Thirty years in the trade.

John started buying drafts off the Welsh and Cumbrian hills in his twenties. The numbers grew. The phone kept ringing. Thirty years on, the same farms send loads down every autumn, and the same buyers ring in August asking what's coming.

Merley Hall Farm sits just outside Wimborne in Dorset. Loads draw in through August and September, sort on the farm, and run out to buyers across the UK by lorry through October. By the end of the season, around forty thousand head will have passed through.

It works because the trade is small and word travels. Sheep that don't arrive as agreed don't get a second order. Thirty years of getting it right is what keeps the phone ringing.

"In livestock, reputation travels faster than our lorries."

— John Wood