Women In Farming-Hannah Russell

Hannah Russell lives In the Yorkshire Dales with her for horses – Badger, Paddy, Pepper and Little Alf, two dogs – Sasha and Maggie, three guinea pigs Candy, Hamish and Holly, rabbits rabbits Malibu and Muffles and a hamster called twinkle, so there is always something to do.

Hannah has lived in the Yorkshire Dales most of her life and has a large farming family in the Dales. Hannah is most known for her Little Alf books and entrepreneur skills, at just 17 years old her first book was published about Little Alf her miniature Shetland pony.
I blogged about it here.
While Hannah does not farm herself, she has grown up around farming from due to most of her family farming for many years. Hannah found this very exciting as she loves animals and says in the farming world there’s always something going on.

Her favourite time of the year is April, when the lambs need feeding and you can watch them playing in the fields. Growing up in the Yorkshire Dales means she is constantly surrounded by farming life and the sounds of an old tractor humming down the road.
Living in the dales, Hannah sees things in her local newspaper quite regular about milking prices and news related around these topics and she admits they can be a huge cause of concern.

“Lots of my friends work in dairy farms who love it and are really passionate about their work, but at the same time there work seems to be so demanding for the price they are receiving per litre of milk,” she said.

“I know this is a general course of concern over the UK and we can only hope and support our dairy farms for the future.”
Hannah gets up quite early to feed all of her animals and she loves spending as much time as possible with them all, so she grooms the horses in the morning.

“Winter can be harder as the weather gets cold and the horses live inside the stables on the winter nights so winter mornings can be quite a chore with four horses to muck out, feed and water,” Hannah continues.

“I then normally start my rounds and visits my little furry friends who live in a huge indoor shed with heating, although they often come in to my office during the day time to have a play.
“I’ll then head back inside for breakfast which is porridge when the weather is cold and then straight to my office to start work for the day! I’m lucky enough to have an office at home which overlooks the paddocks so I can watch the ponies all day.”
Hannah’s biggest success so far has been her books about Little Alf, the clothing brand and new magazine, it’s taken a couple of years for her to get noticed and she says it has had its challenges but that she couldn’t be more thankful for the online support she has recieved and to all the stores who have stocked the Little Alf books and media who have continued to support us.

Hannah was shortlisted for Great British young entrepreneur of the year 2016 which she admits was a very proud moment!
“I think every business faces challenged whatever industry you’re in, and every business makes mistakes but there all learning curves even if they don’t feel like it at the time,” Hannah said.
“In the past year I don’t feel I’ve particularly had any huge challenges but since starting the business I’ve faced loads, I think the most significant one would be getting the brand known and actually in to the world.
“It’s very scary when you don’t have years of experience or knowledge, but with time I’m learning more and more about business, books, social media and the industry which I work in.”

Hannah’s dream would be for my books to get more known worldwide because writing is her passion.

“Maybe one day we will reach out goal, but for now I’m happy with the way things are going,” she said.

“I would love to one day be able to rescue more animals and have my own house with land, but for now this is just a dream.”
Hannah would like to encourage young people to believe in themselves and do what makes you happy, at school.

“I struggled with English massively but always loved reading and writing stories, I can’t spell and always get words muddled up and their meanings, so I always thought I couldn’t be an author but now I know I can be and it took me a while to realise that.
“I also think over the past few years I’ve learnt not to worry about things when I did my GCSE’s and began my A levels I was always stressing about revising and achieving huge grades for my future, I’ve come to realise you don’t need to worry about these things as it all works about in time.”

Happy #YorkshireDay me & Alf are proud to be Yorkshire 😍🍃❤️ pic.twitter.com/z8WZ44C8vE

— Little Alf (@AlfLittle) August 1, 2017

What an inspirational young woman Hannah is. At just 20 years old, she has done things some people three times her age haven’t managed to do.
I can’t wait to see what happens in the future for Hannah as well as Little Alf.

To find out more about Little Alf’s adventures and Hannah herself, visit
www.littlelf.com and www.hannah-russell.co.uk

You can find them on twitter-both the Little Alf account and Hannah’s own which focusses on all of her writing.

You can also find her on Facebook.