Charlotte Winn – A Walk in their Wellies blog

Hi, I’m Charlotte and I live with my partner James and our two children on James’ family dairy farm in Great Dalby, near Melton Mowbray. James and his brother Richard are the fourth generation of their family to farm at Vine Farm, supplying the local cheese dairy, Long Clawson Dairy with their milk. In 2018, we set up a retail side of the business ‘Vine Farm Dairy’ supplying consumers with our milk directly through a self-service vending machine on our farm. Over the past 8 years we’ve expanded and now supply around 25 local businesses including Michelin star restaurants, award winning gelatarias, cafes and sports clubs including Leicester City and Leicester Tigers, alongside running 3 milk vending machines.

The farm was originally a mixed farm with cows, pigs, sheep, poultry and arable enterprises, in the 1970’s James’ parents streamlined the business and focused on the dairy side and expanded the herd. When James returned home from Uni, James and Richard modernised the farm further by installing a rotary milking parlour, large cubicle housing and a purpose-built calf shed, increasing the herd to its current size of 400 cows.

James and I met in the early 2010’s, I grew up 5 miles down the road from the farm in a village near Oakham. Although I didn’t grow up on a farm, my grandparents were from farming families, and my dad’s family had a milk round. As a youngster I would’ve probably been quite surprised if I’d have been told that I’d end up living on a farm and delivering milk for a living, but life has a funny way of coming full circle. At the time James and I met, I was just about to move to London to pursue a career in TV production, having just been offered a job at Sky TV. I decided to carry on with this, and then lived in London for the next 5 years, coming back to the farm at weekends and holidays. I look back at this time so fondly. It was a mad time, I used to help James on the farm at weekends, often fetching cows in during the summer, a couple of hours later I’d be back on the tube to my flat in Brixton.

It was nice living in both worlds for a while, but I started yearning for the countryside more and in 2016 moved back to the farm and went freelance, meaning I could still work in London but the farm was my base. It was then that we started having more ideas about a possible diversification and in 2018 we set up Vine Farm Dairy. At this time there wasn’t many milk vending machines around and people were taking sustainability into account more. Our glass bottles were really appealing, and we were transparent with our offer. Our customers could see the cows grazing, they knew the farm was only metres from where they could buy the milk and they knew it was fresh. Our business grew and grew and we started offering milkshakes, cream and coffee alongside other local products.

Covid was a really pivotal time for our business. We were selling nearly 400 litres a day through our on-site vending machine and the queues were enormous! Although a lot of our hospitality customers reduced their orders, business picked up elsewhere and we adapted our business to cope with demand. My other TV production work had tailed off by this point as Covid had put a stop to that, and I was full time with Vine Farm Dairy. We worked long days, ensuring the machines were constantly filled up, milk was freshly pasteurised, I did all the milk deliveries to our customers whilst also juggling all the office work/marketing/invoicing/liaising with customers/stock ordering. James and I didn’t see each other much during this time, he was pasteurising all night, every night, alongside running the farm, and I’d get up early and crack on with the day to day running of the retail business. As the old saying goes, ‘make hay whilst the sun shines’.

In 2021 our first child was born, and things shifted again. My ‘hands on’ time on the farm decreased, and my time in the office increased. Although our customers will vouch that I’m often seen in the Milk Shed or on the delivery run with a child in tow! It was around this time that we decided to employ a couple of people to help us out with the pasteurising/deliveries, as trying to juggle all our responsibilities plus kids was proving unsustainable. In 2024 our second child was born, and life became even more chaotic as we were also in the middle of building a new house too. It’s fair to say we leaned on our staff during this period in order for our business to survive (and us to stay sane!) It’s certainly been a big juggle since the kids came along, and no two days are the same.

My days on the farm have certainly changed, and there is always a pang of guilt. I know a lot of other farming mums feel the same. I’ve always struggled when someone asks me what my job is. I had a long discussion about this with a farmers wife recently. I find it hard to describe myself as a ‘farmer’, when the reality is that I’m not the one milking or feeding the calves or driving a tractor. I always feel like I have imposter syndrome if people describe me as a farmer. These days my time is mainly spent in the office, doing lots of admin for the farm and liaising with all our customers for Vine Farm Dairy. That said, I’m absolutely passionate about the farm and love getting involved with the business side of it, or if we’re short staffed and I’m needed on the farm, but the reality these days is that logistically it’s not always possible to be in the thick of it on the farm. Therefore, we both agreed that the phrase ‘office farmer’ was the most fitting at this point, it’s not caught on yet, but I’m sure there are a lot of people who understand the identity crisis!

I feel privileged to live and work on a farm, bring our children up in this environment, and I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved with our business. I think British agriculture is highly undervalued, but it’s so important that as an industry we continue to educate the public and keep our voices heard. I’ve loved speaking to our customers since selling milk directly to the public and we’ve hosted lots of groups/schools at the farm to highlight the work we do. It’s fantastic that our own children are really starting to show an interest in the farm, and it’s great teaching them about the stock and the land and how it all works, as generations before us have handed their knowledge down to us.

Farming comes with enormous challenges, stress and worry, particularly with such a volatile milk price. It can be hard to watch the stress and worry build as there is no way to switch off when your life and work is much of the same thing. As James and his brother Richard farm together, it does make it easier for us to be able to get away for a holiday now and then, as they can cover each other. I know for a lot of farming families this simply isn’t possible, but for us, spending time away from the farm (even for a short period of time) can be a breath of fresh air, and often energises us once we’re back. Our milk shed is open 7 days a week for pretty much the whole year (except Christmas Day and Boxing day), and we are on call for all of this time which can take its toll (and it has done even more so since having children), so taking breaks when the opportunity arises has been invaluable to us. When time allows, walking my dog, cooking and listening to music are my ways to unwind, and I do enjoy popping back to London now and then to see my friends. That said, I’m at my happiest on the farm, surrounded by my family and the cows (and our dog!), incredibly proud of how hard we’ve worked and the business we’ve created. James and I have so many ideas and things we want to do that I’m looking forward to the future and excited about what comes next!