John farms 1560ha of in hand farms on the estate comprising 730ha arable, 705ha grass and 125ha moorland, running from very nearly on the beach at Saltburn up to the edge of the North York Moors.

His team have been transitioning to min-till from 2012 and moving to direct drilling when they became an AHDB Monitor farm in 2017, quite a learning curve the team! The benefit can now be seen in the improvement in soil health and tilth compared to when they first started, which is extremely satisfying although with a long way still to go.

John currently runs 500 Stabiliser suckler cows grazing the grassland, this is now a closed herd, these are all spring calving over a 8–10-week period. They sell a lot of the female calves for breeding and the best of the young bulls. The rest are all finished and sold mostly deadweight.

John has been a member of BASE since 2020 although have been following a lot of the principles of conservation farming before then.  He joined the committee in Jan 2025.