The Nests Little Smallholding

Georgie Mitchell gave up her job as a university lecturer teaching Child Development and Counselling and used a £7000 Start Up Loan to launch The Nests Little Smallholding, a rare breeds farm in the Ribble Valley, near Burnley, Lancashire. She ethically rears rare breed livestock that are free to roam, and sells her produce at farmers’ markets and supplies private hog roasts.

Georgie keeps all of her pregnant ewes and sows in an outbuilding based at her home, and has other livestock spread across several other sites totalling 40 acres. She currently has a flock of 70 sheep, three breeding sows and various poultry. She uses the animals for meat or breeding, except for the poultry who provide eggs only.

Two years ago Georgie helped out on a local farm whilst studying for her PGCE, and found an injured lamb. She asked the farmer if she could take the lamb home and nurse it back to health. After a couple of weeks, unsure if the lamb would survive, Georgie came home one day to find the healthy lamb bouncing around on the dining table! Soon after, the lamb was moved to her children’s Wendy house in the garden, before they realised that they would need to find a piece of land on which to keep her. Georgie spoke to a friend who was renting out a piece of land and this became Dotty the sheep’s new home.

After her experience rearing Dotty, Georgie decided to purchase more and more sheep and then bought some pigs to rear meat for the family. When the meat returned from the butcher’s Georgie was inundated with requests from friends and family to purchase the meat. It was then that she realised that she could make a business out of it.

Georgie has two young children, Dolly and Billy (3 and 6), and found that she rarely got to see them when working as a lecturer, so she quit her job and registered as a self-employed smallholder in May 2016. She was then encouraged to contact Business Enterprise and apply for finance. Georgie completed her business plan and was told by the advisor at BE that it was so good that no changes were required, and the application for her £7000 loan went straight through, allowing her to purchase more animals and rent more land.