Alasdair Boden: Less can be more when it comes to acreage

While they might say it doesn’t matter, I always feel very self-conscious when disclosing the size of our farm.

To rip the band aid off, we’re 90ish acres. That’s 90 acres, sandwiched on either side by farmers with a thousand each.

But does it matter and, in fact, shouldn’t we embrace smaller farms? King Charles thinks so. He’s long campaigned for the survival of the small family farms.

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About the author

Alasdair Boden

Having been brought up in Kendal, Alasdair Boden returned to the Lake District in 2019 when he and his wife, Heather, bought a holiday cottage business. The 37-year-old describes himself as an “accidental farmer’ having later acquired the 40ha historically connected to the enterprise.

Read more articles by Alasdair Boden

But that is the word, survival. While smaller farms are seen as nimble and flexible, a single dead cow might not be 1% or 2% of your herd, but 10%.

We all try to duck and swerve around government red tape, but it’s harder on a smaller scale.

However, there is a resurgence on the horizon and we should back it. 

With the likes of social media, it’s getting easier to sell produce direct, driven by an appetite for local food and support from the public to back British farming.

A lamb at market might be £125, but butchered and sold direct it could be well over £300.

There are obviously costs and a whole load of extra time involved, but this is where we’re seeing smaller farms not just survive, but thrive. 

For the government, us smaller landowners are also bowing the lowest to these environmental funds because they make up so much of our income.

But again, we’re the hedge laying, GS4 workhorses that can create that green and pleasant Blighty so many want. 

Is there a smaller limit? Absolutely not.

If we want people to appreciate the work that goes into producing food, then get them to produce it.

Embrace and encourage smallholding of even just an acre or two, they’ll produce great eggs at the very least. 

We should not only support smaller farms, but we should not shame them.

I’m not running an alpaca petting farm, I am rearing meat for market and should not feel bad, however small the farm is.

But would I swap for 1,000 acres? In a heartbeat. I hate paperwork and social media.