Raymond is also a drover at his local market, which is just down the country lane from the farm and tells of last week’s late finish being the norm at this time of year.“The town and the market was rammed with sheep men and women taking two hours to get in and unload. They started queuing to get in before 11 o’clock in the morning. We started selling at 2.30 in the afternoon. There were 3100 ewes. They finished selling at 8.
Raymond works at Bentham twice a week, Tuesday and Wednesday, and while he is well known there, he is better known throughout the country today for the quality of his pedigree Zwartbles flock that has seen him take titles at the Great Yorkshire Show and Royal Highland Show and now sees him as a respected breed judge.
“I started with them in 2005 after we came out of dairying. We’d had a herd of 60 Holstein Friesian dairy cows but it had got to the stage where we were either going to have to get out or go bigger and that would have meant having to spend a lot of money. It just wasn’t going to be worth it.