Claire Howlett

After a very rewarding childhood spent at Wicton, I left the farm aged 18 and proceeded to complete a degree in International Management in French at Bath University. The next 8 years of my life were dedicated to working abroad for an international volunteering organisation and I lived in many remote destinations worldwide. In 2014 my mother and father were approaching 70 years of age, but still actively running our dairy farm on a day to day basis. With the help of a farm succession planner called Sian Bushell, we negotiated a two-year succession plan that would allow myself and my brother to take over the farm so our parents could retire. I became a full-time dairy farmer at Wicton in 2015 with 120 cows on 300 acres and my aim was to ensure that the farm had a sustainable and regenerative future. The farm became organic in 1998 and in 2015 we made the decision to stop using antibiotics.