In earlier times, BAHS was responsible for staging the hugely successful Bakewell Show known as ‘The Little Royal’, with a faithful following within the agricultural sector, attracting competitors, exhibitors and audience from all across the UK.
Since then, the world has changed and BAHS has changed along with it and 2020 saw the launch of our first ever Training grants where individuals and small business owners of all ages within a 30 mile radius of Bakewell and involved in agriculture, horticulture or forestry could apply for a grant to be used as part payment for training course fees, books or equipment.
BAHS has been able to award grants of up to a thousand pounds to twelve individuals over a wide range of industries and skills ranging from Dairy Farming, Butchery, Fertiliser Advisor, DIY AI, Telehandling, Chainsaw Best Practice and Regenerative Farm Planning.
Laurie Bale’s grandad, John Stafford, taught him how to hedgelay 3 or 4 years ago. He didn’t do much of it until he entered Derby YFC’s hedgelaying match in 2019 and went on to win it. He continued to finish the hedge used in the competition and then gained hedgelaying work from other farmers in his area through word of mouth and began to build up a customer base from there. The Training Grant has enabled him to enrol on a Derbyshire Landskills City & Guilds qualification for Chainsaw Cross Cutting, Maintenance and Felling of Small Trees. Laurie comes from Church Broughton in Derbyshire and hopes to move on to Forestry work in the future.
Laurie and his prize winning hedge:
Charlotte Allen from Wirksworth, near Matlock graduated from University of Derby with first class honours in Countryside Management in 2011.Having spent a lot of time on and around farms and associated businesses she took the plunge and began soil testing independently in December 2019. She offers soil testing including trace elements, manure, slurry and water testing for farmers across the country but mostly Derbyshire and Staffordshire. She also offers soil mapping using GPS technology to allow farmers to apply their Fertiliser at a variable rate. This ensures precision application resulting in greater yields and is far more cost effective.
Charlotte successfully applied for the Training Grantand is embarking upon the FACTS course to allow her to advise her customers on the fertiliser requirements. She intends to be able to provide a full agronomy service from start to finish.
Charlotte’s quad is a Yamaha Grizzly 450 and is named Bella by her daughter!
Tracey Langton Ballard is a third generation dairy farmer who took over the running of the family farm after her dad died in 2019. She is slowly rebuilding the dairy herd using Sexcel and her own Angus bull and numbers are growing again. Although Tracey has worked on the farm in some capacity all her life, it was her dad who did all the technical jobs and now Tracey is using the BAHS grant to fund learning courses for her to be able to do such jobs for herself without having to rely on the help and goodwill of friends and neighbours. She has embarked upon a series of practical workshop in conjunction with her local veterinary practice for injection techniques, rumen pump usage, disbudding, castration, bolus application and BCS. She has also been able to enrol on LANTRA courses for rodent control and for pesticide training.
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