Handing over the reins

It was when Robin and Chris Milton were at an agricultural show when Robin knew his son had really become ‘the farmer’. "I nudged Buster [Chris] and said, ‘that’s a nice bit of kit, should we get it?’ and he turned around and said, ‘do we really need it, Dad?’ He wouldn’t have thought twice about it if it had been my money, but now that he’s in charge…"

Succession planning is often quite a thorny issue in the farming community, but the Miltons of Devon have embraced it. NFU Uplands Forum chairman Robin looked around and saw too many farmers clinging onto the chequebook well past retirement age, leaving generations who never get the chance to make their mark on the business. When his son asked to return to the family farm after college and a few months travelling, Robin decided that things were going to be different for them. He made Buster the senior partner at the age of 23.

The Miltons have been on Exmoor for 14 generations, and Buster is the eighth to farm at the site in High Barton, but it wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that he would join the family business. Buster said: "I hated the outdoors, I didn’t like the cold, and I didn’t envisage myself becoming a farmer."

However, the lure of the big kit eventually won him over. While studying agricultural engineering at Lackam Farm, Wiltshire College, he went to work as a contractor on an arable farm. He was offered a job there after graduation and Buster had a big decision to make.

"Just because it is what your dad has done and it has worked for him, it won’t necessarily work for what you want to do"

Buster said: "Dad didn’t force me to come home, he wanted me to work for others and I think it benefited me. You have to get up in the mornings, whereas working for yourself you, might say ‘I’m not getting up’."

"I got a bit bored driving tractors constantly day in, day out, year in,
year out. At least with this farm, one day I might be driving the tractor, the next day I might be sorting bullocks or drenching sheep, it varies so much you never really get too bored."

He was a bit surprised at Robin’s offer, but then his dad had always been keen to get the younger generation involved. And Robin thinks that making Buster the senior farmer was vital to motivate him, and he is delighted with the way he has risen to the challenge.

The Miltons’ farm has 460 acres, 500 sheep and 40 Aberdeen Angus cattle, with common grazing rights across 3,500 acres of Exmoor. Buster looked at the farm and decided he wanted a simple, low-cost structure for when they moved into beef. The region’s high rainfall means that it makes perfect sense to base it on grassland.

However, he admits to despising his dad’s Suffolk X mules, and once he took over he decided to swap them out for lleyns. They ran the flocks side-by-side for a year and during the winter the Suffolks ate two large bales of hay each day, whereas the lleyns ate two smaller bales every couple of days, and were in better condition.

Twenty-seventeen was a transition year and they lambed 250 ewes, last year the combination of lleyns and Welshies meant that they lambed 450 and next year they are aiming for 350/400.

Buster said: "We didn’t have the space to house the sheep with the bullocks we had, so we had to change it. So far it seems to have paid off. There has been no drop in lamb price, they have finished quicker on grass, we haven’t had to creep feed them."

Last year, they started the beef enterprise, buying Aberdeen Angus. Buster decided to start with 10 or 12 cows and ended up with 40. Then he ran out of shed space, so they have invested in shed frames to expand further.

Robin said: "Changes were relatively easy because it’s his future, he’s the one that’s got to live with it, and I suppose I was quite fortunate that my father gave me the opportunity to change some things and stopped me from changing others I would have liked to and should have done. I thought I’d rather not make that mistake again. I have never understood some people’s inability to change because ‘that’s what I did last year’, or ‘what my father used to do’."

When asked what his advice would be for other young farmers preparing to become the boss, Buster says: "Don’t be scared to change it if it’s not going to work for you; just because it is what your dad has done and it has worked for him, it won’t necessarily work for what you want to do."

One of the differences in the generations was their reactions to the environmental stewardship schemes. Robin and his brother were happy to take parts of their land out of production in order to collect the payment, but the younger generation has different ideas.Buster and his cousins have taken the business out of the scheme in order to increase the amount of productive land.

One of the main drivers for making the farm more resilient, efficient and simple to run was to enable Robin and Buster to get on with other things, especially with the NFU. Buster works as a spraying contractor as well as helping out on two local dairy farms. There is plenty of work for all.

And the family has another unusual hobby/responsibility – the two herds of wild Exmoor ponies that graze the moorland. The ponies live on the moor all year, only being rounded up each October to be checked over. The gathering is quite an event and people turn up for miles around to watch as the ponies are brought in and their foals examined. Some are used for riding schools or the show ring, but the hardy ones are released back into the wild with their mothers. Owning the ponies is a family tradition going back generations.

Next year, Buster is planning to marry his fiancée, Jenny, who owns a dog-walking business. The wedding has been planned so it does not clash with calving, spraying or lambing, which Robin thinks is another sign that Buster has changed the way he thinks.

Buster concludes: "Even though technically on paper it says I am the senior partner, I always ask him about any big decisions and he always comes to me about any big decisions. In that way I think it’s still split 50/50, we still run anything major by each other.

"And my dad was always very good, even when I wasn’t senior partner he always asked me my opinion on stuff. So it didn’t change all that much but it did give me the extra drive to think ‘this is my business’."