My Slow Life-From City Girl to Muddy Wellies

I never thought that I’d end living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. When I was growing up the goal was to work for Vogue magazine or something similar, preferably in London or maybe Dublin. However ever since falling in love with a goat farmer and making the move to the (very) wild and windy North coast of Ireland those original plans have firmly faded away.

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I’m a true convert to farm life. It’s not something I’ve ever really experienced previous to the move. Although I grew up in the countryside with a keen gardener for a dad and an artist mum who made all our meals from scratch, we never reared our own animals for food or brainstormed ways to make bog-land fertile. The farm life is a completely holistic way of life, one dependent on the weather, the land… It has taught me what slow living really means.

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I remember the first time Charlie dragged me out to the barn to teach me to skin a deer (a terrifying but strangely addictive experience), or one winter when we had to pluck the ducks and pheasants for a market sat outside on a freezing cold December afternoon. Other memorable moments include seeing one of our goats die after struggling to keep it alive for so long, marvelling at the hatching chicks or our first seedlings shoot up. It’s hypnotising stuff this slow, farming life!

The slow life has been my making; a whirlwind education in the cycle of life, the brutality and beauty of nature, in learning patience (one I’m awful at!) and eating seasonal food. It’s re-sparked my creativity (which after art college had lain dormant and rejected) and it’s made me realise how little we need to be happy. I notice and participate in my surroundings and am conscious of what I’m fueling my body with and what I’m filling my headspace with. For a girl who had an insatiable desire for the next must-have and a dissatisfaction and constant yearning for something “else” I’ve come along way.

If you feel you’d like to explore slow living further, check out my courses, coaching and art here.

Do you live a slow/country life? What has it taught you? Let me know in the comments below x