In 1985 decided to branch out on my own and was offered a rent free disused building on Castle Green Farm in exchange replacing the roof, floor and clearing old building materials, hay, etc. This became the original base for Sherriff Farm Services. I also ran the Hop Picking machine each year and was able to test prototypes of various Hop equipment I designed and built on the Castle Green plantations before offering them to other growers. While at HRD my main job was handling the Smallford Harvester repair work and the Growers continued to contact me after I started SFS. Not long after this Smallford Planters Ltd, still a family run business closed and sold their factory site in St. Albans to Tom Walkinshaw who was running the Porsche factory race team at the time. I approached Tom and purchased the original Smallford drawings and the right to use “Smallford” as a Trade name. Another company trying to secure the Smallford maintenance work had already cleared the site for Tom and so owned all the original parts. These sat unused for a couple of years as SFS had secured work from virtually all the Midland/Scotland/South West Growers. In addition to Blackcurrant growers I found Gooseberry and Rhubarb growers with Smallford based equipment. When that company closed I secured all the original Smallford parts by taking on the job of clearing the unit for the Landlord. I also found a load of original fabricating templates and fixtures so I could now start making accurate replacements in house. By 1988 there was clear demand for an upgraded, more efficient harvesting system.
