Farmstay UK: How the working farm holidays company was set up after a sheepdog trial - and why B&B is in decline

We all know how much we walked, ran, cycled or simply drove during those times of lockdowns, and coming out of them, as the nation found solace in the staycation with foreign travel being off the agenda.

Lisa Preston is regional director of Farmstay UK that celebrates 40 years this year since being originally born as The Farm Holiday Bureau in 1983. Lisa who farms with husband Marcus at Pickersgill Manor Farm on Silsden Moor said that taking a break or full-on holiday in the countryside has never been more popular and that Farmstay UK, run by and for its members, has a special and unique part to play.

“That first year of the Covid pandemic was absolutely mental. From March 2020 everyone lost all bookings until the summer and then everything was booked out. It was mental again in 2021 after we came out of the third lockdown and it was another good year in 2022.

“Farmstay UK’s strength, in a world of Airbnb and Booking.com is that you can actually talk with the owners of the properties directly and we are real working farm businesses. Often that’s the experience people really want when they come to the countryside. There’s still that something special about staying on a real working farm.

“We are a very tight knit not-for-profit, farmer-owned consortium with hundreds of us all around the UK and we all talked to each other throughout the whole process of what happened during the pandemic.”

“Obviously, farming carried on and we carried on filming it and promoting what we were doing on our respective farms. That’s what visitors to a working farm want to see.

“Although we are the biggest in the specialist market of working farm holidays and getaways, we don’t have a huge advertising budget but we kept Farmstay UK in the holidaymakers eyes.

“When no-one could get a toilet roll, we did a video where we pretended to throw toilet rolls between the farms. It was all about showing everyone that we are not some faceless organisation, but real people, living real lives and running real working farms.

Farmstay UK had to rise out of the ashes of another dilemma, when Foot & Mouth disease brought the countryside to a standstill in 2001.

“What happened back then was that a funding programme to change premises into holiday accommodation was created and this brought about renovation of farm buildings that increased both B&B and self-catering accommodation on farms.

Holiday and getaway accommodation on working farms is currently seeing a revolution in glamping from spectacular pods to shepherd’s huts often with hot tubs and a range of ever more luxurious buildings with tremendous facilities. Lisa said it has been a noticeable shift from purely the days of booking a bed for the night and a full English the next morning cooked by the farmer’s wife.

“I would say about 10 years ago we noticed a shift in the business. Before then we would have had a 45/55 split between bed and breakfast accommodation and self-catering. Bed and breakfast has drastically reduced since then.

“Self-catering has become the dominant sector and in the last four years glamping has just absolutely boomed and a lot of our members now offer a mixture of accommodation, but the one thing that will always remain is our commitment as working farms working together to provide the experience that more and more people are actively looking for.

Lisa said her own participation in Farmstay UK started around 20 years ago, but that farming has been in her blood all her life and it was a farming event that set her off.

“Both sets of my grandparents farmed, my mum’s side on Addingham Moor, my dad’s side on Denton Park Estate. I enjoyed cattle, being in the milking parlour with my granddad. I remember as kids we were always sent to get fresh warm milk.

“Today, my husband Marcus and I have 300 Mules raising lambs for market and Marcus goes out foot trimming, cattle scanning and shearing sheep. Meadmore Preston, Marcus’ dad still has farm next door. He was 90 last April.

“The way I got involved in Farmstay UK was when the World Sheepdog Trials were being held at Bolton Abbey. There was a shortage of accommodation for participants and that was mainly because they had to have somewhere where they could have their sheepdog with them. The sheepdog didn’t need to come inside, they but needed somewhere secure and where it could live for the week and preferably with a field to run in.

“Along the road from here we had a chap who was on the British team. I had talked to him

about us doing B&B for it and he asked if he could some friends up as they were bringing their dogs. I cobbled the two rooms together and off they went to the sheepdog trial

At that time Christine Clarkson, who was involved with Farmstay, was secretary of the English National Sheepdog Association and she asked the people stopping with us, where they were staying. About a week later Christine rung me and asked if I’d thought about doing accommodation regularly.

“Christine said she’d help me join Farmstay, that she would pass all her spare business to me and give me any tips I needed. That is Farmstay really.