Interview
says, “as it allowed me to save up a bit and
build up the farming side while I was still
working”. He only finally left the insurance
job in December last year.
Building up the farming included
developing the buildings and land at
Duxmore Barns whilst taking on various
tenancies, including 105 acres of
farmland at Quarr Abbey, plus ‘various
bits around the East Wight’, now totalling
around 350 acres. All the land is managed
grassland, for his herd of 120-140 Angus
cattle and three pedigree flocks of Jacob,
Suffolk and Welsh Mountain sheep.
As time has gone on, the sheep have
become a hobby as well as a business,
and Matt c learly enjoys showing his
award-winning animals, as well as taking
his turn as a competition judge, which he
describes as ‘great fun’.
His Duxmore flock of Suffolk sheep have
consistently scooped interbreed awards at
top events including the Gillingham and
Shaftesbury Show, and New Forest and
Hampshire Show, as well as many Isle of
Wight County Shows over the past decade.
“It’s a lovely community on the show
circuit” he says. “We’re all friends as well,
so it’s a bit like a holiday when we get
together.”
What with the farming, a growing young
family and the NFU role taking up more
of his time and attention, something had
to give, and in Matt’s case that was the
competitive riding he’s always enjoyed. As
he jokes: “Point-to-point is about 10 years
and two-and-a-half stone ago for me!”
A new home
He and his wife Charlotte, who works in
the new product development team at
Liz Earle, are also excitedly planning the
building of their new farmhouse at the
Duxmore Barns site, which they hope to
see finished next summer.
It will be home to the couple along with
their children, seven year-old Pip, Thea
aged four and three month-old baby
George.
The two older children are already
enjoying a similar kind of lifestyle to the
one their dad experienced, with Thea
having a pony, Pip a donkey and both
of them loving the outdoor life, feeding
calves and generally mucking in with the
farming routines.
So are these little Legges likely to follow
dad into farming?
Matt says: “I’d be happy if they did, but
then equally we would support them in
whatever their choice is”.
As he points out, despite all the
challenges, farming is certainly a more
viable choice than it might have been a
decade ago.
“Probably if you’d asked me when I
left school, I’d have said it was a very
questionable career path” says Matt, “and
certainly around that time I knew lots of
colleagues who chose to take other paths”.
Since then, though, he’s seen plenty
of evidence of ‘new blood’ coming
into farming, from other professional
backgrounds, and reckons that this can be
only a good thing.
He admits that farming has traditionally
been something of a closed community
– partly because of the hefty capital
investment needed just to get up and
running.
Matt aged three
Matt on Jeffery in 1990
“I’d finished Uni to get the horses
ready for the racing, training them
out on the field, so when it all fell
through I thought: ‘well, I’d better get
a proper job then!’”
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