Our Farm: A Year in the Life of a Smallholding - Rosie Boycott

Our Farm' is Rosie Boycott's compelling and endearing account of setting up her own smallholding in Ilminster and trying to make it profitable within eighteen months in an era of food globalization. From the personal to the political, Rosie Boycott fights for the farmer, local community, humane husbandry and quality organic food against the increasing homogenization of the high street, the growth of the supermarket and our insatiable demand for cheap, unseasonal food. What's a city girl doing in the country? After leaving the editorship of the Daily Express in 2001, Rosie Boycott wasn't sure what to do next. The natural step would have been to stay in London and continue her highly successful media career but a terrible car accident, which left her on crutches for eighteen months, forced Rosie to rethink her life, turning her in a direction she would never previously have imagined. When an opportunity arises to rent a small farm in Somerset, Rosie and her new husband Charlie decide to take it, determined to throw themselves into a new challenge and to make the land profitable. It proves a daunting task, but it also reaps rewards that have nothing to do with money, rewards they never expected. For what follows is an immersion in rural living which is often hilarious, sometimes profoundly moving. Pigs, ducks and geese are fattened for the butcher, occasionally with lamentable results; vegetables and cut flowers are grown for a reluctant marketplace, as Rosie and Charlie discover more and more about the hard graft of running a smallholding. Gradually they, the land and the seasons begin to work harmoniously together. They learn, too, about the boisterous personalities of the animals in their care, and about weightier issues that affect the local community of Ilminster - particularly the new supermarket which threatens the soul of the local town centre. 'Our Farm' engages as passionately with the plight of people as it does with animals, with domestic and personal issues as much as global issues - most importantly, the environment that nurtures us that we recklessly take for granted. Throughout Rosie reflects deeply on our intimate relationship with nature and, ultimately, its power to heal.

Model: HOM-1375

£15.99