15 minutes with...the Pawsey family

What does it really take to run a family farm across generations?

In this episode, we sit down with John, Alice, and Rufus Pawsey of Shimpling Park — a 4,500-acre organic farm in Suffolk that's been in the family for five generations. We pick up a conversation that started at the CLA breakfast at the Suffolk Show, going deeper into what it's actually like to work together as a family business.

From navigating disagreements over paperwork and loader tractors, to the Cock-up of the Year award, succession planning, and the challenges of back-to-back difficult harvests — this is an honest, warm, and often funny conversation about the realities of farming today. We also explore how diversification through weddings, food events, school visits, and a working flour mill helps keep the business resilient in uncertain times.

If you're interested in family business, rural enterprise, or the future of farming, this one's for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is fifteen minutes with from the Country Land and Business Association. In this edition, CLA East Director Kath Crowther went to the Suffolk Show to talk to the Pausey family from Schimpling Park to discuss family, education, and their annual cock-up of the year competition.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Right, hello. I am joined today by John, Alice, and Rufus Pausey from Schimplin Park in Suffolk. Or rather, we're continuing a conversation that we started earlier today at the CLA Breakfast at the Suffolk Show, where we had a really brilliant, entertaining, open and honest discussion about farming as a family business. Because behind all of the headlines about policy changes, high costs, low prices, extreme weather, what really keeps rural businesses going is people and very often families working together across generations. So today we're going to dig a little deeper into what actually works in practice, what's rewarding, what's challenging, and why, despite everything, it's worth committing to a family business like farming. So, Rufus, I'm going to start with you. For anyone who doesn't know, give us a quick picture. Tell us a bit about Schimpling Park.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Uh, we are a four and a half thousand uh acre contract and own farm business. We also have 300 head of livestock down from 1500 last year. I'm a fifth generation Suffolk farmer. We come from a long line of Ayrshire uh Scottish farmers as well, mainly livestock at that point. Uh, and I handle lots of the uh day-to-day uh operating side of the business at the moment. Um yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

And could each of you tell me a little bit about your the roles that you play in the business, given that you have taken on different responsibilities since Rufus joined the business three and a half years ago.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

Um so, John, um yes, I um still help Rufus with the sort of arable side of the business, basically uh taking more of a back role on the sort of day-to-day duties, uh, but more of a sort of strategic role. Um, also still liaising very much with our contract farms as well, because they're very important uh to our business. Um, and also also working with Alice to a certain extent on the uh bits that she does, which she will talk to you about now.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Okay, so I'm Alice, I'm John's wife, and I'm Rufus' mum, and I do all the bits that nobody really wants to do. So I do property bits and pieces, I do I bully everyone else on the health and safety, and I do events in our events barn and weddings, and I do sheep sales.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

And have things changed since Rufus joined the business in terms of those responsibilities and what you're all doing?

SPEAKER_03 2:59

I did actually do my first ladder inspection this year, Alice. So I'm I'm I'm I've been somewhat helping, and I've done two school visits as well. I took 30 group of 30 school trips around the farm. Um yeah, but I've been mainly helping out on the arable side of the business at the moment with the day-to-day running operationally and operating as an in-the-fields doing combining and drilling mainly. Um but the side of the business I don't really know anything about is Alice's. And so I'm looking to uh progress more into your real estate side of the business, which which obviously you take care of at the moment as farm estates manager.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I think both John and I have thought about this, and to be fair to Rufus, he's catching up very, very fast. There's a huge amount to learn, so he's completely getting his feet under the table on the operational side. That's then growing into the sort of bigger picture on the arable side. Um, and then along with that, we'll come joining the all the extra bits and pieces which sometimes prop up the business, sometimes back it up. Um, and but they are necessities, but they can also be outsourced if Rufus says, I don't really want to do those myself, but I need them to happen. So that will come at the third third stage.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

So um because Rufus has really taken over the day-to-day running the farm, I suppose that I should feel that my time has been freed up enormously. But uh just saying this morning that, you know, busy people are busy people, and so I seem to have filled it with a whole load of other stuff, but I'm not sure what that all is. But uh, my ambition really is to help Rufus more on the sort of agronomic detail of what we're doing in terms of our organic farming practices. I think that, you know, with the rice of regen farming, uh, people are trying a lot of different things. And I think we still, I suppose, or I certainly feel that we still need very much to keep ahead of the curve on all that later sort of agronomic thinking. So um that's what I am trying to do with the extra time that I've got since Roofs has come back on the farm.

unknown 4:48

I like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

And it all sounds very good. You seem to be working together very, very well, but there must be disagreements. Where's where the biggest disagreements been, do you think?

SPEAKER_04 5:01

Uh there are disagreements. I mean, you know, the I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm uh I think I'm quite a good delegator. And so when Rufus came back, you know, I really pretty much sort of almost sort of threw him in the deep end to a certain extent on certain jobs. And I think that, you know, I I you know sometimes when you're doing something and I think, oh my goodness, has you planned for this or whatever? And uh it doesn't, it's not a disagreement, but I sometimes worry that, you know, I I sort of I jump in uh to something that you've made a decision on and and try and persuade you to do it slightly differently. But I I think it still sort of works, doesn't it? He's nervously said to Rufus and looks at his face to see he's scowling.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

No, I think we're pretty good at not disagreeing with each other, sorry, obviously disagreeing with each other, but not in a sort of way that makes it difficult for anyone else uh working around us at the farm. I don't think it makes their lives much um any more difficult. Um, we don't have massive egos to bruise either. I mean, if we disagree, it's kind of you know, I'm very happy to hold my hands up and say, no, I messed you mess that one up. I need to, you know, I need to just think, yeah, I'll never make that mistake again. Happens constantly. I think our skill sets complement each other quite well. As you said, you're very good at doing the big picture, big thinking stuff. I find I need to get better at not getting bogged down in the detail. As I mentioned earlier, that's where I kind of scare myself and almost, you know, back up, skim ahead in the sound and move away from projects if I just see it being too big of a thing to even start. You're very good at looking at the big picture and you're right, we just gotta you know we just gotta go. Worry about the detail later, it'll sort of come. Um whereas Alice and I get really get bogged down and that kind of stuff. Um we're both terrible at admin, or at least I I hate it. I'm sorry, I'm terrible at paperwork and and you're very quick to anger when it when it comes to paperwork. So I think that's where most of our big disagreements happen. It's not huge, there's just a minor shouting, and but apart from that, we get through it and that's and that's fine. Um, it's just both something we've recognized as just takes a little bit more patience, a little bit more time. But we do that, and it's working so far.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

And I fight my little corner. So my biggest rattles are if I need the loader to move a tree ready for a wedding and they're doing something on the farm, I have to battle for equipment, and then occasionally I have to stamp my foot and make the point of what's paying for what at this point, and then I tend to win, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

We got asked earlier about the education side and whether you make any money from it. Tell me a bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Well, I've always done loads of school visits only because my children went to school locally when they were little and it seemed a good idea. That was never supported in the early days, it's now it's currently supported under our countryside stewardship scheme. I don't know whether that's going to continue to happen. So at the moment I am being supported for it, which is really, really great. Because actually, I do a lot and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. And it um I come time to bring people in to help me if I've got really big groups of 60 and things like that. And I'm not sure if it wasn't supported that I would do, I would carry on doing them, but I wouldn't do them at the level that I'm doing them. And I have to say it it's quite risky. I've just redone my CVAS plus training, and actually, there's a huge risk assessed with it. So you have to put the work in before a visit, during a visit, after a visit, and the relationships with the school. So, yes, I'm supported at the moment, and I would really urge the government to carry on with that support. Although I think controversially, I think it should come out of the education department's budget, not the farming budget, because the benefits for a school visit to a school are unbelievably huge.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Well, we can talk about green social prescribing and how the mental and physical health benefits of getting out into the countryside, and maybe that should come out of the NHS budget rather than uh the DEFRA budget as well. Um, and you talk about the education side, but what about the the meal and adding value to some of your produce? Do you uh does it actually pay?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Uh yes, I think it does. I mean, it it we're an entirely organic farm, have been for 25 years. So um there is an uplift to our produce anyway. The bit that goes mainly direct is lamb and now um bread. But again, that the bread is a collaboration with the sourdough baker who happens to rent a building, and because we have a mill, he will take the heritage grains that Rufus has planted and combined, and then they literally get cleaned on site, put through the mill, and they get baked in a building about two doors, two stable blocks down. So it really is about as neat as it gets. We probably need to monetize that more. It's an incredibly lovely position to be in. It's fabulous for the education. We probably need to monetize it more. We use it with some of our events. You know, when we have events on the farm, they tend to eat bread which is, you know, grown and baked here. Um yeah, what's a space, I think. Tell me about the cock-up of the year award.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

This is about celebrating cock-ups and embracing them and learning from them and have being able to have laugh at yourself rather than hiding them and uh and and creating more mistrust in the long term. So we came up with a um a yearly award that goes to the farm operator andor employee with the biggest and a long-term contractor with the biggest cock-up. Alice was of course the first winner. No, I was the f well, I I bought a hen instead of a cock as the prize because I cocked up. And then Alice won it the first year for writing off her car onto John's brand new car at that time. And then I think uh last year's was someone running over a leaf blower, and this year it's gonna be someone probably for cultivating the long field or me breaking the drill. So it's something different every year. We like to get the you know, people in the office can get involved. One of them did some gardening and managed to send a pitchfork through her foot, so she was involved, she was great. Um, fantastic entry, didn't win, runner up. Um it's just it's just to it's just to uh learn from our mistakes and you know laugh them rather than get bogged down. And so that's just a fun way we can sort of gel together as a team, and we've all done it.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

And you now have regular meetings, uh uh strategy meetings, I think, the three of you, and a month uh a weekly meeting with the team.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

Yeah, so we have a uh weekly meeting with uh pretty much everyone involved in the farm, even not full-time employees, people if they're you know working for us as contractors, they come into the Monday morning meeting and uh basically sitting around a table for half an hour working out where we need to get to by the end of the week. But we also talk about you know who needs time off. So if somebody wants to go to the cinema on a Thursday night or they want to go home early on a Thursday, and we've got quite a lot of work and we work out how to facilitate that. So it's actually trying to support people, do a health and safety thing, uh, the Monday morning meeting every single week as well. So we're very health and safety is just embedded into our system. Uh, we also have just started having a strategic sort of you know, uh farm management meeting with Alice Rupus and I. And basically it's around talking about our roles, uh, the things that we enjoy in our roles, the things we don't so much enjoy in our roles, and if we want to pass things on to other people, how do we manage that? But also talking about projects that we personally want to do, and so we can present the project and we can then use it as a monthly sort of roundup of how the project is progressing and whether or not they need help from other people on the farm. So I think you know, they're they're sort of they're they're sort of blue sky thinking sort of um uh meetings, really, to be quite honest, to give ourselves the freedom to develop uh what we're bringing to the business.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

So, Rufus, you've come into the business at a really challenging time and we've had two bad harvests, and this dry weather is looking um pretty difficult again for this year. Um, there's a lot of negativity in the industry at the moment. What made you commit to it and um how are you feeling about it right now? Did you feel pressure as well? Because I think a lot of farming um next generation do feel like they have to come home, they don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Um, I want to I I've I felt no pressure at all. Uh uh John very made very constantly made the decision not to make any of us feel any pressure to come back to the farm at all. Um John wanted to be a uh punk rocker from the age of 18, and it was his grandfather that forced him to come back, and he said he hated it for the first 10 years, and I feel very, very privileged that I haven't hated it for the first 10 years. I've loved it from let's say year two. Um so it's it's it's it's it's been it's been fantastic. I'm so I'm so terrible at a desk. I can do maximums of four hours in the office, and then I really have to then I have really want to be outside. Um so I've loved um being involved in that part of it. You know, just day to day, that's been incredibly positive. We've got a fantastic team. Everyone on the farm has been absolutely fantastic. Uh, include, you know, I love getting our contractors in. We've got some really, really fun people that come in at different times of the year. I love getting our hard harvest students in. Uh big picture-wise, we've obviously had our two really, really difficult where we had our two really, really wet uh drilling seasons in 23 and 24, and now 25, 26 drought years. Um, it's it's hard to get really excited about the stuff you can't control, like the weather. So that's been really difficult. But um, going forward, I mean, from a very selfish point of view, I'm enjoying seeing where my role's going on the farm. And so I'm excited about that aspect of the future. There's obviously lots of uncertainty. I'm just gonna have to plan as best as we can and see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Jen and Alice, what do you see next steps for you and for the business?

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Um, I'm very sort of involved in sort of planning uh succession planning. Uh as at the moment, I'm I'm sort of doing a lot of work on that. Uh, I don't want to be the person who doesn't get that right. Um, and so we're taking advice from all the usual people. Um, and but it's it's taking up quite a lot of my time to think about that. Um also I'm I'm absolutely determined uh not to um hand a poison chalice to Rufus. I want to make sure that you know, when I leave this mortal coil, that he's inheriting a business that um is profitable and fun. Um, so that's you know, that's my my vision of the future. I I want to keep it in hand. I want to um, you know, we've we spent a huge Alice and I spent a huge amount of uh our working lives um, you know, bringing the whole thing together, you know, a very diverse family farm with lots of different ownerships, and we've consolidated all of that. And I want to pass it on uh as I said, an exciting and profitable business.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I think my bits are bits that could be outsourced, but I think they're vital. I think the diversifications are what will prop up farming. However, we shouldn't be running farms that are really, really not profit making, but they will be challenging years, and if we can diversify or take them, mitigate the risk a bit. So I think the bits that I do, the weddings, the extra events, the food events, um, and the food events also are a bit of an emotional journey because they are about linking exactly what we do to food. So I that's why I love doing those. Um, I think they're necessary, I think they create employment, and I think Rufus can step back in a few years' time and look at them and say, I love them happening here, but I don't want to run them, and we can outsource them. So he'll be very much involved in the development of those and how big they become or don't become.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Great. Well, I think that we're probably running out of time there, but thank you so much um for the the chat. Um, I think that what comes across really clearly is whilst farming is very, very tough right now, then rural businesses are very resilient and you've got um shared purpose and long-term thinking. And I think that long-term multi-generational look that family farms and family businesses have is so important, which is why the CLA continues to push against the inheritance tax changes that doesn't encourage investment in the long term. Um, we also continue to push against the um the SFI, which I know that you're impacted by that um SFI um cap. Conversations like this are really important, and I'd encourage everyone to have that open and honest conversation. Thank you again for joining us, and um hopefully people can come along to some of your events, have a look on your website, and um also have a look at your social media.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

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