Thirty-year-old Sarah Dusgate never imagined she would become the first new tenant at New House Farm in a century. For a hundred years, a single family had dedicated itself to cattle, sheep, pigs and cereal production across 240 acres of gently rolling Monmouthshire hills. When the final generation retired, the Bosanquet family, who have owned the land since the 1800s, searched for someone new.
Dusgate stumbled across their advertisement online. Despite growing up in rural Wales, she was not from farming stock. After studying veterinary science, Dusgate worked for an agricultural charity where she found herself “inspired by the principles of regenerative farming and mob grazing”, a way of farming that “focused on soil health, organic matter, water quality and reducing artificial inputs”.
Yearning for the practicality of hands-on farming — “No number of Zoom meetings can compare to the tangible win of fixing a leaking water trough!” — she took on part-time and weekend farm work. A job rearing cattle across thousands of acres followed, transitioning herds from conventional to regenerative systems. “My eyes were opened to a whole new way of managing land and livestock,” Dusgate says. “It was the best job and lifestyle satisfaction than I’d found anywhere else”.