A farmer's wife, my second life, community and hamsters.
I am living my second life. It is a life I never imagined! But I am embracing it with wide stretched open arms.
I am a farmer’s wife. How on earth did I get here?!
I often wonder what my day would have looked like had I followed I different path, and not met My Farmer. I seem to have a character that is always looking forward optimistically with a childlike interest in what might happen next. A bit simple really!! Nothing ever seems impossible. What is around that corner?
I was once a Fashion Designer. That was my first life.
Living in London. Girl about town. Single, passionate about fashion, styling, partying and good times. It was a great life. Never boring. Always changing. Very fickle, but hugely exciting. My working life and my social life were very busy and colourful. I travelled a lot with my job. Paris, New York, Milan, Amsterdam and Florence for fashion, fabric and colour prediction shows. Trips away to those big cities, shopping for style inspiration with the company credit card. What’s not to love for a young girl?
I was designing for one High Street clothing supplier and travelling backwards and forwards to Istanbul, Turkey. Supervising the initial production of my designs. It really opened my eyes to different cultures, and I did a lot of growing up in those years. When you travel on your own, you only have yourself to rely on to get things right. I learnt that I was more capable than I thought I was. No use covering your eyes and saying, “I can’t!” Just give it a go.
My first ever trip overseas with any company was to their factory in Istanbul. I was twenty-three, wide eyed and pretty naïve. I had to get to Heathrow airport for a very early morning flight. The taxi was booked and I was packed and ready (a HUGE achievement!). I set off on my way. The taxi duly broke down en route. Help! The driver fiddled around for ages, with no joy. No other taxi could take me either. No mobile phones in those days. Time was ticking. I moved my case to the side of the road and stuck my thumb out. The next thing I knew a massive lorry pulled up and asked where I was going. “Get in love. We’ll blue light it!” He asked his mate to shift over and make room as he slung my case in the back. The radio was cranked up and we all laughed and sung our way to the airport. Brilliant! I made it with minutes to spare. I don’t know if anyone would do that now, but it felt different back then.
It has always been important to me that I enjoy what I’m doing. Although I do think I’m quite easy to please! I’m very ready to find good times wherever I can, and I love meeting new people. If they are kind and with a genuine heart, I will have a lot of time for them. Life is too short to waste time on mean, miserable people, and a fake smile is easy to read. It’s never worth making enemies, but I just choose to spend my time with someone else.
When we moved to Exmoor, I had no idea how I would meet those people. After all, we would be many miles from the nearest town. But they found me through a wonderful farming community with friendship and kindness at its heart.
The week we arrived in Devon, a few days before Christmas 2011, snow was on the ground and we struggled to work the heating in the house, which had been empty for a long time. Most of our belongings were in the barn in boxes, and I had got lost trying to find the supermarket! We were waiting for lorry loads of cattle and sheep to arrive from our farm in Kent. Martha was only just four and kept disappearing to ‘explore’. Let’s just say…it was stressful!! But every day we had some lovely person pop in to introduce themselves, to welcome us to Exmoor and to give us gifts of boxes of biscuits, bottles of wine and Christmas cards. So much kindness and so many offers of help. It was wonderful.
We were even invited to a Christmas drinks party at a neighbouring farm, which, of course, we went to. There we met some fabulous other farming couples, who have become firm friends. We now meet often as farmers and farmers wives. Farming friends. It’s great. We have so much in common, so much to share, a lot to laugh about. I feel I have found my place.
It is the same with my gundog and shooting friends. A tight community of like-minded people. We all love our dogs, working outside on the moor and a bloody good laugh…plus a lot of port! Living on the land, and from the land gives you a real sense of being rooted. Ashes to ashes, if you like. Whatever we do the moor and the land will be there long after we have gone. We have to respect it. I feel the same about my home. This old farmhouse has stood here, sheltering its families for centuries. We are just its custodians. We must do what is best for it.
I admire the traditional farmers wife, like My Farmers Grandmother. I’m not sure I can quite match up to her standards though. Perhaps I care too much about actually leaving the farm! Mom used to be driven (she couldn’t drive) to meet her friends every Wednesday at Hexham market. I find that I need social interaction. I enjoy my own company, but I just really like people. The farm is always a busy place, and its very easy to get sucked into a merry-go-round of chores with no time to step off. To stay sane, and happy, I need a good balance. Especially as my children are still young and need a lot of attention.
Other than being tied to the constant school run trips, taxi service to activities, feeding a family of five, tending to seven dogs and generally keeping everyone alive, I can pretty much work to my own schedule. My day can be beautifully fluid at certain times of the year. During the Spring and Summer months, I can work outside for longer. More dog training, gardening, general maintenance of the house and garden. Escaping for a ride on Marble whenever I can. It does mean that I am sometimes sat at the computer until late in the evening. Completing paperwork, spreadsheets and filing stock information. I would rather that than miss a moment outside.
In the Winter my days are very different. I will be working on the shoot as well as having less daylight hours to spend outside. Everything active has to be squeezed into those hours. Office work is done when the light has gone. Nothing stays the same, the seasons see to that.
We have just returned from a family trip to Brighton on the Sussex coast. Where we spent time with family ranging from eleven-year-old Martha to my father, who is 85. It was a very special time. But getting home to the farm, I am left unsettled. I love my life here, but the world is a very big place and I love some of that excitement that is ‘out there’.
I know that two bulls getting loose in my garden last week was pretty ‘exciting’, but you will understand what I mean! This feeling can often drop into my life here on Exmoor as a farmer’s wife. I have a little jealousy when I think of a traditional farmers wife, with her family living and working close to hand, her stature in the community, her comfort in the lifestyle she is living as it has been for centuries.
I’m a bit of an imposter. But I think I’m happy to take that! I may have come from another life, but I am happy with following the changes in the season here, the shift in workload as the days get longer, the endless talks about grass (believe me, they really are endless!), the straw blown into parts of the house I didn’t think possible, the endless talks about the weather (honestly…endless!), never knowingly going anywhere without a penknife or some baling string in my pocket, welcoming any cold little animal snuggling next to, or on my Aga, the huge meals feeding whoever walks through my door, My Farmer only ever accepting invitations with the codicil “as long as I’m not silaging/calving/lambing etc etc”, actually knowing my neighbours and really being part of a community. I am happy with all of that.
I have also had to suffer MF wanting to pose for a photo with our first born (within moments of him being born, and after a very long and difficult birth), having baling string tied around his feet as if he had been ‘lambed’. I drew the line at that!
Hopefully I am bringing something else to this lovely farm too. I am proud that we are able to keep it as a working farm, although making it commercially viable is a challenge. Productivity levels on a hill farm are always going to be limited. The challenge to run this business with modern demands is also great. If I told you a hamster was turning a wheel to power our broadband, you would get a pretty accurate idea of the speed it runs at…and hamsters sleep a lot! It can be hugely frustrating. Even trying to post a picture on my Instagram account can take a day. You can see how sending electronic cattle movements which have time restrictions can be a tiny bit stressful!
Perhaps I am a modern farmers wife?! I don’t know. I do know I can’t compare myself to others, I can only do what’s right for me, for us. It feels right to be here, in my own way, as a farmer’s wife.
Yep, I’m happy with that.