Meet Josh Misselbrook

At school I was terrible academically and I just wanted to be outside all the time. My dad’s side of the family come from a farming background so in the summer holidays I was always out on the farm with my uncle. At 16 I decided to go to agricultural college, but I was too young, and I didn't like staying away from home during the week. I decided to return to school for my A-levels. I picked up some weekend work at a local dairy farm and started off doing milking and feeding calves.

When I finished my A-levels the guy I worked part time for suggested doing an apprenticeship with him. I did a Level 3 Apprenticeship in Agriculture, which I loved, and I worked there for 10 years! A livestock-based apprenticeship involves milking cows, feeding calves and machinery work – which is anything from servicing machinery to rolling, mowing, and harvesting – the list is endless! I was assessed and given a grade relevant to what I was doing at the time. I think it helped that the man I was working for was a really good businessman as well as a good farmer as that rubbed off on me.

At 20-years-old I went on to do a Level 4 qualification in agricultural business management. Considering I am terrible at anything classroom-related I did really well and I became the Duchy College Student of the Year. I went to college once a fortnight and most of my time was spent working on the farm. I have been in my current job for two years. My dad has worked here for 35 years, on the science side, so I used to come here when I was a boy.

As an Agricultural Technician you are looking after cows, driving tractors, helping out on research projects and doing crop establishment. We help with a lot of the research projects that are on-going such as GPS collars on cows, grain samples at harvest time, heat maps for where cows spend their time – helping to innovate things for farmers of tomorrow. There's no such thing as a typical day!

In the winter there is more of what you'd consider to be a 'typical day' as all our cattle are inside. I feed the animals, another guy checks on any cows that have calved overnight and someone else checks the sheep. Somewhere between 8 am and 10.30 am we have a coffee – that's the only time we are all doing the same thing! After that, we can be doing anything from calving or looking after the welfare of the sheep, then there's maintenance and even tree planting.