WE'RE BUILT FOR FARMING

My name is Luke Bancroft and we’re here on my family’s farm. I am a fourth-generation farmer.  The farm was established by my great grandfather in 1952.  We have around 6,000 acres here in Lancashire and land in Yorkshire that is split with other farms.

We predominantly work on a hill farm and don’t have any lowlands. As far as our work is concerned, no day is the same. But like clockwork, we start at 8am and our first job is to feed the lambs and dogs. Then we go off for the day and complete the jobs that need doing.  Due to the lie of the land, there is quite a lot of fencing to erect and walling to construct. Sometimes it feels like there is no end to repairing the walls, which is why I feel it is important to do a little bit every day.

We are predominantly a sheep and beef farm and run about 2,000 heads of sheep and 20 heads of cattle. The cattle were reintroduced a couple of years ago as they work well with the sheep for the grass. Having both cattle and sheep leads to a lot of gathering, moving around the pastures and feeding the herds on the hills

On site, we have a couple of tractors, stock trailers and low loaders, which for a hill farm is quite a lot of machinery. However, with the extreme conditions we get here, I could not imagine working on this farm without an ATV or utility vehicle.