicester in the 1980s. Their success in breeding high value pedigree stock enabled them to buy the first, then derelict, part of the now 540 acre Low Foulshaw Farm at the southern end of the Lyth Valley.
Today the business involves John Geldard and his wife, Rachel, as well as their two sons, Richard and Charles, who are now in charge of the day to day running of the business. It strives to survive without EU or other support payments.
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