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Family fun down on the farm
Tired of missing out on his children growing up, farmer William Weightman decided to take the mountain to Mohammed and open a family farm.
Working just a few hundred yards from the family home, William Weightman saw very little of his two young daughters.
As a commercial livestock farmer, he was putting in long hours and returning home when Grace, now five, and three-year-old Hannah were already asleep.
But when disaster struck the family, everything changed.
Grace contracted meningitis in 2006 and doctors told William and his wife Catherine that she would not recover.
The couple had already begun to plan the launch of a hands-on family farm when their daughter was rushed to hospital.
Catherine said: "It came totally out of the blue and we nearly lost her.
"While she was in hospital we got planning permission to build the farm and realised that we had to just go for it."
Thankfully, Grace fought back, and three years on the Weightmans have become a tightly-knit family with a thriving business on their farm at Warden Law.
William said: "For the first year-and-a-half of her life, I didn't see
Grace very much and I knew something had to change.
"It was very frustrating to be a few hundred yards away from the family home and unable to see my daughters. Commercial farms are dangerous places, so it's not as if I could take them out on the tractor.
"I get to see my children now. I'm still working long hours but they can come and join in.
"If my daughter hadn't got ill, it would have taken years to build the farm but I just threw myself into it and got it done in six months."
The farm pulled in 17,000 visitors in its first year, 33,000 last year and has just been awarded the Enjoy England Quality Rose award.
It is home for 400 animals and 35 species, including cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, geese, reindeer, ponies, donkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, snowy owls, racoons, a tortoise and a 17ft snake.
Catherine said: "The first year we had to work very hard to get the business going but the second year word-of-mouth gave things a boost and now we're getting bookings for Christmas already."
William said: "I realised how lucky I'd been to grow up around animals and we wanted to give other people a taste of the same experience.
"Our philosophy is that we stay as a farm rather than add lots of exotic animals and ending up like a zoo.
"We want visitors to have a genuine hands-on farm experience where they can hold chicks and bottle-feed lambs and wash the pigs.
"A mother and her son, who was blind, came to the farm recently. She was trying to describe to him what a sheep looked like. I suggested he had a go at the pig washing so he could actual feel the animals around him. At first he was terrified but then his confidence lifted and he loved it – it sounds corny but that was a brilliant moment.
"Children can learn a lot through having fun.
"We also do tractor and trailer rides so the kids can see all the cows charging over for a feed and because the views up here are second to none.
"I was born here and I've lived here all my life. Some people knock Sunderland and focus on fading industries but it has some of the best countryside going – we just need to make it more accessible."
Down at the Farm is part of Haining Law Farm, which has been farmed by the Weightman family since the 17th century.
William said: "We used to be tenant farmers for Lord Lambton.
"The choice for farmers these days is to go out of business, get bigger or diversify.
"As a family, we chose to diversify and now we have fishing lakes, paint-balling a golf course, a livery yard and Down at the Farm. It's taken years to do.
"My parents were dead set against me becoming a farmer, so I went to medical school in London for two years. I couldn't handle working in a hospital and the farm was like a big magnet drawing me back. I just prefer having my boots on and getting my hands dirty."
Herds of cattle and sheep still live at the farm, which has 200 acres of arable land.
For Catherine, the venture has been life changing on a business and personal level.
She said: "I can make decisions very quickly, I know my own mind and I don't need permission from anyone else.
"The nice thing is that we've done it by ourselves. We haven't been given grants or assistance. We're not working with a pot of gold and it's the money we generate that is invested back into the farm."
William and Catherine employ five core members of staff and up to 15 part-timers. Their policy is to use local suppliers wherever possible for animal feed and other necessities.
But the real upside is on the home front.
Catherine said: "The result is that we have two very confident children. Grace is deaf because of the meningitis and she could easily have become quite introverted but she's the total opposite."
* For more information, go to www.downatthefarm.co.uk
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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