Having Jo’s origins rooted on a farm means we understand farming very well, when working with owners and clients alike. It also means Jo has to step away from the Locations work sometimes to help with the farm work. The last few weeks has seen the switch to the family farm near Rye in Sussex.
The Locations and lambing juggle is a challenge I get to tackle annually. Every March since the year dot, I’ve been an extra pair of hands on the family farm at lambing time. I recall very well, following Dad around the lambing pens, slopping water from the buckets as a 5-year old. After school, I’d go with Mum to do the tea-time feed, and often if there was trouble and she was held up well into the evening, I’d head home on my own, trailing across the fields, weary and hungry. 2026 has been no different in many respects. I still slop the water buckets, I still get weary and hungry and I’m still witnessing something extraordinary, that very few get to do.
For over 10 years now, I’ve run lambing workshops on the farm, enabling people with a keen interest, to get hands on with me in the lambing sheds. We’ve had sign-ups from midwifes, aspiring vets, novice sheep keepers, tourists, care workers, company away days, all kinds of backgrounds and distances travelled. This year, one student came over from Bermuda, tying in a trip to see his sister too. He’d not seen a lamb before.
This year, we also hosted the local Young Farmers Club, with twenty young farmers taking a more in-depth insight into our lambing set up and systems. We run an indoor lambing system on the farm, we have plenty of shed space for our 800+ ewes. The North country mules are less hardy than some breeds and very prolific – they averaged 2.2 lambs per ewe this year, that’s a lot of triplets (and 10 quadruplets too!)
My role at lambing is to come in to help when the work stacks up, when the pressure is on. My brother runs things, and works ridiculous hours, and then we’ve had a brilliant team this year supporting him, including Ruby and Robert who have learned the trade on the farm over the years, and Clara who is on a gap year with no sheep experience at all. It’s great to be able to provide an opening for those wanting to get involved with sheep farming. The number of sheep farmers is reducing in the UK, and we enjoy sharing our world with a younger generation. My children help each year – the jury’s out though whether they will want to be sheep farmers themselves!
Stepping back into farm clothes and all weathers keeps me rooted, and is a helpful way of staying involved in the family farm. It keeps things in perspective, and highlights the harsh realities of what it takes to produce our food. Lambing throws up extreme conditions, life and death, joy and sadness. The intense care and standards we have on the farm, to do the best job, to provide for healthy mothers and lambs, is relentless. It’s far from easy and sheep farming alone is far from commercially or emotionally sensible. But what we have is a way of life that I do still cherish and feel privileged to be part of. I’m proud of my family, and what they do as custodians of the landscape, conservators of our heritage, nurturers of nature, and producers of our food.
I’m also proud of the team back at Farm Locations HQ. Whilst I delivered the lambs, Gemma, Carolyn and Marta delivered a record March, with 3 times the number of hires this year compared to last year. We’ve some stunning new locations in the mix, and have the best range of farm locations, nationwide. Call me biased, I don’t mind. We will keep delivering, that’s both lambs and locations, it’s a juggle I love to do.
See more of the family farm at Hare Farm, Sussex here.
And for all farms with sheep, available for hire, we currently look after 115. View the full portfolio of farms with sheep here