Meet Tom on our Little Dalby Estate

A farming family who always admired the neighbouring farm from “over the hedge” have been able to take on around 400 acres as tenants of The Ernest Cook Trust, securing their dairy and sheep business for the long term. 

Tom Darlington, 26, his girlfriend Sam, 25 and brothers Ben, 23 and Mattie, 21, have taken on Wilds Lodge Farm, on the Little Dalby Estate near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, including two farm cottages, seven good quality sheds and the grazing and arable land. 

It has given the Darlington family, which has been farming in the area for more than 90-years, the extra acreage it needs to remain viable and support three generations to continue to live and work on the farm, which includes their Ferneley’s Dairy business.   

Tom’s great-grandfather, also called Tom, started farming in 1933 at Brickfield Farm, near Melton Mowbray, with only a horse and cart and three cows. He was succeeded by his son, John, who married Margaret, who still lives on the farm. 

Over the years successive generations have been able to acquire small parcels of extra land with Tom’s parents, Peter and Vanessa Darlington, helping to grow the farm through the 1980s and 90s. 

Tom and his brothers have diversified the operation with the opening of a café, a crazy golf course, an ice-cream business and a large milk round. Now, thanks to the tenancy of Wilds Lodge Farm next door becoming available, the farm has been put on a much firmer footing. 

They sell around half of their annual milk production to the Long Clawson Dairy, specialist cheese makers. The rest goes to make ice cream or is sold on their milk round, which has 2,500 customers in a 15-mile radius of the farm. The milk is delivered in a fleet of six vans – five of them electric. 

Tom plans to expand the milking herd from around 130 to between 150 and 175 cows, boost the sheep numbers to around 350 and expand arable production to provide more forage for the livestock, reducing the cost of buying in feed.   

The family has farmed regeneratively for several years, minimising inputs and using the livestock to fertilise the arable land. Regenerative farming now attracts support payments from the Government, but Tom said the Darlingtons had started practicing those methods several years ago because they proved effective. 

Tom said the family had always had a good relationship with The Ernest Cook Trust as the owners of neighbouring land, both as landowners and the operators of an educational charity. He said,

He said that without the extra land and with three generations living on the farm, it would have been difficult to keep going.