Anna Hane - Natural Entrepeneur
Near Öresundsbro, between Uppsala and Enköping, lies Resta Gård, run by Anna Hane. However, this hasn’t always been her path. Anna transitioned from the IT industry to become a full-time farmer about ten years ago. She now manages the farm in a modern, eco-friendly way, with a deep sense of care and empathy for the animals.
Hi Anna! It’s great to visit. Who else lives on the farm besides you?
In addition to me, my husband Fredrik, and our daughter Alva, we have around 600 animals here. We have 80 breeding ewes that give birth to about 120–130 lambs each year, over 100 cattle, 100–150 pigs, around 30 free-range hens, two donkeys, horses, dogs, and cats.
What did you do before Resta Gård?
I had a long and intense career in IT before Resta Gård. In the beginning I was as a programmer. I started working as a software technician and later transitioning into technical sales support. It was really my thing, I successfully closed many sales cases and quickly grew into the role. After that, I started a headhunting firm and worked in recruitment. Later, I joined the venture capital company Start Up Factory, where I worked with boards and management teams. From there, I moved on to Blue Ice Research, where I was involved in developing software that today is used for BankID and Swish. Finally, I served as Head of Sales at the fiber network company IP Only.
What a fantastic skill set for running your own business, like Resta Gård, sales and recruitment. Have you been able to apply those skills to the farm?
Recruiting for the farm has been much harder, it’s a completely different industry that requires a different type of person. Innovations and sudden changes haven’t always been well-received.
I stepped into the world’s oldest industry, agriculture, and have been running the farm like a startup in IT, but from the farm’s perspective. I’ve tried to think about the kind of mindset, how to tackle problems, what solutions are acceptable, and profitability requirements. Ten years later, you get Resta Gård. The people who thrive here at Resta Gård are those who enjoy working with nature and life, animals, births, deaths, and at the same time, embrace innovation.
How did it all start with the farm?
We bought the farm in 2007. For a couple of years, I worked both on the farm and in IT before deciding to focus on the farm 100%.
We started by buying a pregnant pig and a companion pig. The kids even played soccer with those first pigs.
Then we got 7–10 ewes, which soon had lambs. Things grew pretty quickly. One of our first bottle-fed lambs was named Sören. He went everywhere with us, he lived in the house and even came to parties. He got a bit wild when it was time for him to move outside to the other animals.
Then it was time to buy a boar to mate with the sow we had. Instead, I came home with two pregnant sows, three sheep, four dairy cows, a milking machine—and no boar. The boar refused to get on the trailer. This was the day before New Year’s Eve, and on New Year’s Eve 2013, I milked a cow for the first time.
What’s your favourite animal?
I’m in love with the donkeys. They’re just so adorable and will always have a place here.
What sets Resta Gård apart from large-scale farms?
We want the animals to live as naturally as possible. It’s not about optimising for maximum milk or meat production. The animals come first, and their lives should be as natural as possible. Cows aren’t meant to eat protein powder to produce as much milk as possible, they’re meant to eat grass, which is natural for them.
It’s also important to me that the cows stay with their calves. That instinct only grew stronger after I had Alva. A mother should be able to be a mother and enjoy it, which she can’t if her calf is taken away after just one day. At Resta Gård, all cows and calves stay together for four months. By then, the calf is a teenager, and it’s okay to separate them. During that time, we share the milk.
We don’t fatten them up with concentrated feed; they eat naturally and therefore grow much slower, or as I like to say, at a natural pace. This isn’t because I run an organic farm, but because I want to maintain ethical animal husbandry. The meat tastes different, it’s better. We also grow our own grains and some vegetables, which we sell in our farm shop and café. Vegetables are my next area of development, where I want to expand our cultivation efforts.
Where do your pigs live?
They stay wherever they can be useful, such as when we’re preparing land for vegetable growing. They’re excellent at removing weeds, roots, and grass from fields and compacting the clay-rich soil. For a while, they were in forest enclosures, but we discovered they had been visited by wild boars, which resulted in a litter of spotted crossbreeds. Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep them in the forest after that.
You were on Mästerkocken (MasterChef) teaching the chefs how to make sausages and were part of the jury, judging their sausages. What’s the secret to a good sausage?
The secret is to keep it simple. It’s organic meat from lamb, sheep, and pigs, and organic spices. No fillers, just pure ingredients.
What’s your favourite dish on the Christmas table?
I really enjoy Christmas ham with apple sauce, which some might find a bit odd, but the sweet-and-sour combination works really well with the salty ham. This year, we’ve made wood-fired apple sauce with star anise and cinnamon using apples from our own orchard.
What should one consider as an organic farm?
We don’t spray chemicals on the animals' feed or on the food we eat. We don’t use synthetic fertilisers that leave heavy metals in the soil; instead, we fertilise naturally with animal manure and Biofer, which is slaughter waste.
What do you do with the wool?
We shear the sheep twice a year, but unfortunately, we don’t do anything with the wool. We sheared the sheep last Thursday, and we plan to use some of it in the fields. Otherwise, it’s piled up in bags, waiting for me to do something more large-scale with it, like spreading it in the apple orchard.
What do you sell the most of?
Dairy products. We have a small dairy of our own, but it’s too small. We’re in the process of building a slightly bigger one.
What’s the most rebellious thing about starting a farm?
The rebellious part is that I had no experience at all when I started, and I didn’t look for how others had done it. Instead, I thought about how I would want things if I were a pig, what do the sheep and cows want? Does the cow want her calf taken away? I run the farm with empathy for the animals. It was very provocative that I came neither from a farm nor were there any farming heritage, and I came from the IT industry.
When do you wear the Keb vest and Tedd jacket?
I wore the vest a lot this summer over a T-shirt. The Tedd jacket is great for this time of year. The temperature fluctuates a lot when you work on a farm. One minute you’re being physical, and the next you’re standing still. The wool keeps you comfortable, just like it does for the sheep.
