Your own organic farm seems like the last thing a celebrity should own, but could it soon become the preserve of the rich and famous? Baking Star Prue Leith, who has a small organic farm at her Cotswolds home, has criticized the “red tape” associated with sustainable farming.
“The Cotswolds probably have a higher concentration of organic farms than anywhere else because it’s where the rich live who can afford organic farming,” he said Old. “It takes at least two years to convert. During that time, you can’t use chemicals to increase crop growth and the soil isn’t good enough yet to produce a profitable crop.
‘You plant nothing but clover to fix nitrogen and borrow sheep to eat it and fertilize your fields. You cannot sell anything you grow or cultivate as organic. So the only farmers currently switching to sustainable agriculture are large landowners or wealthy hobbyists.”
While this may not seem entirely true (the Soil Association says the organic market is set to grow by two per cent in 2023, and according to Defra, 509,000 hectares will be grown organically in the UK by 2022, with 5,500 organic operators) – there are certainly plenty of organic markets for farmers to grow. If they want to have organic status, there are hoops they can jump through.
And such Clarkson’s Farm It turns out that even being a non-organic farmer requires working for a profit that is often not very much. Clarkson claimed to have made a profit of £144 in his first year running Diddly Squat.
But of course, for most farming celebrities, it’s not about the cash, it’s about the love of the land (and the Instagram selfies).
So who are the celebrities who replaced a famous life with a life on the farm?
balearic beet
Superstar DJ Calvin Harris has swapped Ibiza’s wild culture for farming by purchasing the island’s largest organic farm.
40-year-old Harris purchased 138 acres of land finca Terra Masia is producing its own vegetables, eggs, wine and farm-to-table meals in 2022. He drinks his own “enormous” supply of raw sheep’s milk every day and regularly posts photos of himself carrying crates of oranges and videos of himself herding sheep.
A source said: “Calvin employs a specialist team of farmers and chefs. But that hasn’t stopped him from getting involved and he regularly gets his hands dirty, helping plant seeds and everything else involved in running a farm.”
The multimillionaire Scottish DJ courted his now-wife Vick Hope on trips to his farm and allegedly proposed to her under a tree there. And when she’s not busy milking herself, Harris can get back to making music, as she’s set up a recording studio on site.
The Oprah Effect
In 2013, the billionaire chat show host proudly announced his new venture. “Oprah’s New Farm!” shouted the title HE magazine, complete with a glossy picture of Winfrey wearing the obligatory plaid shirt.
Winfrey, 70, grew up on a one-acre farm with her grandmother in Missouri, but this venture is a world away; Near the stately 60-acre farmhouse on the slopes of Haleakala, an extinct volcano, in Maui, Hawaii.
The farm was inspired by his friend and personal trainer Bob Greene; He helped her set aside 16 acres of land for farming, eventually planting 100 types of fruits, vegetables, and herbs on a single acre.
Chickens provide eggs and they use “regenerative agriculture” to improve the health of the soil and save water. “Everything grows five times more than you expect,” Winfrey wrote. HEdescribes his “baboon-butt radishes”.
Although the article claimed that Winfrey and Greene would “roll up their sleeves, till the soil, and share a very nice prize,” skeptics noted that Winfrey’s sun hat cost $245 and that none of the dirty hands in the magazine’s pictures belonged to Winfrey.
lady shit
Lady Carole Bamford had a simple aim when she founded Daylesford Farm with her husband, JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, 35 years ago: “I always wanted to produce good, nutritious food from our farm,” she says. “Factory farming systems have overlooked good food at the expense of taste and nutrition.”
When he opened his organic farm café on his 1,500-acre property near Chipping Norton in 2003, he was convinced no one would come. “We were in a field and all we served was soup and sandwiches,” he says. It now runs a number of Daylesford cafes and farm shops, as well as wellness brand Bamford, a cookery school and Agricology, a research centre.
Winner of more than 100 awards and claimed to be one of the most sustainable farms in the UK, Daylesford is run by senior farm manager Richard Smith. “Because we farm organically, it doesn’t mean I’m walking around here in an apron, sucking on a piece of straw, and being ignorant of the rules of the modern world,” he says.
On 5,500 acres of organic farming land (split between their sites in Staffordshire and the Cotswolds), they slaughter 150 lambs, 16 steers, 50 pigs and 2,500 chickens a week and produce 20,000 eggs and 20,000 liters of milk. Moreover, they even managed to host Boris Johnson’s 2022 wedding.
From safety pins to sausages
Elizabeth Hurley swapped her Manolos and safety-pin dresses for wellies when she bought a 400-acre farm in Gloucestershire in 2010. “I wasn’t a farmer before and I’m a farmer now because this is a working farm,” she said. .
Although his younger brother Michael was doing daily runs. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done… this is the only place I want to be,” Liz said. At one point he had four Labradors, two cats, three geese, eight chickens, 49 cows, 63 sheep and 82 pigs.
Hurley converted the farm to organic status and launched a range of quality jerky and fruit bars, and began stocking her own sausages in Harrods under the “Elizabeth Hurley Foods” label. In 2009, he joined forces with King Charles’ Duchy Originals brand.
“His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is an inspiration to me for his passionate belief in organic food and farming and his unwavering commitment to helping protect and sustain the countryside,” she said at the time.
The model and actress sold her farm for £9million in 2015 and moved 40 miles to the shores of the Forest of Dean. “I had previously spent 10 years in the Cotswolds, which I loved, but in London it was frustrating to run into people I had crossed the road to avoid,” he said.
Butcher, Baker, Organic Farmer
More than a million people watched BBC presenter Matt Baker’s program about moving from Hertfordshire to the Dales to help run his family’s organic sheep farm. Our Farm in the Valleys.
The 2021 series was a surprise hit and followed three generations of the Baker family: Matt and his wife Nicola, their children Molly and Luke, and Matt’s parents Mike and Janice. Across three series, viewers watched Matt plant an orchard, round up a flock of sheep and organize a woodland cookout on his 100-acre farm.
Baker leaves BBC Single Show After receiving the news that his mother had an accident and needed knee surgery. “It was one of those scenarios where you automatically go into recovery mode, so we put the instruments down, went out there and it was all hands on deck from day one.”
Although Baker’s new series is about traveling around England in a caravan with her mum and dad, her Instagram is still full of baby lambs, rowdy donkeys and farm life.
I see you baby, plowing that field
Groove Armada’s Andy Cato was returning from a concert in Lithuania when he read an article about chemical farming and its devastating impact on human health through soil and plants. “I decided [organic farming] “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he says.
In 2008, the Barnsley-born musician sold the rights to his songs with Groove Armada and bought a 110-hectare farm in Gascony, south-west France; here he raised red Sussex cattle and grew heritage grains, avoiding mass production methods. But it was almost crippled by costs. “Do you know how much a tractor costs?” says. “€80,000! “It’s like buying a house whenever you need something.” The 51-year-old man was awarded the title of knight for his services to agriculture in France, and then-President François Hollande visited his farm.
After 12 years at what Cato calls “the agricultural school of hard knocks”, what he has learned is now being applied at a National Trust farm near Swindon. In 2018, he co-founded Wildfarmed, which distributes bread, pizza and pasta made with organic flour grown through “regenerative” processes across the UK. There’s even a “Soil Zine” online.
“Farming changes your concept of time,” Cato says. “I’m thinking in terms of harvest now.”