The Dining Table Story
Over the past three years my life has changed out of all recognition. In 2020, we lived within commuting distance of Manchester, in the North West of England. On a bad day the commute could be two hours. I started leaving home at 06:00 to miss the traffic. I arrived at 06:30, just as Mike, the car park attendant was opening up.
As the months went by, even leaving at 06:00 was not early enough and the commute lengthened. But it gave me time to write. I'd go into Caffé Nero, opposite the office, purchase a latte, open up my laptop or notebook and do my own thing for about 90 minutes. It was the antidote to the daily grind, what I'd worked on gave me something to contemplate whenever I had five minutes of downtime during the day. It made work bearable.
Three years ago today we started our new life in Derbyshire, moving into our new house, with no clue as to what lay ahead. Fast forward and my morning starts on a friend's farm, tending our hens and helping with his sheep, lambs and cows. All fodder for my writing.
This is what my day looks like now:
- 06:00 Rise and Shine
- 06:15 Feed Bamber, my husband's Guide Dog
- 06:30 Drink coffee, read, log any ideas that inspire or speak to me
- 07:00 Shower, get dressed
- 07:30 Drive to the farm
- 08:00 Let out our hens, feed and water them
- 08:15 Check on the sheep, look for any new arrivals, give the ewes who've already lambed fresh water, corn nuts and hay, top up the water trough, feed the ewes in the paddock. Phil usually arrives part way through my morning routine so there may be ewes and lambs to put in a pen, adopted lambs to feed.
- 09:30 Drive home, eat breakfast
- 10:00 Start working - this might be a client project or writing
- 13:00 Lunch
- 14:00 Work - as above
- 16:30 Back to the farm to put the hens to bed and do the evening routine with the sheep. There may be more new arrivals. Feed the cows.
- 18:00 Dinner
- 19:30 Sometimes more writing, especially at the moment when I'm getting started again
- 21:30 Bed
Around the time we lived near Manchester, I wrote about life at a gentler pace. It was a dream of mine to find a way to spend more time outdoors, to slow down from the relentless hustle and culture of crushing it. I'd walk as much as I could, get outside at the weekend, but I still had to be back in the office on a Monday.
I'd advocate having a daily moment - could you adopt a gentle pace even if you lived and worked in a city? Look up at the sky, find a patch of green, buy a pot plant, sit in a park. It was a start but not enough for me. I'd had this yen for a long time to go full on rural. I just didn't know how to make that happen.
In the end, all I needed to do was make space. I left my job in May 2019 with no particular plan. Five months later we decided to relocate to Derbyshire. A year later we finally moved.
And in Autumn 2022, I sold a dining table. An unexpected way to be introduced to a farmers' group of which Phil was the outgoing Chairman. We met lots of farmers. I saw a lamb being born for the first time. We decided we wanted a smallholding. Not able to find any land, Phil took pity on us and let us use some of his. Nine hens and a cockerel later, we have fresh eggs every week, plus a handful of regular customers. This year, we'll be establishing our raised beds and growing our own produce. With Phil, we're building an orchard, and planning to make cider and apple juice.
I've delivered my first lamb, act as Phil's farm hand, and have become accustomed to being in a shed full of sheep. While not encyclopaedic, my knowledge of shepherding has grown.
This is the dream, beyond my wildest dreams.
I spend much of my day outside, wearing my muddy boots and farm gear. Some days the plan goes out of the window and I pitch in with moving sheep, taking livestock to market, repairing fences, or walking the cows back to the farm. To Phil, this is the life he's known for several decades, to me, it's magical.