Am I A Farmer Yet?

I never thought I’d be a farmer. Sometimes I reflect on whether I actually am a farmer- I don’t own land or have a tenancy, I don’t sell milk or meat in my own business name, and I own two cows (and another in utero). I don’t work full time on the farm and I don’t earn a living from farming. So what exactly am I doing and how did I end up in this position?

With Dolly, my favourite cow

The story starts in 2018 when I met my now fiancé and started to work alongside him on the farm where he was in his first year of contract farming. At the time he owned half of the machinery on the farm and was paid a monthly fee to manage the farm. He and the farm owners received a return on capital for the machinery, infrastructure, and livestock they independently contributed to the farm business, he was paid a depreciation fee for the machinery, and the farm profit was split between them after also paying a rental equivalent (first charge) to the farm owners. That’s basically how contract farming works, and as the contractor is encouraged to reinvest their profit into buying the rest of the machinery and then cows, their annual return on capital payment increases. It’s the cheapest way for new entrants to get in to farming as it requires relatively little initial capital, and the structure of the agreement gives discipline and support for running a profitable farming business.

In 2021 I invested in the contract farming company to buy a third share of the company and support us to buy the rest of the farm’s machinery. I am now in my third year of contract farming, but I still work full time off farm. My work as a farm business consultant really helps with navigating the financial aspects of farm management, and I am regularly exposed to new ideas and best practice which helps shape our policies on the farm and drives us to improve and do better.

The farm has a herd of 300 cross bred (e.g. not pure bred but a mixture of Friesian- your classic black and white cow- Jersey, and Norwegian Red genetics) cows. They calve in a 12 week block from the 20th February, which allows us to match peak milk supply (and therefore peak energy demand) with grass growth. This reduces the amount of concentrate feed used because the cows can utilise grass for their energy demand, and so reduces input costs. Milk from grass is also arguably better for the environment. This does mean that we have a very very busy calving period followed by a busy breeding period (we’ll come to that) and theoretically a quieter autumn and winter.

The milk the cows produce is sold to a company who process it into mozzarella which is sold to manufacturing clients- one of the biggest buyers is Pizza Hut! We live pretty far from a PH restaurant so we rarely get a chance to sample our milk as a finished product.

Part of me would like to be full time on the farm but in reality a 300 cow spring block calving herd doesn’t need two full time managers, and I really enjoy the work I do away from the farm. Around my paid work I fit in calf rearing, relief milking, general farm work, and of course completing budgets and financial monitoring for the business.

As we start calving I’ve made the decision to start long form writing about the farming year. I’ve used Instagram for a while to discuss some aspects of technical agriculture and to report in real time what’s going on on the farm, but short stories and photo captions don’t provide a huge amount of nuance and I want other people to see that there are ways into a farming career that don’t involve inheriting or buying a farm or having the capital required to secure and make a success of a tenancy.

I never thought I’d end up working on a farm, let alone have my own farming business. Some of you will be keen to point out that it’s not my business alone, and I certainly wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t started dating someone who was farming. That’s true, but I know that my work is central to us still being in business as contract farmers and I’d want to continue with this line of work even if I wasn’t with my partner.

I grew up on a dairy farm, but like many other farmers’ daughters was steered away from a career in the industry- or at least a career in practical farming. I started working in consultancy as a teenager and had a place to read veterinary medicine, whereas I can count on one hand the other women from farming backgrounds who went to school with me and have a career anywhere in the agricultural industry.

Last year I signed up to LEAF’s FarmerTime initiative which links schools with farmers, and also completed training with NFU Education for their Farmers for Schools programme. I did both because I feel it is really important that young people learn about agriculture and the opportunities that the industry can give them for rewarding work. There’s room for everyone and a need for diverse skill sets and experiences, so why not give them information about the work we do and how they might find their way?

The school visits are more local and one thing I really want to achieve is to give more girls the confidence that they can have a career in farming. Even in rural areas agriculture is so often touted as a man’s world, and many farmer’s daughters grow up knowing that they won’t stand a chance of inheriting their family farm.

I still have moments- loads of them- when I question whether I’m good enough to work on the farm. I think back at the number of times other people put limits on what I could do or told me I was useless at anything hands on and I have to remind myself of all the times I’ve been in sole charge of milking or have stomach tubed a sick calf or used the machine that mixes up powdered milk. If I can do it, then so can anyone else.

Farming has given me an amazing career and fantastic opportunities to travel the world, turn my interest in writing into a valid business, and meet inspirational people. I really hope that by reading about what we do on the farm and how we draw on different resources in the industry you can learn not just about dairy farming but about the wider rural landscape and the different opportunities there are in it.

And am I a farmer yet? Yes, I think I am.