Robin Mills went to Plush, mid-Dorset, to meet Dot Browning. This is her story.

“My childhood was spent in a fairly leafy part of South London, between Streatham and Tooting. I was the youngest of three girls, and we lived next door to the vicarage where there were three boys; there were two more in another nearby house, so I think my sisters and I all grew up as tomboys. We lived in London until I was about 13; things I remember from childhood are mainly family holidays, and that was when I got to know Southwold, on the Suffolk coast. I can also remember going to Wales—I’d have been about 5 or 6—on the train, with my sisters, and for some reason I didn’t question why we went all that way unaccompanied by our parents. I only found out a few years ago that it was because there was a family funeral, in Southwold, in those days something to which children didn’t go. The other thing which, as children, we didn’t really know much about was that my mother’s grandfather was an equestrian, in the family circus. There was a time when coming from a circus family was a bit frowned upon, and that might have been why the subject didn’t often come up. My grandmother grew up in the circus, and there’s a true story about a wind pump, which remains a special place to my family, at Walberswick; aged 9, and egged on by her brother and cousin, she jumped up and clung on to one of the wind pump sails and rode right round its huge arc—a feat of daring happily without dire consequences. At the age of 12 she ran away from the circus with her sister in London and went in to service.

When I was 13, my parents decided they wanted a different life from London and work in the City, and became tenants of a hotel in Southwold. Having been to a London co-ed college, I found myself going to a catholic convent in Lowestoft, a very different experience. I remember the local catholic Father coming once a week to teach a particular lesson, which only catholic girls were allowed to attend, which turned out to be sex education from which strangely we non-catholics were excluded. After school, I did a secretarial course, and got a job in a bank. And then, I decided I’d go and visit my sister and her husband who were working in Uganda. I spent 9 months there, with the idea of finding out about the people and their culture rather than just being part of the ex-pat community. I travelled a lot, and worked in a family planning clinic; quite a challenge for a 19 year old, advising women some of whom had had no education. Colonial attitudes to the inequalities amongst African people still held by some Europeans incensed me, and had a lasting effect. Before I went to Africa, I’d already met my husband-to-be, John, and during my stay there I had a proposal – by telephone. We got married on my return, honeymooned in Scotland, and after finishing his professional practice exams in Windsor, John got a very exciting job as a young architect based in Norwich, with a firm responsible at the time for the architecture of both Norwich Cathedral and York Minster.

In the early seventies, John became a partner in a new practice based in Winchester. The practice is now 40 years old, so it’s been a long association. One of the original partners was Richard Plincke, now over 80; he gave up architecture to become a painter in the early eighties, and I think it was his work which really drew my interest to art. Richard’s studio was at the top of the practice building, and instead of taking a rent, the accountant suggested that each of the partners would once a year choose a painting. I did try painting myself, with Richard as a tutor, but soon found I had more aptitude for written appreciation of painting than actually creating pictures, and writing continues to be a creative outlet. It’s something which brings me joy, it’s something I do entirely for me, but it’s not yet reached a publishing stage.

I’d become very involved with the practice from early days, originally organising the architectural library, but later as the practice grew, I was developing the marketing and publicity, covering both the architectural and national press. That was something I really enjoyed, and it also involved running exhibitions of the practice’s work. So it was a very busy time for both of us; we bought a house on Dartmoor and commuted to Winchester weekly, but the travelling became too complicated, and about 12 years ago we bought Millers Barn here in Plush. At the end of a huge amount of remodelling work, the sight of pristine, bare walls gave me the idea of hosting an art exhibition. Our first one showed 6 artists, over a weekend, and it went so well that I repeated it the next year for longer. We’ve hosted exhibitions here every year, and then 5 years ago I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.

Two years later, I particularly wanted to show the work of Dorset artist Harriet Barber, and when I went to see her, blown away by her landscapes, I discovered that she had just had a mastectomy herself and was halfway through chemotherapy. Later, Harriet had the idea that she wanted to have a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings of women with Breast Cancer, and asked me to organise it. I don’t think either of us had an inkling then of where the exhibition would take us. Between February and August 2010, Harriet drew and painted 24 Dorset women (and my sister from Somerset), aged between 35 and 80, who had suffered Breast Cancer and received varying types of treatment. It was always going to be a problem finding enough subjects who were willing to pose naked for an artist, but through the Macmillan Breast Nurse Specialists in Dorchester who really got behind the project, a wonderful number of women came forward when the benefit in terms of self-confidence and positive self-image became clear to them. We launched the exhibition here at Plush in September 2010, as Breast Cancer LIFE, and then it went to Poundbury Garden Centre Gallery in Dorchester, and on to the Malthouse in Lyme Regis.

Stewarding that exhibition, its reception from the visitors, who came from far and wide, was extraordinary. People were moved not only by the quality of the work, but for many of those who knew sufferers or had lost someone close it was a positive, life-affirming experience. The exhibition spent a month in Salisbury, then at the Lighthouse in Poole. Finally, the exhibition of 44 works, and 2 sculptures, Greta Berlin’s “Woman” and a stunning ceramic by Jenny George of a pair of knee-high high heel red suede boots worn by one of the ‘models’, was selected by the National Cancer Research Institute as the key visual element of their 7th Annual Cancer Conference, held in Liverpool. The venue was the BT Echo building on Liverpool’s waterfront, where party political conferences are held, and was absolutely huge. There were 2000 delegates from all over the world attending, who found it a wonderfully positive experience. It was the first time the National Cancer Research Institute had used art in this way, and it was a first for the venue, which had never installed an exhibition in their galleria before.

That experience was quite overpowering, to think that pictures of 25 Dorset women had been shown at a huge event the other end of the country. We owe thanks to the many people who helped with donations and generously discounted professional work. As a lasting legacy for the project, I’m in the process of creating a DVD of the whole story, including footage, shot by her husband Dan Thompson, of Harriet painting one of the ‘models’, and the people involved, and the ‘models’ as well as their images.

At the launch of the exhibition, held here, we had all but about 4 of the models attending over the weekend. When each one arrived, they were given a flower to hold, and my daughter photographed each one in front of their own painting. Those images are a powerful symbol of continuity for those women, something to hold on to at difficult times which can be very demoralising. When asked why she’d taken part in the project, our 80 year old ‘model’ said memorably: “because I’m here, and because I can”.

Robin Mills went to Hursey, near Broadwindsor, to meet farmer Lloyd Curtis. This is his story.

“I’ve lived on a dairy farm my whole life. The family started farming down at Whetham, a couple of miles away, and the land down there and this farm where I am now were owned by my grandfather’s twin brother. I suppose we’ve been at Whetham a hundred-odd years; I mean grandfather’s brother came out of the First World War and married into the farm. But he’d been shot up a bit, and his legs were bad, so he gave up in the sixties, and Father took it on and we rented it, then he managed to buy it, in ’74 I think. I was brought up at Whetham, so that’s three generations have been there. We didn’t get electricity there until ’63, and that made a difference. We went round with hurricane lanterns until then. My wife Alison and I built this bungalow here at Moorlands Farm in Hursey when we got married in ’77, and the farm buildings across the fields from here where we have the dairy went up in the early eighties.

I’ve got one brother, Steven; he’s two years younger than me, and he runs the farm at Whetham. We went to school at Broadwindsor, then to Beaminster comprehensive. I think at first I wasn’t sure if farming was what I wanted to do. I’ve always been quite good at fixing things, without trying to blow my own trumpet, and Father wanted me to learn to be an agricultural engineer after school, but I loved animals so I was a bit tugged in two directions. Anyway, farming won, and after I left school I said I wanted to go to college to learn farming. Father said, “Why do you want to do that, you always hated school”, but I went, and enjoyed it, and I did very well.

Just after I left college, Father had a major heart attack, but then he had a bypass operation and made a good recovery. So my brother and I were working the farm, but the problem was we had too many cattle down at Whetham; all the silage had to be hauled down there from here, and the manure back up here again. We have two blocks of land virtually the same size, just about 100 acres each, and we rent quite a bit as well. A lot of dairy farmers rent land like we do; land’s got too expensive to buy, but when non-farmers do buy it they don’t really know what to do with it, so I get asked to look after it. So back in the eighties I told Father I wanted to put up a shed up here, and start milking, which was exactly what we did, and now I’m here at Hursey milking about 100 cows, and Steven’s down at Whetham.

The land round here’s good grass land, but not really suitable for anything else, like corn. If it rains, it tends to lie wet for quite a long time so crops can easily spoil before they can be harvested. And in the early days we had sheep, pigs and beef cattle as well as the dairy. Sheep were never really my thing; the pigs I was ok with, and at one time we had about 200, but it was always either boom or bust with them. Nowadays, you just can’t; different enterprises all mean more and more labour, and more and more paperwork. So, we specialise in dairy, and we’ve got a cheese contract which means we’re looking for very high protein milk. A firm called Lactalis, a French company who make Somerset Brie up at Cricket St Thomas, buys all our milk, which is great because the milk only travels about 5 miles from here. Personally, I think it’s a hell of a good product, and we beat the French at their own game; I’m quite proud to be one of the 10 farms producing milk for it. We’re using Friesian cows, with a few Jersey crosses, and I’m experimenting with different breeding to get higher protein, but also because we’ve had too much trouble with their feet, and I think perhaps the pure Friesian just won’t stick the English climate.

I do most of the milking myself, and I like it. It’s my thinking time. My son Stuart does the feeding and cleaning out, and now we’ve gone to a new feed wagon which weighs and dishes out the rations to the nearest kilo, it’s that precise. It helps us to look after the cows the way they should be, more naturally, with much more roughage in the diet, rather than the trend which was at one time to feed them like racehorses. We have to buy in protein, and straw, but everything else they eat, grass and grass silage, and maize silage, is grown here on the farm.

Obviously the changes in farming in my lifetime have been huge. The tractors for a start, from a David Brown Cropmaster and a Massey 35 when I started, to the sort of machines we all have now; I mean we can be nostalgic about the old tractors, but what we can do in a day now, in comfort, is a million miles from those days. But the job has become a lonely one. I spend 5 hours a day milking, with only cows, or my dog, to talk to; the reps don’t even call in to try and sell you something these days. In my father’s day, there were 23 people working on both farms, but now it’s just me and Stuart. Alison’s always helped me on the farm when she can, and does the milking from time to time. So it’s ok really; we managed a holiday last year, and went on a cruise with some friends to celebrate Alison’s birthday. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it, but it was great; I love meeting people and talking. Turned out there were quite a few other farmers on the boat, and that was the first time we’ve ever had a fortnight’s holiday. Then there’s the village holidays we go on, just for a couple of days down at Woolacombe, always unpredictable but always a lot of fun. It’s a lovely village, Broadwindsor, a great community. The pub’s unfortunately been shut since September, but it’s opening again now, and we’re trying very hard to get the shop open again. I’ve been on the Parish Council for 29 years now, took over from Father when he was bad. Sometimes I come home from meetings thinking that’s it, I’m not going back, but I do. Parish Council, it’s miniscule government, and sometimes it takes a long time to make things happen, but it’s great when something does get sorted. It’s doing your little bit for the community, and I think it’ll become more important for the community in the future. I’ve also had a lot to do with the NFU, and I do quite a bit with Beaminster Young Farmers. I started with them when I was about 15, and I’m still going.

I’ve stuck with dairying all these years, when many, many farmers haven’t. I’ve gone years without making a profit, but I’ve stayed here. I’ve always tried to keep expanding the business a bit, and move forward and look at different ideas. We try and save a penny here and a penny there, so the supermarket can make a fortune. It was a fairer system years ago in the days of the Milk Marketing Board; there were equal shares for all. These days the supermarket takes the profit, and the farmer and the processor are squeezed. As a producer, I’m in such a weak position; the milk tanker comes every day, the milk’s got to go. But then I don’t know what price I’m going to get paid for it until 6 weeks later. Since last December, we’ve actually broken costs, which flabbergasts me; in the last 4 years we’ve sold milk at consistently 4p/litre under costs, so we only survive because barren cow prices are good.

Alison and I also have two daughters, Emma and Sonia, both married to farmers’ sons. We’ve got 6 grandchildren, and there’s another on the way. They’re all local, all involved in farming, and so it carries on. Stuart’s married a farmer’s daughter as well, so it does seem farming’s quite infectious. And since he’s been home, it’s been a lot easier. I’m lucky to be doing what I do because I love it, and helping feed the nation in the process.”

Robin Mills went to Lyme Regis to meet writer Miranda Vickers. This is her story.

“I’m a West Londoner through and through. I was brought up there, although nowadays I spend much of my time, especially during the summer, in Lyme. I was an only-child and my parents split up when I was 18 months old, so I didn’t really know my father. My mother was from a staunch London/Irish background, and it was very difficult for her as a single working parent, so she sent me to live with my Irish grandparents in Acton, West London. I went to a strict Catholic girls’ convent school which I absolutely hated. We were hit repeatedly by the nuns using the sharp edge of a ruler on our hands and legs. I got expelled at the age of 13. This was easy to do because something as trivial as smoking, or carrying the Thoughts of Chairman Mao instead of a prayer book, was an expelling offence. I was then sent to another even stricter convent, from which I also got expelled for trying to run away.

In those days you could leave school at 15, so along with my cousin who was 16, I took the Magic Bus from Victoria Station on the four-day journey to Athens where we got jobs as chambermaids in the Monastiraki district. I learned to speak Greek, and after the chambermaid job I bought a forged English degree from a dealer in Piraeus and we took the boat to Crete where we settled in a small fishing village and I taught English at a language institute in Iraklion. I also taught Greek to American personnel at the nearby U.S. airbase. In the end, I stayed in Greece for nearly 5 years.

However, the situation in Greece at that time, the mid-1970s, was very unstable. Following the coup by the colonels, there was an extreme right-wing government, and I was involved with left wing politics so it wasn’t a good place to be. My Greek boyfriend had been arrested and tortured and I was asked to leave the country. Simultaneously, my mother became seriously ill with cancer. So I returned to London and my mother died, leaving me with next to no family. I tried to settle back in London, but having only a forged degree and no formal qualifications, I found it difficult to get work.

I met a boy from Belfast, and packed him and our friends into my mother’s flat in Ealing where we lived as a little commune. I became vegetarian and eventually we decided to try and embark on the good life wholeheartedly. I sold my mother’s flat and bought a cottage near Arundel in West Sussex with an enormous garden, and tried to become self-sufficient. We acquired quite a menagerie of cats, chickens, ducks, a rabbit and a guinea pig but we had absolutely no experience, and of course we couldn’t kill anything. That first winter we collected wood from the forest for our fire but it was damp and wouldn’t light so we froze, and in the spring we planted vegetables but got very thin and hungry waiting for them to grow. We got thinner and thinner, and friends from London would visit with hampers of food and implore us to return to civilisation. Eventually my boyfriend got a job as a tomato pollinator, and with my vast experience I got a job as a chambermaid.

It became obvious, however, that we were never going to be able to live as we’d intended, so we returned to London bringing back most of the menagerie, including Gertrude the bantam hen that we’d rescued from a gang of boys with catapults, who lived to the great age of 14. I bought a derelict cottage back in Ealing, made it habitable, and decided to get myself properly educated. So I did a foundation course then a Degree in modern history followed by a Masters Degree in Balkan history at London University, at the end of which I wrote my first book, The Albanians – a Modern History. I studied Balkan history because of the affinity I’d had for the Balkans ever since living in Greece. Before Greece joined the European Union, non-Greeks had to leave Greece every 3 months in order to get a new passport visa. So my cousin and I would leave Crete, and travel right up to a village just over the Yugoslav border where we’d stay a couple of nights. That was where I met my first Albanians, who described their mysterious, inaccessible, mother country, and that was how I got interested in Albania and the Albanians living in Yugoslavia.

As soon as I’d finished my MA a journalist from the Independent, James Pettifer, contacted me via the University because he’d been commissioned to write the first Blue Guide to Albania, and he needed a researcher to go there with him; so we met in a pub in Aldwych, got on like a house on fire, and he offered me the job. That was 1991 and we have been working together ever since. Albania then was almost a pre-industrial world, akin I imagine to how England was in the 1840s. The Communist regime was crumbling and the people were desperately poor, having been locked into an isolationist time warp for nearly 50 years.

The country was at that time completely anarchic, with people looting whatever they could and trying to flee the country. Food was scarce and the political situation was incredibly volatile. Everyone was armed including our driver, who taught us how to shoot and we kept a pistol in the front of the car. The following year the Yugoslav wars began, eventually spreading south to the Albania-inhabited region of Kosovo.

From then on, throughout the 1990s I worked in Albania and Kosovo as a journalist and, until 2006, as a political analyst for the International Crisis Group. James and I wrote a book chronicling what we had witnessed in Albania called Albania – from Anarchy to a Balkan Identity, which was published in 1997. The following year my book on the history of Kosovo was published. During this whole process, I became an acknowledged specialist on Albania and the southern Balkans and was visiting the region five or six times a year. It was a very busy and stressful time and I started coming to Dorset for short breaks in order to relax, often staying in B&B’s around Lyme. I found that West Dorset was far enough away from London to provided real escapism. My boyfriend and I decided that if anything cheap in Lyme came up we’d try to buy it. So in 1995 we bought Wren Cottage near the Mill. In 1997 I split up with my boyfriend and began a relationship with another Belfast man whom I eventually married in 2009. He has a fishing boat in Lyme harbour and we share a little cottage in Church Street.

Over the past few years, Albania has settled down to relative tranquillity along with the Balkan region as a whole. Although I still work on Albania-related issues, going to conferences, writing articles for newspapers and journals and have published two more books on Albania, I travel there far less frequently. Despite my deep affection for Lyme, I love London with a passion, especially my home ‘manor’ of Ealing. When I’m not in Lyme, I spend much of my time on my allotment in Ealing and boating on the Thames. As a child I would play beside the River Thames at Chiswick, with my cousin, and we would walk across to a little island at low tide. There we would build our secret camp and swim on warm summer days. That childhood smell of Thames mud never really left me, even in the Balkans. Despite the Thames playing such an incredibly important role in English history, I was amazed to find that nothing had been written about the 190 or so islands in the Thames, so in 2007 I decided to write a book about the islands called Eyots and Aits – Islands in the River Thames, which will be published in May 2012. I have a small boat in which my husband and I have greatly enjoyed the last few summers going up and down the Thames searching out all the islands. Much of the book has been written in our peaceful garden in Lyme. The thing about writing a book is that when you’ve got this thing in you, you’ve just got to get it out, to express it, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Robin Mills went to Yarcombe, East Devon, to meet John Carter. This is his story.

As a child of the war, I was evacuated from London aged four, to Lewes in Sussex with my sister, who was seven. Together with my mother, we went to live with my aunt Freda; her garden, and the nearby South Downs, became the scene for every adventure we children could invent. In fact we played out the war while my mother and aunt had to live with the fears and anxieties that war brought every day. We acted out the dogfights that were happening above us, wheeling round with bony arms outstretched, and with stuttering machine gun noises exacted revenge on the Hun that lurked behind every bush. Eventually my father returned from the Desert War but Uncle Arthur, Freda’s husband, died as a P.O.W., building the railway featured in the film Bridge over the River Kwai. The sacrifice of his life for our benefit affected me more than anything else at that time, inspiring me to make the best of mine for his sake.

My father resumed his job as an agent for the Prudential Insurance. He was a Socialist, keen to help build the peace, and led a team which built a new Social Centre in Lewes. Both my parents devoted themselves to serving the community and I was brought up in a warm and caring environment with plenty of company. I went to school in Lewes, but academically I struggled. I did however pass the entrance exam for Grammar School aged 13, where I acquired a cauliflower ear playing rugby but not much else. I also played other sport, and acted, something my mother organised. My body had developed but my brain was yet to do so.

My father placed great importance on security, after the war years, and felt I should learn a trade, apprenticing me for five years in the printing trade. I really wanted to be a poet, write and play rugby. At the end of the 5 years I was obliged to join the Army for a further 2 years’ National Service. By that time I’d met my future wife, Dawn, a fellow actor, when we were both involved in a drama festival at Glyndebourne.

I stuck with the printing apprenticeship and gained the qualifications out of respect for my father, but without his approval I also took correspondence courses in English and poetry, and agriculture. I worked Saturdays on a farm locally, and became determined to work my way in to a career in farming. I had a desire to be involved in something which lasted, which had permanence beyond the material world. I felt the secret of life could be found in the countryside, working with and close to nature.

National Service fortunately only lasted a couple of months as I had a rugby injury that refused to heal because of the square-bashing, so I was de-mobbed. They assured me I would be the last person to be called up if there was another war. Within a few weeks I was pitching bales on a mixed farm in Oxfordshire, as a live-in student, being paid only pocket money but learning huge amounts about all aspects of farming. I had a go at everything on that farm, even took a church service when the vicar didn’t turn up one Sunday. The next job was looking after a farm nearer home owned by a crazy army officer—who would shoot an escaping pullet as an example to the others—after which, as by now we were married and Dawn was expecting our first child, I managed to get a one year job with a cottage on a large farm on the Wiltshire Downs. There I learned about shepherding, cereals and beef cattle. I was playing rugby for Newbury then, and loving the work, but we were still paying to learn on £7 a week.

The tied cottage system allowed us to gain experience by moving around to different jobs; dairying in Leicestershire, large scale arable, outside pigs and other livestock in Oxfordshire. I began to realise that the only opportunity to farm on my own account lay with low capital outdoor pig keeping. So I took on a unit manager’s position with the West Wycombe Estates looking after 100 Saddleback sows in beech woods, and 500 ewes. I was working long hours, including gaining farm management qualifications part time, but in farming at that time the chances for a penniless chap to break in were pretty well impossible. We stayed there for 3 valuable years while starting to look around for opportunities to farm on our own—by now the family had grown and we had 3 daughters.

My grandmother’s memories of her farming life at Winsham may have caused me to look for free-draining soil in the West country; eventually, with the landlord as sleeping partner, I rented 5 acres with a cottage outside Ottery St Mary. In an orchard and some woods we started a nucleus herd of Saddleback sows to produce our own hybrids. We had to borrow capital and pay our electricity bill of £6 by instalments, but I was confident there was profit in the system we were developing. We rented stubble from other farmers after harvest; I designed and built my own pig huts. The system was flexible and low cost; the money was all in the pigs and everything else was manual work, but I could do that. Gradually my pig keeping operations expanded. We were offered another 120 acre run down farm, anything but ideal at 900ft with high rainfall, but by this time I’d negotiated security of tenure with the landlord, and then whenever more land became available we expanded the herd adding sheep, cereals and potatoes. I had a young enthusiastic workforce, no boss worker relationship, just a great team spirit and a desire to achieve. With my loving wife, children, dogs and cats, and young farming people around the kitchen table it took very little to make us all laugh.

Bit by bit things expanded, and I was able to buy Lashbrook, the farm we tenanted at Talaton; we were now farming 800 acres, with pigs, sheep, potatoes and cereals. We took, housed and trained students from Seale Hayne, Bicton and veterinary colleges. As well as this complete seven day farming family life, Dawn and I have had many other interests and involvements which included singing at Ceilidhs, Mummers plays, and Pantomimes, and I’ve served as a magistrate for 30 years. I’ve been involved with co-operative marketing and helped to establish the Institute of Agricultural Management, eventually becoming National Chairman. But I’ve always got up early enough in the morning to see to my stock before anything else, because it was vital to keep hands on with the farm and the team: to feel the seasons, to sense the animals, the weather on my face and the soil under my feet. That’s where my heart and skills lay.

My niece was teaching mixed race children in a London inner city school; tough country. We wished to share our good fortune and so we asked her if they would like to bring a group down in the summer to visit. The local Scouts provided a camp, the keeper took them out in the woods, they went walking on Dartmoor, and the local farmers invited groups to feed stock, and to breakfast every morning. At the end of their stay, the children put on a show for farmers and wives; it continued for many years. We have shown many foreigners, farmers and children round our farms but this was the most rewarding.

Being involved in village life, I got badgered to take things on. When the village shopkeeper decided to call it a day in 1993, as chairman of the Parish Council I was expected to do something about it. And so, I found myself leading a wonderful village effort to establish the second community-run village shop in the country. It turned out a great success, still goes strong and later won the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award.

The meat processors and supermarkets started to dictate to producers what breed of pig they should rear; our pig, which we had spent so much time developing for mothering ability, quality and taste, was not on their list. We believed in our pigs even if they didn’t, so I began to explore marketing our meat direct to the customer, through Parish magazines and village shops, and then through Farmers Markets as they started at Cullompton, Crediton, Bridport, Dorchester, and Chard. We also set up a website and sold by national mail order. It was a great success, an essential part of keeping the business going when the market was declining around us. A Farm Shop followed and a further web site to market in co-operation with other farmers. The virtues of buying and eating local food was added to talks I gave on our farming and establishing village shops.

My life in general has been hugely rewarding, but there have of course been ups and downs. Foot and Mouth Disease hit us hard in 2001; although we avoided being slaughtered out, the movement restrictions were disastrous. Our young team became disillusioned with farming. Afterwards Dawn and I decided as we were well into our 60’s rather than trying to rebuild we’d wind down the business. These days I farm only 50 acres with a neighbour, but I’ve published two books —Both in it Together, A Farmers Life with Foxes, and Journey into Farming. And being fully involved with village life, and with my lovely family, there’s plenty of new road to travel and to look forward to.