The average age of farmers is about 80, OK I may be exaggerating – but if you wander down to your local cattle market you may think you have stumbled into a Day Care centres annual trip out. There is a big problem in farming, the younger generation for some reason aren’t over keen to work 10 hours a day,7 days a week for less than a Ugandan tuk-tuk driver. It isn’t just the working hours – there are amazing young people out there that will put in the hours and dedication, but if they ever want their own patch of land they would have to rob a bank (apparently a few do still exist). The price of farmland is astronomical, an acre of rocky hillside on Dartmoor still sells for £8000 plus and you need a quite a few acres to make a living. There are a few Council and Duchy tenancies, but these are hard to get. This has forced those interested in a career in farming to look elsewhere.
So when our own farmhand sought pastures new a year ago, we advertised the position extensively with little expectation of a response, luckily just as we were contemplating selling off the herd and flock and letting the land to another local farmer (85 years old and still clambering in and out of a tractor) we had a reply.
Jess is a first generation farmer, a rare breed indeed, who cut her teeth at Eversfield Organics and various other farms and moved to us from milking 180 sheep in Coventry, immediately slashing the average age of the farmers in our valley, her being under 30.
