Rowles Farm Featured on the Tramlines Podcast

We've been getting quite a bit of airtime lately — and this one was a particularly good listen.

Georgie, Tom, and Will joined host Tony Smith on Season 2 of the Tramlines podcast, produced by Agrii, for a brilliant conversation about farm diversification and what it really takes to branch out into something new. If you've ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at Rowles Farm, this episode is well worth an hour of your time.

Tony — who has a farming background himself — gets right into the heart of it, starting with the family history. It's a story that not everyone knows: the Carlisle family originally farmed in Wiltshire, before Norman Carlisle was forced to relocate when the M4 motorway cut straight through his land. He landed in West Ilsley, south of Oxford, took on a tenancy with the Lockinge Estate, and the rest, as they say, is history. In 2015, the family was finally able to buy the farm outright — a milestone that clearly meant a great deal to everyone involved.

The podcast paints a vivid picture of just how much Rowles Farm produces — winter wheat, barley, oilseed rape, a breeding flock of ewes, cattle including Charolais, Limousins and Aberdeen Angus, and — a personal favourite — alpacas, who it turns out are quite the hit with visitors.

But the real meat of the conversation is the vineyard, and how the family came to plant it. Tom is refreshingly candid about the pressures that made diversification feel not just appealing but necessary — climate change, market volatility, rising costs of fertilisers and fuel. It's a familiar story for many British farmers, and it's told here with real honesty.

What comes through so clearly is just how seriously the family took the planning process. Five years of research, weather stations identifying frost pockets across the farm, careful selection of south-facing chalk slopes, windbreaks installed to protect the vines — nothing was left to chance. As Georgie explains, the whole venture started when she returned to the farm and the family sat down together to think about the future. Their father's response? Come back with a business plan. They did — and the rest is now beginning to bear fruit, quite literally.

The episode also covers the very real risks involved — frost in May, wet harvests, a high upfront investment with returns potentially taking eight to nine years to materialise. It's not a decision to take lightly, and Georgie, Tom, and Will are the first to say so. Their advice to other farmers thinking about diversifying? Research thoroughly, take your time, seek expert guidance, and make sure any new venture genuinely adds value rather than just complexity.

It's a grounded, generous, and genuinely useful conversation — exactly the kind of thing the Tramlines podcast does so well.

You can listen to the full episode here.