The vegetable grower
You could easily miss the shop at Newfield Organics. It’s no more than a shed in the farmyard, so modest that you’d never guess that it’s the front end of one of Yorkshire’s most impressive food enterprises.
It’s all down to Howard and Rosemary Wass who for twelve years, farmed their 200 acres conventionally before they came to realise that they were tied into a chemical regime that they felt was unsustainable. In 1980 they began the long conversion to totally organic farming. Working seven days a week over twelve years and with the help of their teenage children, planting 85,000 plants, they eventually achieved official Soil Association organic status, doubling their turnover, achieving record harvests and improving the structure of the soil.
The farm that looks out onto the village green in the gentle village of Fadmoor is where Howard Wass was born and which Rosemary, a radiographer, married into. Life changed in 2008 when Howard died suddenly leaving Rosemary to run the farm alone. For the next 14 years she did just that, though leaning heavily she says, on her ‘passionate’ farm manager John Simpson who has worked on and off at Newfield since he was 12 years old.
In 2020 Rosemary retired, handing over the tenancy of the 200-acre farm to John and his wife Rachel. The couple continue to run Newfield Organics as the highly respected organic farm the Wass’s created. Their Texel and Suffolk Cross lambs and beef from a suckler herd of Charolais and Luing cattle supply organic meat to the likes of Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and M & S who in 2004 named Newfield the National Organic Grower of the year.
For a farm situated 650ft above sea level, one of the highest organic farms in the country, they also grow an impressive range of vegetables. Row upon row of vibrant healthy crops of fennel, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, carrots, kalettes, kale, cavalo nero, leeks, swedes, pak choi, onions, beetroot, spinach, potatoes… the list goes on.
The latest trend for cauliflower means that Newfield now grow 100,000 cauliflowers a year including yellow, purple, the beautiful romanesco and the familiar creamy white.
The Newfield Organics shop is open year-round. They admit there is a ‘hunger gap’ in May and June when veg. is in short supply before the summer crops are ready, but the Simpson’s want their customers to understand where their food comes from and when it is in season.
From July onwards the shop has filled up with beans, peas, summer squash, cucumbers, radish, lettuce, herbs and fresh eggs from their organic flock.
Yes, you could easily miss it, but your larder will be enriched by finding it.