MIXED, RUTLAND: Olivia was brought up on her family’s arable and poultry farm. But since the death of her father over a decade ago that’s been rented out, so she now rents a 150-acre (61-hectare) area of land nearby which she is converting into an organic mixed farm.

Although raised on the family farm, Olivia studied geography not farming at university as she planned to follow a non-farming career. But when her father died during the final year of her studies, she returned to the farm and then took herself off to the Royal Agricultural University at Cirencester to take a one-year graduate diploma in Agriculture.

Her first venture, on a couple of fields on the original family farm that had not been rented out, was to raise around 20 Hereford cattle, selling their meat direct to the public in beef boxes. But she sold the herd after becoming pregnant with her daughter.

She is now studying (remotely) for a masters in Organic Farming at Scotland’s Rural College in Aberdeen. In addition, she works part-time for the Soil Association as a soil and biodiversity assessor, on farms across the East Midlands.

Once the farm has gained organic status, Olivia plans to farm it in a way that promotes biodiversity, soil health and carbon sequestration. She has planted a herbal ley (a mix of herbs, grasses and legumes) to reduce weeds (such as blackgrass) and improve the soil. In addition, she’s established flower-rich field margins, to attract pollinators, and bird-seed plots to attract birds. In the long term she hopes to run it as a mixed farm, combining livestock with arable.

On the arable side, Olivia plans to grow unusual grains such as heritage wheats for milling for bread-making, and naked oats which makes a great substitute for rice. On the livestock side, she intends to keep a breeding herd of native-breed cattle that are hardy enough to graze outdoors year-round. “Livestock are an essential part of the system. I call them my ‘eco-system engineers’,” says Olivia. “Carbon is sequestered in the grasslands they graze, dung beetles thrive in their cowpats and in turn provide food for birds. When I was young we saw swallows, swifts and house martins, and it would be wonderful to get them back again. Many young people won’t even know that they existed or what they looked like.”

Having toyed with other careers, Olivia now feels she wouldn’t want to do anything other than farming. She loves being outside and around nature, and being her own boss. “Every day is different,” she says. She admits, however, that “it can be a slog” and sometimes feels that as an industry, farming is “hugely underappreciated and misunderstood.”