The celebrity organic farmers chasing down the good life
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Your own organic farm seems to be the latest celebrity must-have, but could it soon become the preserve of the rich and the famous? Bake Off star Prue Leith, who has a small organic farm at her home in the Cotswolds, has hit out at the “bureaucracy” involved in sustainable farming.
“The Cotswolds probably has a greater density of organic farms than anywhere because it’s where the rich, who can afford to go organic, live,” she told The Oldie. “It takes at least two years to convert. During that time, you cannot use chemicals to boost crop growth and the soil is not yet good enough to produce a profitable crop.
‘You plant nothing but clover, to fix nitrogen, and borrow sheep to eat it and to manure your fields. You cannot sell anything you raise or grow as organic. So, right now, the only farmers converting to sustainable farming are huge landowners or rich hobbyists.”
While that doesn’t seem to be strictly true – the Soil Association says the organic market increased two per cent in 2023 and according to Defra, 509,000 hectares were farmed organically in the UK in 2022, with 5,500 organic operators – there are certainly plenty of hoops for farmers to jump through if they want to be granted organic status.
And as Clarkson’s Farm demonstrated, even being a non-organic farmer is demanding work for often-not-too-much-gain. Clarkson claimed to make £144 of profit in the first year of running Diddly Squat.
But, of course, for most of the famous folk who farm, it’s about the love of the soil (and the Instagram selfies), not the cold hard cash.
So who are the celebrities who’ve swapped a life of fame for life on the farm?
Balearic beets
Superstar DJ Calvin Harris swapped Ibiza’s rave culture for agriculture when he bought the island’s largest organic farm.
Harris, 40, bought the 138-acre finca Terra Masia in 2022 and produces his own vegetables, eggs, wine and farm-to-table meals. He drinks his own “tremendous” raw sheep’s milk every day, and regularly posts pictures of himself lugging crates of oranges and videos of himself herding sheep.
A source said: “Calvin employs an expert team including farmers and chefs. But that hasn’t stopped him getting involved and he regularly gets his hands dirty, helping to plant seeds and everything else involved in running a farm.”
The multi-millionaire Scottish DJ woo-ed his now-wife Vick Hope with trips to his farm, and allegedly proposed to her under a tree there. And when he’s not busy milking, Harris can get back to making music, as he has 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!” screamed the headline on O magazine, complete with a glossy picture of Winfrey in the obligatory checked shirt.
Winfrey, 70, grew up on an one-acre farm in Missouri with her grandmother, but this venture is world’s away – in Maui, Hawaii, near her palatial farmhouse estate of 60 acres, 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 ended up planting a single acre with 100 species of fruits, vegetables and herbs.
Hens are supplying eggs and they’re using “regenerative agriculture” to build soil health and save water. “Everything grows five times as big as you’d expect,” Winfrey wrote in O, describing her “baboon-butt radishes.”
Although, the article claimed Winfrey and Greene will be “rolling up their sleeves, tilling the soil and sharing one heck of a beautiful bounty,” sceptics noted that Winfrey’s sun hat cost $245 and none of the dirty hands in the magazine’s pictures were Winfrey’s.
Lady muck
When Lady Carole Bamford set up Daylesford Farm, with her husband, the JCB chairman Sir Anthony Bamford, 35 years ago, she had one simple aim: “I have always wanted to produce good, nutritious food from our farm,” she says. “Factory farming systems have lost sight of good food, at a cost of taste and nutrition.”
When she opened her organic farm café 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 heads up a series of Daylesford cafes and farm shops, as well as the wellness brand Bamford, a cookery school, and a research hub, Agricology.
Daylesford, which has won over 100 awards and claims to be one of the most sustainable farms in the UK, is run by senior farms manager, Richard Smith. “Because we’re farming organically doesn’t mean I walk around here wearing a smock, sucking on a piece of straw, being ignorant to the ways of the modern world,” he says.
Across 5,500 acres 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 a week and produce 20,000 eggs and 20,000 litres of milk. Plus they even managed to host the 2022 wedding of Boris Johnson.
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 haven’t been a farmer before and now I’m a farmer because it’s a working farm,” she said.
Although her younger brother, Michael, did the day-to-day running. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done... it’s the only place I want to be,” said Liz. 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-end beef jerky and fruit bars, and began stocking her own sausages in Harrods under the label “Elizabeth Hurley Foods”. In 2009, she joined forces with 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 unwavering commitment to help protect and sustain the countryside.”
In 2015, the model and actress sold her farm for £9million, and moved 40 miles down the road to the fringes of the Forest of Dean. “I previously spent 10 years in the Cotswolds, which I loved, but it was annoying bumping into people I cross the road to avoid in London,” she said.
Butcher, Baker, Organic Farm Maker
More than a million people tuned in to watch BBC presenter Matt Baker’s show about moving from Hertfordshire to the Dales to help out with the running of 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 kids Molly and Luke and Matt’s parents Mike and Janice. Over the course of three series, viewers watched Matt plant an orchard, pick up a flock of ewes and organise a woodland cookout on the 100-acre farm.
Baker left the BBC’s 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 when you automatically go into rescue mode, so we downed tools, went up there and from day one, it was all hands on deck.”
Although Baker’s new series is about travelling the UK with his mum and dad in a caravan, his Instagram is still full of baby lambs, rowdy donkeys and farm life.
I see you baby, ploughing that field
Groove Armada’s Andy Cato was on the way back from a gig in Lithuania, when he happened to read an article about chemical farming and the catastrophic effect it has on human health via the 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-hectare farm in Gascony in southwest France, where he reared red Sussex cattle and grew heritage grains, eschewing mass-production methods. But he was almost crippled by 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 paid his farm a visit.
After 12 years in what Cato calls “the agricultural school of hard knocks”, what he learned is now being applied on a National Trust farm near Swindon. In 2018, he co-founded Wildfarmed, which distributes bread, pizza and pasta made with organic flour farmed through “regenerative” processes, throughout the UK. He even writes an online “Soil Zine”.
“Farming changes your concept of time,” says Cato. “I think in terms of harvests now.”
