Your own organic farm seems like the latest celebrity must-have, but could it soon become the domain of the rich and famous? Bake star Prue Leith, who has a small organic farm at her home in the Cotswolds, has lashed out at the ‘bureaucracy’ involved in sustainable farming.
“The Cotswolds probably have a greater density of organic farms than anywhere else because this is where the wealthy live and can afford to go organic,” she said. The Oldie. “It takes at least two years to convert. During that time you cannot use chemicals to stimulate crop growth and the soil is not yet good enough to produce a profitable crop.
“You plant nothing but clover, to fix nitrogen, and you borrow sheep to eat it and fertilize your fields. You cannot sell anything you grow or grow as organic. So right now the only farmers switching to sustainable agriculture are large landowners or wealthy hobbyists.”
While that doesn’t seem to be true at all – the Soil Association says the organic market will increase by two percent by 2023 and according to Defra, 509,000 hectares were grown organically in Britain by 2022, with 5,500 organic entrepreneurs – there is certainly plenty of Hoops true farmers have to jump through if they want to get organic status.
And if Clarkson’s Farm It has been shown that even being a non-organic farmer is demanding work for often not much gain. Clarkson claimed to make £144 profit in the first year of running Diddly Squat.
But of course, for most celebrity farmers, it’s about the love of the land (and the Instagram selfies), not the cold, hard cash.
So who are the celebrities who traded a famous life for a life on the farm?
Balearic beets
Superstar DJ Calvin Harris swapped Ibiza’s rave culture for farming when he bought the island’s largest organic farm.
Harris, 40, purchased the 138 acres finca Terra Masia in 2022 and produces its own vegetables, eggs, wine and farm-to-table meals. He drinks his own ‘amazing’ 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 team of experts made up of farmers and chefs. But that doesn’t stop him from getting involved and he regularly gets his hands dirty helping with planting seeds and everything else that comes with running a farm.”
The Scottish multimillionaire wooed his current wife Vick Hope with trips to his farm, where he reportedly proposed to her under a tree. And when he’s not busy milking, Harris can get back to making music, as he’s built a recording studio on site.
The Oprah Effect
In 2013, the billionaire chat show host proudly announced her new venture. “Oprah’s new farm!” the head shouted further O magazine, complete with a glossy photo of Winfrey in the obligatory plaid shirt.
Winfrey, 70, grew up on a one-acre farm in Missouri with her grandmother, but this venture is far away — in Maui, Hawaii, near her palatial 60-acre ranch estate, on the side of Haleakala, a dormant volcano.
The farm was inspired by her friend and personal trainer Bob Greene, who helped her designate 16 acres for farming and eventually planted one acre with 100 varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs.
Chickens provide eggs and they use ‘regenerative agriculture’ to improve soil health and save water. “Everything is going to be five times bigger than you would expect,” Winfrey wrote Oin which she describes her ‘baboon butt radishes’.
Although the article claimed that Winfrey and Greene will “roll up their sleeves, till the ground and share a great reward,” skeptics noted that Winfrey’s sun hat cost $245 and that none of the dirty hands in the photos of Winfrey’s magazine was.
Lady mud
When Lady Carole Bamford founded Daylesford Farm with her husband, JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, 35 years ago, she had one simple goal: “I have always wanted to produce good, nutritious food from our farm,” she says. “Factory farming systems have lost sight of good food, at the expense of taste and nutrition.”
When she opened her organic farm cafe on their 1,500-acre estate near Chipping Norton in 2003, she was convinced no one would come. “It was in a field and all we served were soups and sandwiches,” she says. She now runs a range of Daylesford cafes and farm shops, as well as wellness brand Bamford, a cookery school and a research centre, Agricology.
Daylesford, which has won more than 100 awards and claims to be one of the most sustainable farms in Britain, is led by senior farms manager Richard Smith. “Just because we farm organically doesn’t mean I’m walking around here wearing a smock, sucking on a piece of straw and being ignorant of the ways of the modern world,” he says.
On 5,500 hectares of organically farmed land (split between their sites in Staffordshire and the Cotswolds), they slaughter 150 lambs, 16 cattle, 50 pigs and 2,500 chickens per week and produce 20,000 eggs and 20,000 liters of milk. Moreover, they even managed to organize Boris Johnson’s wedding in 2022.
From safety pins to sausages
Elizabeth Hurley swapped her Manolos and safety pin dresses for boots when she bought a 1,000-acre farm in Gloucestershire in 2010. “I’ve never been a farmer and now I’m a farmer because it’s a working farm,” she said. .
Although her younger brother, Michael, ran the day-to-day operations. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done… it’s the only place I want to be,” Liz said. At one point she 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 high-quality beef jerky and fruit bars, and began stocking its own sausages in Harrods under the label “Elizabeth Hurley Foods”. In 2009, she joined King Charles’ Duchy Originals brand.
She said at the time: “His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales is an inspiration to me because of his passionate belief in organic food and farming and his continued commitment to helping protect and preserve the countryside.”
In 2015, the model and actress sold her farm for £9 million and moved 40 miles away to the edge of the Forest of Dean. “I previously spent ten years in the Cotswolds, which I loved, but it was annoying meeting people I crossed the road in London to avoid,” she said.
Butcher, baker, organic farm maker
More than a million people watched BBC presenter Matt Baker’s show about moving from Hertfordshire to the Dales to help run his family’s organic sheep farm in Our farm in the Dales.
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. Over three series, viewers watched Matt plant an orchard, round up a flock of ewes and host a woodland cookout on the 40-acre farm.
Baker left the BBC The one show after receiving the news that his mother had been in an accident and needed knee surgery. “It was one of those scenarios where you automatically go into rescue mode, so we downed tools, went out there and from day one it was all hands on deck.”
Although Baker’s new series is about traveling around Britain with his mum and dad in a caravan, his Instagram is still full of baby lambs, noisy donkeys and farm life.
I see you, honey, plowing that field
Groove Armada’s Andy Cato was returning from a gig in Lithuania when he happened to read an article about chemical farming and the catastrophic effects it has on human health through soil and plants. “I decided [organic farming] was what I wanted 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 to buy a 110-acre farm in Gascony in south-west France, where he bred red Sussex cattle and grew heirloom grains, eschewing mass production methods . But he was almost paralyzed by the costs. “Do you know what a tractor costs?” he says. “€80,000! It’s like buying a house every time you need something.” The 51-year-old has been knighted for his services to agriculture in France, and then-president François Hollande visited his farm.
After 12 years in what Cato calls ‘the agricultural school of hard knocks’, what he learned is now being applied to a National Trust farm near Swindon. In 2018 he co-founded Wildfarmed, which distributes bread, pizza and pasta across Britain made with organic flour grown through ‘regenerative’ processes. He even writes an online “Soil Zine”.
“Agriculture changes your idea of time,” says Cato. “I now think in terms of harvests.”