November Profile: Izzy Clutterbuck
Hi there, I’m Izzy Clutterbuck, and I work at The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. I live in North Yorkshire, where I’ve spent all of my 26 years, and I run a farm there with my Dad. I commute down to London on Monday evenings for three days each week so that I can be in the London office, before jumping on an LNER train (I know the route like the back of my hand!) on Thursday evenings and heading back up to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
After finishing school down in Rutland, I took a year off before heading to Newcastle University, where I studied History for three years. In 2021, I moved to London to take up a job with a garden design studio in Notting Hill. It was fantastic to work in such a vibrant and fun part of London while being surrounded by plants, nature, and the environment - a perfect first job in the city! I have a huge passion for gardening and love experimenting in the garden at home. The countryside is experiencing huge change at the moment, and for those who work within it, there’s a constant need to educate, learn and adapt. I think it’s a fascinating sphere to be in.
I started at the GWCT in January this year and now work in the London events team with Iona and Vanessa. It’s a huge amount of fun, and we pull off some amazing events all around the country. I feel incredibly lucky to have landed another job in London that allows me to work in something I am passionate about - in this case, for the countryside, farming, and animals - something I don’t take lightly!
Our farm is just on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. We have a plethora of animals - mainly cattle and red deer - while also keeping some of the land in arable rotation. We’re very lucky to live in a historic house (which comes with its challenges!) set in beautiful parkland. There’s always a huge amount going on, which makes for very busy weekends when I’m back from London. My Dad is a total powerhouse and, at 73, is showing few signs of slowing down - a condition shared by many farmers around the country, I think! Weekends usually involve feeding hundreds of hungry mouths and doing small repair jobs around the farm whenever the weather allows.
We’ve had deer on the farm for almost 20 years now, and they are wonderful animals. That said, one has to have the patience of a saint to work with them - they can be volatile, flighty, and not always the clearest thinkers! Everything has to be done on their terms, which definitely teaches you to go with the flow and think ahead. They require fairly constant, year-round care and are fed mainly on silage and barley, except from around May to October when they’re purely on grass. They calve around May and June, and we try to leave them alone as much as possible during this period - the less disturbance, the better! The stags have their antlers removed in late summer before going out into the park to join the hinds for the rut - it’s pretty amazing to have that happening right outside your bedroom window.
As the years go by, there’s a growing sense of pressure to diversify - something I think many estates and farms across the country are feeling. It’s definitely all about finding the right balance, and that balance is certainly completely different for every landowner/farmer, so it’s never a ‘one size fits all’ predicament. We’re constantly brainstorming new ideas for Hornby so that we aren’t quite so reliant on the farming side alone, as with the current political climate the outlook isn’t massively optimistic. Hopefully, one day we’ll hit the nail on the head.
I’m so excited to see where my time at the GWCT takes me. It’s the most fantastic place to learn about the industry and all things agriculture. It’s inspiring being surrounded by so many wonderful people, who are so knowledgeable and invested. My boyfriend is working in the Middle East at the moment, so we joke that maybe I’ll set up a GWCT branch over there one day… watch this space!
