The Townie Farmer

Humans are actually only about 43% human.

More than half of each and every one of us is, in fact, made up of bacteria.

So when it comes to what we eat, we really need to think about catering for our guests.

Although I have discovered the benefits of carnivorous and ketogenic eating for my fitness and health…

This does very little for my bug tenants.

And so to keep them happy and paying the microbiome rent, I have recently ventured into the world of fermentation.

In fact, if you sit still long enough in my house right now, chances are you will be salted, massaged and squashed into a Kilner jar.

And watched closely to see how much you bubble.

Already this adventure is reaping rewards for me.

I’ve shed some timber and feel really well despite a challenging few months.

My job as a reporter at ITV’s Good Morning Britain means I currently work overnights from 10pm to 10am.

For someone concerned about their health that disruption to my sleep is obviously bonkers, but I do bloody love it.

It does mean, however, that it is even more important to stay as healthy as possible in all other ways.

My and my family’s gut health is of even more importance at the moment because we have also had something of a health scare.

Turns out Oli’s intermittently cold hands and slight fatigue were actually symptoms of 40% heart failure.

Cue a stint in the Brompton Hospital for open heart surgery.

And a lengthy recovery at home.

It’s been one of the most serious challenges we have faced in our life together.

But positive mindset, movement and good nutrition have seen him defying doctors’ expectations about his recovery.

Having been pumped so full of drugs and antibiotics, his microbes, mind and body didn’t know which way was up in the immediate aftermath.

So like a woman possessed, I set about making even more kefir, sourdough and sauerkraut to help nurture his microbiome back to health.

Click here for my recipe for an entry level simple sauerkraut if you’re interested:

Simple Sauerkraut

People talk about your gut being your second brain.

I honestly think eating well has helped us mentally weather all the storms that we’ve faced.

And smile into the headwinds.

Even if my children don’t appreciate my artistic efforts at breakfast to entice them to feed the fauna in their tummies…

Philistines that they are…

I know that feeding their microbiomes will reap rewards for their current and future health.

Oli’s brush with mortality was rather more fortuitous though than that faced by our newest chicks.

These little smashers were just coming of age when overnight every single one of them disappeared.

It’s the fourth time our coop has been decimated and is so frustrating. 

A lot of furious googling of llamas as effective poultry guard dogs, encouraging the boys to do wild wees around the coop and other chick safeguarding policies will hopefully mean our next batch survive a smidge longer. 

Our bees also perished after a wasp invasion massively reduced their numbers ahead of a bitter winter.

We’re starting again, but this time with a much less civil bunch.

Rory’s already been stung to bits and we’re all a little more nervy when tending to our newest charges. 

I won’t feel so bad when nicking half of this lot’s honey at the end of the season.

Our inexperience with this farming lark meant when one of our young heifers was getting rather rotund, we wondered aloud if she should have her grass further rationed.

Little did we know the poor immature girl had actually arrived at Rowan Farm knocked up by a bull she shouldn’t have been anywhere near at her last farm. 

Our anger at such a catastrophic mistake had to be quelled as we got on with the job of helping her calve.

The calf was dead. 

And getting it out was such a hell of a job, it left her lame. 

We spent a week tending to her, milking and cleaning her udders to prevent mastitis and heaving her around to avoid sores.

Eventually we got her back on her feet.

But we will never be able to breed from her again. 

I think she’s earned a quiet life now as a companion cow to the others. 

And maybe the odd bit of sugar beet as a treat. 

Planting and foraging also continues a pace as we try to follow Tim Spector’s advice to eat at least 30 different plants a week.

While it’s perhaps not been our best year so far… 

We’re chalking the first half of 2023 up as a challenging learning experience.

And are charging on with our good life experiment. 

It’s been my absolute highlight of our smallholding adventure so far.

Harvesting our first batch of honey.

We weren’t sure how much sweet stuff we were going to get in our first year of trying.

But we were blown away by the generous bumper haul our bee pals have gifted us in return for their lodging and servicing. 

We were keen not to be too greedy so went 50/50 with the bees on their stores.

We took half the heavy, honey-laden frames and left the other half behind in the hive for them.

We carefully carved off the wax, with which the bees had capped off their honey.

And then stuck the frames into a spinning extractor, kindly lent to us by some friendly beekeeping locals.

Quick turn of the handle and what happened next was pure magic.

Watching this golden liquor come oozing out was just incredible.

It tastes like honey on steroids. 

The flavour is so strong and the consistency so thick…

You really only need a tiny amount to get a major sweet hit. 

We got 17 jars of the stuff and have so far fiercely guarded it.

In mean spirit, for the first time ever with the spoils of Rowan Farm, we don’t want to share.

This has taken so much care and attention and so much input from Oli especially.

With a little help from his apprentices…

It’s the most labour intensive farming we’ve done so far.

But definitely among the most rewarding.

We have decided we must invest in more hives so that next harvesting season we might be a smidge more generous and spread the sweet love a little more. 

Sadly though, a week ago we discovered wasps had got into our hive.

They’ve killed loads of bees and nicked loads of the stores we’d left for the colony.

The Queen is still there thankfully, alongside a core gang of loyal survivors.

Oli is now working hard to try and salvage the situation and save the remainers ahead of the colder winter months. 

In another farming disaster, every single one of our chickens has been killed by either fox or buzzard.

Their clucking, pottering about and eery staring at me through the window are thoroughly missed. 

As are their eggs. 

On the minuscule plus side, it happened just in time for them to avoid being cooped up as part of the recent bird flu lockdown. 

I hated shutting them up last time and was relieved not to put them through that trauma again. 

In the meantime, we have some new, rather larger arrivals.

Isaac, Bella and Beyoncé – the Dexter cows – have come to join the party.

With the exception of the council threatening us with enforcement action after one of our charming objectors complained about us putting up a fence to contain them (I mean the cheek… stock fencing… on a FARM??)

And Isaac being a right noisy blighter for his first night in his new home (delighted that said objector may have had to listen to his overnight complaint…)

…These lovely miniature cows have settled in well. 

Nahla is thoroughly perplexed but thrilled by these oversized fellow labradors.

We have the beginning of a herd and will breed from the girls in the next couple of years…

Attempting to raise them entirely on grass, allowing our calves to wean naturally and without any pills and potions.

Once bird lockdown is over, we will have new chickens in a mobile home following the cows about in their field.

Not only does this mean the beef will be sublime and so good for us and the chickens well fed on bugs…

It should mean our soil quality becomes sublime too.

The richness added to the dirt by these clever ruminants and their feathered friends will not only create grasslands far better at withstanding drama and drought…

It will create a rich environment for all sorts of flora and fauna to flourish.

Nature is so blimin clever when we let her do her thing.

I’m no longer Queen of Rowan Farm.

I’ve been usurped by a small high flyer with loads of boyfriends.

I have to confess, I have had little to do with the arrival of a queen bee and her subjects at our smallholding.

Beekeeping is definitely my husband’s department, although he’s teaching me as he goes along.

He’s taken courses, read books, grilled those in the know and got himself a fetching new outfit.

And then the call came in.

A local friend, who is an experienced beekeeper, had a swarm he needed to offload.

And some new residents were ready to be deposited into our shiny hive.

Despite the preparation, as is standard practise for us, we weren’t actually fully ready.

The frames the bees are now generously filling with their golden honey hadn’t yet reached us in the post.

So for the first week the bees were left to their own devices and produced the most incredible freestyle honeycomb in that time.

Sadly we had to ditch this masterpiece to establish proper order once the frames arrived.

Beekeeping is phenomenally complicated.

There is much more to it than just strapping on a suit and puffing some smoke at them.

Unless you keep bees carefully they can be very dangerous – to you and others.

And they need constant monitoring to make sure their social set up doesn’t collapse in on itself.

If a second Queen gets made, all hell breaks loose.

Queen bees are a bit like the Kardashians. 

More than one of them in a setting means all kinds of drama ensues.

They have to split off, loudly, with a huge entourage to set up their own honey-making pad elsewhere.

But despite the drama, it’s worth the constant monitoring and the risk of a sting or two.

Because bees are essential for life as we know it on this planet. 

They pollinate the food we eat and the trees and flowers that provide habitats for our wildlife.

If all bees die, so do we. 

Frighteningly, numbers of bees have plummeted in recent years.

In some parts of the world, bee populations have declined by as much as 59%.

So caring for these fascinating creatures and helping them to thrive is probably the most important conservation job we’ve taken on at Rowan Farm.

As with all things with us, we have succeeded so far in this family endeavour with a bit of effort, a spot of winging it and a huge dollop of first timer, honey-sweet luck. 

The honeybees we have inherited are incredibly placid and industrious.

Someone who knows what they’re talking about – not us – says it’s one of the best hives they’ve ever seen.

They’ve already nearly filled one storey of honey and we’ll soon need to give them another penthouse suite to get to work on. 

Perhaps the best bit of all is how much Hugo, our youngest son has taken to this beekeeping lark.

He’s obsessed.

And he’s learning so much from helping Daddy with all the bee-related jobs.

The care of such an essential insect to our planet and the ability to help facilitate them in their production of such naturally good, sweet stuff, feels like one of the best life lessons we could instil in him for the future.

It’s finally time.

I have had 10 years of blissful life in the countryside.

I’ve reared pigs, chickens, vegetables, babies. 

And now the latter are all at school, it is the moment for a new challenge.

So I’ve swapped my wellies for a pair of heels and headed back to the newsroom.

After all the cows won’t pay for themselves. 

I need to earn a crust in the capital to keep this good life country show on the road.

So off I have trotted to become a newsreader and producer for GB News.

I’m so grateful to them for plucking me out of maternity leave obscurity. 

And I could not have come back to the newsroom at a more challenging and fascinating time. 

As President Putin of Russia madly threatens the comfortable stability and mutual understanding we have all taken for granted in Europe for many decades…

I find myself straddling two worlds.

The outside world of geopolitics and office politics.

And the insular world of my family’s care.

Despite now both working full time, Oli and I continue our attempt to steward the conservation of our immediate environment here at Rowan, grow our own grub and raise conscientious children.

The bloodshed in Ukraine is taking a heavy human toll – hot on the heels of the Covid pandemic – and rightly absorbs many of our waking thoughts and my time in the office. 

But the health of our Earth continues to suffer and decline, while we bicker and persecute and view each other as potential vectors of disease.

Our planet soldiers on amidst these human dramas.

How we are going to change this rightly needs big picture thinking.

But it also starts with each and every one of us trying to do our bit.

I see evidence of climate change constantly on the farm.

The epic winds that recently rattled the ancient trees at Rowan.

The winter warmth that coaxes out the bulbs and blossom before hammering them back again with a heavy frost.

The autumnal veg that has freakishly survived an entire winter and we are still eating into the spring.

The chickens’ laying season becoming increasingly extended.

This can obviously be practically useful for us but it sounds a clear warning.

The British climate is rapidly changing.

In just the 5 years we have lived at Rowan Farm, that change has been very palpably noticeable.

And yet, as a species we continue to argue over how to deal with it, or if, indeed, it is even happening at all.

In many ways, I feel trying to reduce my family’s footprint on the planet remains my most important job. 

It’s not glamorous or far reaching.

But it’s doing our little bit.

And my hope is that counts for something.

What constitutes a healthy diet is a total minefield.

There is so much conflicting advice.

So many government initiatives, diet books, telly programmes, online resources, slimming products and businesses.

We’re constantly having a finger wagged in our faces.

Constantly told to eat less, move more.

It’s calories in, calories out. Right??

Sounds so simple.

And yet, as a nation, we are still getting fatter.

And sicker.

Obesity, heart disease, cancers and diabetes are all on the rise.

But why?

Are we all feckless, ill-disciplined, greedy wastrels?

No, I don’t think we are.

I just think we are getting really, really bad advice.

Advice from governments in the pocket of the processed food and pharmaceutical industries.

From politicians just as confused, fat and metabolically unwell as the rest of us.

Sadly many doctors and nurses are no better informed, knowledgeable or metabolically healthier themselves.

Hospitals are filled, from the lobby to intensive care units, with processed food.

The powers that be are all telling us to eat “wholegrains” as the main staple of our diet.

They all are engaged in promoting the huge lie dreamt up 50 years ago that saturated fats and red meat are bad for us.

But they are not.

They are what nourished, sustained and helped evolve our species for millennia.

Traditional ruminant meat and fats eaten for many thousands of years simply cannot be blamed for modern diseases that have sky rocketed in recent decades.

When you think about it, it seems totally bonkers to try to do so.

So what is it that has changed in our diets in the time that these diseases have flourished?

What instead might be responsible for our declining health?

Drumroll please…

Vegetable oils, grains and refined sugars.

All of which exist together in the packaged, processed foods and sauces that line the vast majority of our cupboard and supermarket shelves.

We aren’t being greedy.

We just aren’t eating foods that nourish us, so we are still hungry for more after eating them.

In fact, calories are a total red herring.

All calories are NOT created equal.

There are empty, bad, processed ones and then there are highly nutrient dense, good ones.

Like butter, which I think is best eaten with a spoon.

Counting calories is also the most mind numbingly dull thing to do.

And we all have way better things to be doing with our time.

Like eating delicious, nutrient dense meals to our natural satiety.

So we can get on with doing the things.

When so much research into nutrition and government guidelines is sponsored by Big Food…

How can we trust our sources?

The brutal truth is, we can’t.

We need to trust our instincts, our bodies and our history instead.

Working in this area with clients and devouring as much information about food as I can get my greedy hands on, there is one thing I have learned for sure.

Government nutritional guidelines are woefully out of date.

And just plain wrong.

But no one has the guts to admit it.

Or maybe worse, they are financially motivated by a Big Food lobby not to tell the truth.

Better to please another huge lobby – the Big Pharma one – by buying drugs that mask the symptoms of our metabolic ill-health, rather than prevent the metabolic ill-health in the first place.

The good news is we have the freedom and power to make our own nutritional choices.

To nick a phrase from the Man himself, we can ‘take back control’ of our own health.

My own dietary guidelines are pretty simple.

Instead of the NHS food plate, I have three Ps:

1. Protein – make this the main focus of your meals (seafood, red meat, organ meat, eggs, chicken, high fat dairy) and get your carbohydrates from vegetables, not from…
2. Processed Food – refined grains and flour, refined sugar, vegetable oils. Just don’t touch ’em
3. Period of time – eat your food in an 8 hour window and fast the other 16 hours (more on this in another post coming soon)

Given I will never be elected Prime Minister…

There are just too many pictures of drunken, naked me knocking about the place…

We’re going to need to do this from the ground up.

Please do get in touch if I can help you make these changes for yourself.

I can point you in the direction of the medical literature and community that will back up what I’m saying with the science.

And help you feel the incredible health that is possible, and dare I say easy, on a natural human diet.

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This is an unashamed defence of meat eating. 

Yes, I know that’s unfashionable in a world where all the cool kids are going vegan. 

But hear me out. 

The current debate around meat eating vs plant based, focuses on two extremes of both types of diet. 

On the one hand, you have highly industrialised agriculture, where animals are processed in the most inhumane and methane-producing fashion, before being packaged in plastic and shipped about in ways that are similarly disastrous for Mother Earth. 

On the other hand, you have those who are attempting to change this disaster by adopting a vegan diet that is disastrous, in my humble opinion, for their own health and also the health of the planet (more on this later). 

But I’m here to shout about a third way. 

One that is better for the environment, for animal lives and for the human bodies that then eat them. 

It’s win, win, win as far as I can tell.

Conscientious nose-to-tail meat-eating of grass-fed, fatty ruminants that were reared locally beats veganism hands down when it comes to sustainability, welfare and our health. 

And here’s why… 

Whether we like it or not, humans are protein hungry animals. 

Until we have fulfilled that macronutrient need, we will feel hunger. 

That’s why in a heavy carb-loaded western diet, we are all eating way too much. 

Our processed foods laden with seed oils, flour and sugar are not only addictive and poisonous, they’re also not sating our hunger.

Despite our excess, we are still starving. 

Our lifestyles are making us sick too.

Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease reign supreme. 

We have lost touch with our bodies; we have forgotten how to nourish them. 

I recently did something my formerly vegetarian self never thought I would do. 

I only ate meat, fish, eggs and a little dairy for an entire month. 

I had heard about carnivores on social media. 

They all seemed a little wild-eyed and bonkers to me. 

And instinctively, I thought just eating meat was surely highly unsustainable and incredibly unhealthy.

Right?? 

But being someone who loves having my preconceptions challenged, I did some more homework. 

Despite having the biggest veg patch in the village and being a committed eco warrior, so impressed was I with what I learned about carnivore eating, I decided to try it for myself.  

For 30 days. 

I expected to hate it. 

I expected to crave my greens. 

I expected it to be expensive. 

I expected to be constipated. 

I expected to feel, well, a bit sweaty…

Nothing could have prepared me for the incredible health I experienced from this experiment. 

I had so much energy – gone were the cups of coffee to get me up in the morning and keep me going through the day. 

I needed less sleep – I awoke after 7 hours super refreshed and raring to go. 

Having always thought I was just a naturally windy girl, I had such a settled tummy and was fully regular. 

Who knew plant fibre actually CAUSES constipation in some people?? 

I hit personal bests in the gym. 

I’ve been trying to squat 100kg since I was 25, but I’ve never managed to. Before now. 

Three weeks of a carnivore diet and aged 39, I squatted 100kg. Three times. 

In the same session, I bosched out my first ever 60kg bench press too. 

Despite eating just two small meals a day and normally being a very greedy, hungry, hangry person… 

I just wasn’t. 

I cooked my meals calmly, with little urgency. 

I could let the meat sit and rest before I ate. 

There was a delightful stability to my mental state and my blood sugar levels. 

Gone was having to self impose moderation in my eating. 

I was in touch with my appetite, which was remarkably small. 

Meat does the body good.  

And if you do it right, eating the whole animal, it can be cheap too. 

But I don’t think we should scrimp on meat.

We ought to buy the best we can afford.

I think it matters where meat comes from and what the animal was fed. 

If not for any other reason than for concerns about animal welfare. 

I want my food to have been happy and healthy while alive and for its death to be part of the process of honouring the animal. 

But grass-fed meat isn’t just better for for the cow, it’s better for us and better for the planet. 

And here’s why. 

When animals who are not meant to eat grains, eat them, it causes all sorts of havoc.

Grain fed meat is higher in omega 6 than grass fed and lower in omega 3.

If all you saw in that statement was Greek and a load of numbers, worry not.

Just know that we need a good balance between the two to be healthy.

With so many refined carbs in our own diet and eating meat that is also high in omega 6, we’ve skewed too much in that direction.

Consequently, as bariatric surgeon Dr Andrew Jenkinson says in his excellent book, Why we eat too much, our bodies are in a “perpetual autumn”.

In autumn, we start to eat foods high in omega 6 that signal to the body that winter is coming.

That we need to start laying down body fat to see us through the scarcer months ahead.

Explains a lot about why so many of us are carrying too much timber.

It is also the case that there are nutrients you can only get from animal meat.

Nutrients like carnitine, carnosine, Vitamin K2, Vitamin B12. 

They are essential for your mental health, brain function, immune system.

I appreciate there are very strong views in the other camp though.

Recently a friend sent me an article about research done into meat production that suggests grass fed, organic meat was still more polluting and unsustainable compared to plant agriculture. 

First of all, I’m sceptical about the science here.

Ruminant animals have been farmed for thousands of years and roamed the earth for many millions more.

It seems pretty shoddy to me to blame them for the climate change triggered by our industrial revolution 150 years ago.

But this study was also merely comparing a kilo of meat to a kilo of plants. 

It’s not a fair fight because a kilo of grass fed beef is so nutrient dense, it would nourish you properly, for far longer and more effectively than a kilo of broccoli.  

You would remain sated and functioning for far longer before any hanger were to strike. 

The whole argument also fails to understand how food is produced.

When you grow your own, you start to see how plants deplete the soil.

They suck it dry of nutrients without giving anything back in the process.

Little blighters.

You need to bring a boatload of animal poo in to keep your soil in good condition.

Mixed, organic agriculture is a beautiful, environmentally sustainable cycle of life.

The cow eats the grass which nourishes it perfectly.

The cow poos out the digested plant complete with microbes from it’s gut and trample it into the ground.

These microbes not only put nutrients back into the soil, they also help to capture carbon.

The soil is rejuvenated sufficiently to grow more delicious grass for the cow.

Which in turn provides an amazingly nutrient dense superfood for us.

Nature is a marvel.

And we are extraordinary in how we keep trying to interfere with this marvellous process.

There is a community of people starting to make more noise about all of this.

I highly recommend Brian Sanders’ Peak Human podcast for a brilliant overview of everything I’m banging on about.

Cattle farmers are not enemies of our environment.

They are actually the custodians of our future countryside and planetary health.

How do you build a body that’s hard to kill?

It’s something I’ve pursued with my fitness and nutrition most of my life.

It was something that felt even more pressing when my daughter Emily died and my husband developed his heart condition.

It made me want to make myself and my family physically bombproof.

Food matters for our health.

That is something we all know and can accept.

What we put in our bodies has a profound effect on how well our bodies are.

Essentially, we are what we eat.

Your body literally uses the fuel you put into yourself to build new cells within you.

It affects your fitness, your energy levels, your hormonal balance, not to mention your mental health.

So the quality and quantity and source of that food matters a great deal.

But it’s still so hard to navigate all the conflicting advice that’s out there.

As someone who is qualified in nutrition, even I find it hard to always know for sure the right way to go.

What I do know is government guidelines are badly ill-informed.

I’ve followed them. Then been a vegetarian and then a pescatarian.

I’ve tried paleo and then full carnivore.

I’ve spent time saying sod it all and just eating whatever I can get my greedy hands on.

I’ve read every faddy new health kick book going, as well as some from people who seem really, genuinely to know their stuff.

And they all have something different to say, but there is one theme that runs through them all.

Easy to grab, ready-made, processed food is really bad for us.

It makes us want too much of it, it makes us ill and it makes us fat.

I also care deeply about environmental issues and how our food needs to be sustainably sourced and packaging light.

So here’s the solution I’ve adopted.

Here is the “LivWell Diet” (working title)…

• Eat meat (lots of it and especially organ meat) and eggs
• Make sure your meat is local and grass-fed so it’s high omega 3, low omega 6 (look it up)
• Eat fewer grains and fewer starchy carbs (but don’t be a nob about it)
• Eat food that is reared and grown within spitting distance of where you live and the season you’re in
• Eat full fat everything
• Avoid all vegetable oils (cook in butter and meat fats)
• Avoid refined sugar (for the most part, again see the bit about not being a nob)
• Avoid processed foods (this is key – there is basically no real food in any petrol stations or large portions of the supermarket)
• Make everything from the basic raw ingredients yourself
• Have periods of the day or week where you fast to give your body time to heal
• Don’t go hungry, but if you live like this, you will only need to eat once or twice a day and feel fully sated at all times  (I promise – I’m not someone who tolerates hunger well)

Now this might all sound expensive and a faff. But it isn’t.

You’re cutting your food preparation by a third (or two thirds if you only eat once a day).

You’re simplifying the recipes to a small number of basic ingredients.

You’re either quick cooking on a hob or barbecue or bunging in a pot to slow cook in a low oven.

And it’s dead cheap.

Ask for organ meat from your butcher and they’ll basically almost pay you to take it off them.

Even though it’s the most nourishing part of an animal and will turn you into a health superhero, it’s absolutely dirt cheap.

Take your tupperware boxes so you don’t have any plastic rubbish in the process.

Liver is the king of nutrition and you will feel your body sing with joy after eating it.

If you’re weirded out by offal, I suggest your entry level might be sweetbreads, which are kind of pancreas, kind of thymus.

But don’t worry yourself about these details – just know it’s kick ass for your health.

Tender, easy to cook, slightly chickeny, slightly scallopy.

After soaking it in water, try frying it with a bit of chorizo and onion and serving with pea mash.

Gourmet. And oh so cheap.

Local fruit and veg can also either be grown very cheaply or sourced very cheaply.

Or picked for free in the case of wild garlic…

When there’s not much of it about, your grass-fed ruminant meat will provide all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

They’ve eaten your greens for you.

Who honestly doesn’t love liver pate?

Or a fatty, salty, ribeye steak?

Yes, steak is expensive, but not really if it’s the only thing you need to eat all day.

And that grass fed british cow will have had a great life, provided rich habitat for bugs and small animals in the fields it lived in and won’t have had anything whatsoever to do with clearing of rainforests to grow it.

I’m looking at you Soy.

For more information, I think one of the best books I’ve ever read on the whole topic is Why we eat too much by Dr Andrew Jenkinson.

Making these changes in my own life has made me feel like a rockstar.

I’m sharper in mind, focus, energy levels and I no longer have major carb rollercoaster ‘hanger’ crash moments.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on!

My step by step guide to entry level good life: Salad Leaves.

Why you should ditch the bagged stuff and grow your own.

So the Townie Farmer is back.

And this time I mean business.

It’s been some time since I totally ballsed up, got carried away by the modern obsession that is “being busy” and neglected to keep my blog up and running.

But I’ve been elbow deep in organic compost all the time I’ve been away…

Making loads of mistakes still, but somehow managing to grow vegetables and rear livestock and learning every day.

Lockdown got me thinking and has turned me a bit evangelical.

So here is the new look Townie Farmer.

I’m back to bang on about the benefits of organic home growing and rearing.

But the change isn’t just a new fetching snap of me in my smalls up at the top of this page.

The Townie Farmer is getting a bit more ambitious and I now want to start spreading the soil love.

So on here you will now find (hopefully) helpful videos and instructions on how to start getting dirt under your nails and living the good life yourself.

I’m going to help initiate you into a world in which I still feel like a total numpty, but in which I now have some experience under my belt.

If, like me, you have no bloody idea what on earth a perennial actually is…

And you find gardening programmes unfathomably dull…

Then step this way my friend.

I will show you how to have the enormous satisfaction of growing your own food, without wafting around a rose garden or speaking an alien language.

The thing is, EVERYONE can grow their own food.

Whether you’re lucky enough to have a garden or you just have a tiny window shelf, you can grow stuff to eat.

And it will connect you to your food and wellbeing like nothing else.

Even just growing a few salad leaves (which I promise is absolutely laughably easy) will help transform your health and your happiness.

It’s been two years since my last post on the Townie Farmer.

Two years since an over enthusiastic tech type accidentally deleted this website and I was told there was no hope of retrieving it.

But having found my old content in the online ether and had some time in lockdown to really think about what I’m going to do next…

I’m in the process of putting my old articles back together on this new look gaff and dusting off my telly hat to make video content for your viewing pleasure.

So get yourself an old pot and some compost, for heavens sake please subscribe so I feel vaguely popular and let’s do this.

I can’t wait to drag you through the mud.

Recently I’ve lost my mojo. 

I’ve neglected my blog.  

I’ve neglected my gardening.  

I’ve neglected to make any effort whatsoever to get more paid work this year. 

My family are all still alive though so I’m not an abject failure.  

I am learning to pick my battles and accept I can’t do everything. 

A large stumbling block for me in the garden department has been freak weather. 

Now don’t get me wrong. 

I love the heat. 

Love to lounge in it. 

I bask like a lizard on a rock. 

But it doesn’t sit happily with my productivity nor that of the garden either. 

This time last year, I barely went to the shops. 

We were overrun with bountiful homegrown produce. 

This year though while I flounce around enjoying the sweltering summer, I’m also having to schlep rather more to the supermarket for my greens. 

It’s a very real wake up call for us all about the dangers of climate change and what’s to come. 

I’m having to learn a trade while the goal posts are constantly changing on the job. 

Bitter cold and freak spring snow hampered my seeds’ germination. 

Very little came out of the soil at all. 

And what did emerge was often plucked out by my toddler Hugo. 

It’s my own fault for enlisting him as slave labour in my weeding efforts. 

His Pavlovian training means anything green sticking out of brown must be ruthlessly extracted immediately. 

Helpful chap that he is. 

Branching out to plant in the wilder parts of Rowan Farm instead of just my raised beds has also flagged up where I don’t know my onions. 

I thought gardening was pretty easy last year. 

Turns out I didn’t know I was born. 

Raised beds are easy.  

Fighting nature is really hard. 

Despite having pigs lay waste to anything living in the soil, hours of careful weeding and repeatedly using my second hand rotivator… 

The brambles and thistles have shown me who’s boss. 

With the help of my parents-in-law I diversified into cut flowers this year. 

They’ve been a great thing for decorating the house and taking as gifts to friends… 

If you can find them among the prickles. 

After coming through the cold start to the season, we have now been hit with repeated heat waves. 

What has managed to germinate has promptly bolted and run to seed. 

There are loads of leggy, frazzled, parched plants lining up in my veg boxes.  

It’s like the Kings Road on Kate Moss’s birthday. 

Now a responsible gardener would be busy watering three times a day. 

There would be care taken to weed. 

There would be cultivation and fertilisation of soil.  

But I’ve been a poor parent to my plants. 

I’ve abandoned them to their fate while I engage in the horticultural equivalent of hiding under the duvet on exam results day. 

Put simply I’ve been skiving.  

But like with all burying of your head in the sand, it’s never as bad as you think when you actually face the problem head on. 

A bit of light weeding has sorted out a great deal when I finally plucked up the courage a few nights ago. 

Oli has weighed in to give the poor blighters a drink from the hose every now and then. 

And I have renewed plans to rescue any survivors and replace those plants lost. 

Some new seedlings are on order for some extra late summer veg. 

Some compost and watering should get the soil ready for them. 

I have courgettes, sweetcorn, squash, kale, tomatoes, aubergines, cucumber, beetroot, chard, raspberries and salad leaves all looking like they’ll give us some grub to be getting on with. 

And I will set about continuing to try and live this self sufficient dream I keep banging on about. 

But first I might just finish my coffee on this sun lounger.