Background
About
Land the family has worked for three generations, and the question of who works it next.
The land is the family's, the packhouse is the business, and nobody wrote down how the pieces fit.
Sadler Farms is a family farm on the Norfolk side: arable land, a packhouse and the people who work both. My grandfather started with rented fields and a borrowed tractor. The land is ours now, and the packhouse came later, when we got tired of watching somebody else take a margin for putting our crop in a box.
I came up on the land and then into the office, and I still know every field by the gate it opens onto. My son works elsewhere and my daughter has not decided whether she wants it; my farm manager could run the place and knows it better than anyone. What I am trying to sort out is not a sale — nothing is for sale — it is that the land, the packhouse and the arrangements between the family have grown into each other without anybody writing them down. I am looking for somebody who has taken a family farm through this before.
How it got here
From rented fields to our own packhouse
My grandfather took on rented fields with a borrowed tractor and a great deal of optimism.
The family bought the fields it had been renting, a block at a time, whenever a good year allowed it.
We put up the packhouse so the crop left here in our own boxes and on our own account.
I took the farm on from my father with the same fields and a longer list of things that needed doing.
The land is the family's, the packhouse is the business, and nobody has ever written down how the pieces fit together.
The question I keep asking
Who farms it next, and what does that actually take?
If you have been through it, or are going through it, write. Nothing to prepare, no obligation.
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