"I wouldn't go back to teaching" - Chloe Wilcock's story

Chloe says: “I don’t think I could now sit inside all day; there’s so much that the countryside has to offer!”

Chloe now farms rare breed livestock in Kent, having previously worked as a teacher. But having studied music at university and then taken on a placement at a school that allowed her to train and work at the same time, she sadly found that teachers were continually facing increasing pressures and falling budgets.

“So I was a secondary school music teacher, and funding cuts for the arts meant that teaching just wasn't what I had expected it to be. So I decided that maybe farming might be for me.”

Starting farming without their own land

Chloe and her husband David started their farming adventure by buying goats and using them to graze other farmers’ land. These grazing arrangements allow Chloe and David to start their own farming business without owning any land, and—more importantly—they also mean they can help improve the quality of the land.

Chloe and David were certain that they wanted to farm in as sustainable and environmentally friendly a manner as possible, and these share farming arrangements allow them to do that.

 

Improving the environment while producing food

By grazing fields owned by other farmers and Natural England, they are helping to improve the soil quality, ensuring later crops will have better access to nutrients, too. This means the landowner will have less need for chemical fertilisers, ensuring the land is farmed in as nature-friendly a manner as possible.

Chloe and David have since added pigs and cattle to their farming business, devouring books on livestock keeping and reaching out online for help, too.

“We met quite a lot of people through Instagram who were able to give us advice on small-scale keeping, which was really, really useful,” says Chloe.
And while they’ve now built their own network of trusted contacts online and learned loads so far, Chloe says there’s always more to learn, too.

 

“CPD should be at the forefront in farming. Other organisations are expected to do CPD. It's good for your individual development, but it's also good for collective development. There's so much that we can learn from other people. I think if you're not going on CPD courses to further your farm's potential, then you are going to get left behind.

“We need to think about the climate. We need to think about different ways of farming because stuff is moving forward. We've got all these policies that need to be fulfilled in terms of climate change. You know, meeting net zero targets, etc. We can't do that if we're not moving with the times.”

 

More benefits to farming than just being outdoors

Since abandoning the office, Chloe has developed her own system of farming, which has been beneficial in many ways.

“Farming has been really beneficial to my three boys and their education because it gives them time outside. It gives them time to run around. 

“They're physically active all the time, but also emotionally, in terms of their emotional development. They see birth, they see death, and they see the hardships, too. They're learning resilience from a young age by doing what I do.”

Chloe admits that making the move into farming wasn’t easy, but she gains a great deal of strength from knowing the industry's positive effects. In addition to feeding the nation, farmers and growers manage the landscape while increasingly looking to help the area’s wild birds and animals, too.

But she says that to continue doing this, the industry needs to bring more people in. Importantly, she says it’s possible to make that move even if you feel you don’t have any transferable skills to start with.

“The skill that I have transferred across from teaching is most definitely being resilient. You know, there's absolutely no denying that farmers are the most resilient bunch of people out there. You know the weather changes, you can't harvest crops. The weather changes, you've got to move your cattle because it's too muddy.

“You have to be adaptable as well. You've got to take the rough with the smooth. You know, life is messy. Farming is messy. You've got to get out there. And you've just got to do it. But that resilience and that adaptability, I think, are the key skills that farmers need.”

 

Chloe's advice for anyone interested in getting started

For anyone considering a career that brings all the joy of working with animals and raising them in a high welfare system while also working to enhance the environment, Chloe’s advice is crystal clear.

 

“Get out there, get out on farm, contact your local farmer, even if it's a smallholder. And if you know somebody that's got a few sheep down the road, get out there, get involved and see if it's for you.

“You know, there's no harm in trying. Just go and do it. It's brilliant, but it does take work. I'm going to be honest. It really does take work. But you have to put yourself out there, and there's no harm in trying if it's not for you.”