A Family Affair

Roderick Easdale explores the Jersey farms that have been handed down from parent to child for decades

- Roderick Easdale

JERSEY’S roots are firmly planted in agriculture. Over the centuries, locals have been so adept at exploiting the island’s good soil, mild winters and long hours of sunshine that French writer P. C. Dubost named them ‘masters at farming’ in his 1879 article for the Journal de l’Agriculture. And although much has changed today—not least the fact that financial and legal services have trumped potatoes and beef as the Bailiwick’s economic engines—family farms remain at the heart of Jersey’s culture, with many passed down through the generations.

A prime example is Master Farms, a mixed dairy-and-vegetable business run by the Le Maistre family—Peter is the sixthgeneration farmer and his sons, Phil and Matthew, the seventh. Phil ‘would love it’ if his own children were to join him and continue the farm into the eighth generation.