I am 24 years old have been trying to start a farm for 7 years with it being my dream since a young lad.
I have now had the opportunity to take on 16 acres of pasture land in Oxfordshire which I have a plan to turn it into a diverse scale self sufficient farm which is maximising output but producing top quality products for the uk markets.
We will be doing a vast range of things such as livestock, poultry, horticultural plants, aquaculture, aquaponics, microgreens, gourmet mushrooms, exotic fruit/veg, fruit/veg, orchards and bees.
The poultry that we are looking to do is chickens, ducks, quail, gooses, turkeys to start off with. We will be doing a couple of different varieties of each type of poultry for different products you can get.
With this new venture I am starting a company I used to run from 11 years of age to the age of 18 as I went off to university which was called Robert’s plants. We used to grow and sell a range of horticultural plants from bulbs and bedding plants. This is now something I am looking to start again and expand from the allotment I used to use to grow the plants on.
I done an aquaponic system for my university dissertation which aided me getting a batchlor of science degree. This system uses both fish and plants to become a self sufficient closed loop system producing high yields of produce more than average normal arable farming. It also producing fish on top. In these systems you can do different types of fish from good eating fish, exotic fish, ornamental fish, fish for fisheries and shellfish opening the opportunities i have with these systems.
We have already faced a range of challenges from flooding to veichles sinking and getting stuck needing lovely neighbours to come to the rescue us with their tractors. One of the biggest is the subsidies getting stopped and the cost of materials putting a much bigger dent in the original small ish budget for the farm we had to start. This is why i started this page to aid the set up cost of the farm getting sectors started which would have to wait. As well as bringing similar minded people together in a community which will be the young dumb farm to follow and maybe participate in the journey.