Demonstration farm
Ian always envisaged that Cotswold Seeds would have a demonstration farm one day, and in 2013 with his wife Celene he bought Honeydale Farm, at Shipton-under-Wychwood in the Cotswolds, realising his dream of becoming a farmer.
Honeydale became the base for FarmED, a 107-acre regenerative agriculture and sustainable food demonstration farm featuring a conference barn and café.
FarmED hosts a range of courses and events from weekly farm walks to in-depth courses focusing on aspects of food, farming and climate change.
The café features seasonal produce from Honeydale Farm and local producers.
The farm also offers informal year-long paid internships to young people looking to increase their agricultural knowledge, allowing them to work at FarmED then spend three months in another farm or agricultural environment.
‘Education is so important’
Ian said: “With the help of Cotswold Seeds and a like-minded and generous donor, it’s something we’ve done off our own bat and it’s been great. Education is so important. We have about 30,000 people a year coming to FarmED and I’m now in a position where training and education and knowledge transfer are very much front and centre for me.
“My agricultural education has made me into what I am, and my apprenticeship was the start of it. If I hadn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have gone to agricultural college, and I wouldn’t have met my wife, who I met at college. I’m still married 40 years later. Secondly, I wouldn’t have been exposed to the broad range of opportunities in farming because I didn’t farm back then, and it enabled me to get a better job with more prospects, and as those prospects opened up it completely changed my life.”
Taking on apprentices and offering other avenues for training is vital to the future of farming, Ian believes.
“It’s absolutely essential, I would say. We’d be foolish not to. If you can bring people through your agricultural business, whether it’s a farm or otherwise, they often end up being lifers, and that’s what we’re after, really – and they don’t have to be from farming families.”
Ian Wilkinson (left) shows FarmED visitors around the farm. Photograph: Ian Wilkinson.
Different perspectives
Ian continued: “Sometimes it’s really healthy to get different perspectives coming in. We had an engineer here from Mercedes. He was career changing and he came here for a year, and he came at it completely differently from us. He brought skills onto the farm that we wouldn’t have had, and ideas that we wouldn’t have thought about.”
Ian advised that farmers need to be prepared for a candidate to fail sometimes, while remembering that for every failure, you’re closer to the person that’s going to really succeed and be a rising star in the industry – and perhaps a game-changer for your own business succession.
“I’ve seen lots of young people on farms who started out as youngsters fresh out of either school or college and if they’re the right person they are just brilliant,” he explained. “They’ve got energy and inquisitiveness, and what they lack the older farmers can teach them.”
‘Providing succession’
Ian Wilkinson said: “Those of us who have jobs where we make decisions have the responsibility to bring new blood in, otherwise what’s going to happen? We’re all 60-odd-year-olds running farming businesses. When I started, I was 20, one of those new ones, and over time I’ve become one of the old ones. I feel really grateful for the opportunity I’ve had and feel a responsibility to provide succession for the next incomers.
“When you get older in life you learn to play to your strengths. I can’t run as fast as I used to. I don’t want to chase sheep around, I don’t want to physically mix grass seed every day, even though I just loved all that. But there are things I can do better now, and they include mentoring and bringing on the next generation. And I think that’s really important and as older farmers we should do that.”