[Cactus Jack]

I was born and raised in Hampstead NW London so definitely a townie.
The family went on holiday to a farm called Skilgate I think in Devon when I was about 8 years old. I fell in love with whole farming lifestyle there and then.
It took me a further 44 years to get my own farm and another 6 years to get it to actually produce something.
It was worth the wait

[bloomer]

I live on the edge of town, i have 5 chickens...


I grew up spending every minute i could outside and am the same now, eventually I will find a piece of land i can afford and keep more animals, grow more veg.


For me it would be a lifestyle choice but it would have to break even...


I make up for it by knowing a lot of smallholders and working on various holdings mainly installing fencing, but other jobs as required...

[john and helen]

i am a townie who lived on the edge of town and countryside, we would pass brick and mortar to go to school, yet play in fields after school, the area has been taken over now by buildings,

i guess with the development of bigger faster tractors and farm equipment, the death of the farm was always going to happen, 1 machine can do what 10 workers did

as for people moving to the countryside, well , i guess they do have as much right as country folk moving to the towns,

money has always been a factor, not everyone in the towns can afford to buy a house, what with faster trains etc etc
we have many a person who works in london during the week and comes down to their house by the sea at weekends…. the small towns have all gone too…most have out of town shops killing the high streets

so its not just the small farms that have died,,,its the whole way of life that has changed ..

[Ideation]

Some excellent and very interesting replies. . . thanks!

[MAK]

Townie I am affraid - East london then NW London before moving out to the sticks. Dad then got me into gardening and in later years I was obliged to preserve the nice garden for the ex so I had to get an allotement to grow my veg and fruit.
After seperating from my wife of many years I lived alone in the centre of town, no garden, no concerns about what I ate or where it came from and too much money to need to learn basic skills that are needed on a smallholdong.
I woke up one day and changed my life. I sold everything I had except one black suit ( just in case), bought clothes suitable for the outdoors from charity shops and bought a place in France with my new partner.
We are fortunate that we do not need to work and accidentally we became smallholders. Unlike some townies moving to the countryside we live a basic life, work our socks off, are often cold, wet or too hot with the obligatory cuts, grazes, muscle aches and pains. We love it - but if I am honest we can live what we think is a simple life becuase we can afford it. But we are certainly not townies playing at the countrylife. 

[mab]

not sure where I fit: rather middle class family living on a new (middle class) estate, and I did go down the uni degree / career route, but our house was on the edge of that estate and my best mate was the grandson of the farmer who owned the fields and woods behind my house - so my childhood memories were of haymaking, potato picking (by hand) and 'sacking up' grain on the back of the MF788 combine harvester, the air thick with dust, diesel exhaust and the smell of the transmission belt smouldering as the combine crawled up the side of the hill.


I 'farm' never left me even when I was working in surburbia - so I decided to come home as it were.


I can certainly understand why anyone who can afford it chooses to live in the countryside, but as a closet environmentalist I get a bit irritated by the fact that we are developing the crazy system in places where the high earners who work in town live in the countryside and the farmworkers can only afford to live in suburbia - so the roads are packed with cars commuting both way every morning and eve    . I think they call it economics.

[Beeducked]

I'm also a townie by background but won't apologise for that, no choice in where I was born and bred. My grandparents retired to a smallholding with a few sheep which is where I learnt to love the countryside, animals and growing.
Not being born to a rural way of life but knowing that's what I wanted I had to do it the other route so I worked hard, got a good, well paying job that luckily I love and managed to buy a place with a couple of acres. We (my OH is even more of a townie than me) now have a productive veg patch, ducks and geese for eggs and meat, sheep and bees and the pigs arrive next week.
Our smallholding is never going to be self sufficient and I am going to have to continue to work to pay the mortgage etc but my job also means I am part of my community.
Our neighbours round here are predominately 3rd generation farmers at least but most of them also have other strings to their bows to keep themselves afloat as small scale farming rarely pays well enough. They are very accepting and welcoming of us and I haven't noticed any resentment. Then again our predecessor in this house was a Townie with a capital T and literally a used car salesman. He was regarded as an outsider for the whole of the 20 years he was here so think the neighbours think we are great in comparison!

[Lesley Silvester]

Born in London, grew up in a seaside town but right on the outskirts and loved to get out into the woods and fields. Got to know a couple who lived the good life from before it became popular and visited every weekend, helping with the work on the land. I lived for 11 years on Isle of Arran just outside a village of less than 200 people. I now live in a town but would rather be in a rural area.

[AndynJ]

Lived in Manchester city centre all my school life, no farming connections, worked on a caravan site part time from the age of 9, we can't warrant/afford to farm so we play at it as a hobby/lifestyle

I've never had a good job, as a family we have all been blessed by having an extra portion of elbow grease, this alone has contributed to us being able to afford the things we choose to do.

On that note it does seem like a lot of modern adults haven't collected their quota of elbow grease 

  those other people are better off than us     may as well give up then 

[lord flynn]

I'm between Lanark and Biggar-all of the farms surrounding me are family farms. there are weekly auctions of livestock at Lanark. Its not easy land to farm. Seems to take a lot of space for relatively few animals. I did live in East Lothian-more arable-and there were plenty of family farms there as well but most of them had to diversify to make a decent living.


I am the pits going by the original post-not only was I born on a council estate in the Home Counties, I moved to rural Scotland and keep horses :p I don't own enough land to support a family though so not taking anyone's livelihood.


I was born in Epsom, family moved to rural Suffolk when I was wee. We kept pretty much everything animal wise but we were not gardeners. I spent 15 years working with horses after I left school before deciding I wanted my own instead of shovelling poop for other people for less than minimum wage. Put myself through uni both undergrad and postgrad and have been gradually moving further out to the country ever since. I currently work a 37 hour week in 4 days as a researcher in veterinary science (sheep) and approx 10 hours per week on top of that as a lecturer for the OU. I prefer physical work tbh, but it doesn't pay and takes a toll on you when you get older! OH was born in Drumchapel and have never so much as kept a fish before he met me. He now loves living in the sticks and the animals-even the chickens. Even with good jobs we are mortgaged up to the hilt for a modest property and (I) have to work these hours so I can afford my luxury hobby-I don't get holidays away, new clothes and my car (a clio) is a wreck which will be kept until it dies.

[ellied]

I was born and brought up in a tiny rural village in what was then North Yorkshire, but of parents who were both born in towns.  A generation or two further back they had been farming stock that had moved to find work when either younger sons or farms became unprofitable in the 19th century so it's been going on a long time   My mum was also brought up in wartime so knew a lot about getting by, making and mending, growing her own and so on, and I'm pretty sure her agri roots came good there cos she had a huge garden/orchard and was forever knitting and crocheting and sewing and baking and preserving out of sheer poverty/need to keep a large tied house in fuel bills and a husband and 3 kids fed and clothed..  She was out in the garden at every opportunity as an escape from the kids I imagine..

[ballingall]

Interesting thread this....


I grew up in the country, though more on the veg side, than farming per se, as my dad had his own nursery/ green grocers etc. We kept animals too, but that wasn't for the business but more for lifestyle/smallholding. However, we grew up in a very rural environment, kept goats, sheep, reared lambs, calves, kept chickens and ducks, made our own hay etc. My uncle also had a small farm only about 8 Miles's away.


One of the best smells in the world for me is a "proper" green grocers, because it just takes me right back. My older siblings were used as child labour, but I came along so much later than I wasn't put to work quite as much.


I think it is really hard for people to get onto the smallholding ladder, I wouldn't be able to afford a place with land even now, had I not bought a house jointly with my mum. Even though I have a good salary, from working full time, there are very few properties with land I would be able to afford.
At that, we only have about an acre here, hindsight is a wonderful thing, we moved away from having 2.5 acres of field and an acre of garden, and I do regret it now. The land was built on, and our house was replaced with four houses and gardens. A so-called "steading development"- but it wasn't, because there was no steading in the first place! Just an old house built out of corrugated iron, which no one would have wanted to live in once we moved out. And I drive past it, and look at the 1.5 acres of field, which is just sitting there going to ruin, as they didn't sell it with any of houses!


 And I look at my nieces, who are aged 10- 16, and I can't see any way that they will be able to buy a farm or a smallholding   


I do know many family farms, but are there maybe more in Scotland? I don't know. But certainly there are farms that go up for sale round here, with a massive price tag, all because the agents think they'll get more for it as a "development opportunity".


Beth

[jaykay]

Born from town folk, my parents always lived on the edges of small towns.

Dad is the person people have always brought stray, sick, lost or otherwise 'in need of care' animals to, and who always knew how to handle them and make them better. We always had a huge and varied assortment of animals in the house and outside, but only the poultry were really 'farm' animals. Mum is also into animals, and very tolerant!

Then about 20 years ago, as my brothers and sisters and I moved out, my parents fostered a family of 5 additional children (there were 4 of us originally) and moved to the country. In the process, they acquired a few acres and some sheep, and Dad's 'animal habit' extended, including pheasants, quail, geese, ducks, hens, rabbits, donkeys as well as the sheep!

In the meantime I got a job and seemed to become the person people brought stray, sick, lost or otherwise 'in need of care' animals to........and I also seem to know what to do with them - partly I just did, and no doubt in a large part learned from Dad.

Then 7 years ago, I got a new job, married now, we moved to the country and acquired a few acres......and some sheep. My then OH decided, after a couple of years, that he didn't like here, he didn't like farming and he didn't like me! Oh well. So now there's just me. And the sheep, and the goats, and the ducks and the hens and the geese and the cats and the dogs. Have rescued/rehomed 6 animals (2 pygmy goats, 3 feral-now-barn cats and one Golden Retriever) in the past year. But we really are full for now.

I still have the full-time job, it's the only way I can afford my little run-down place.

The neighbours are all 'proper' farmers, big family farms. They are tolerant and helpful towards me, really pitching in with the heavy jobs, to help me be able to stay when the ex left - they cheer me on and I am immensely grateful to them.

[SallyintNorth]

Townie born and bred, townie on both sides right back as far as we've done the family history.

But from before I could even speak I have always wanted to be with animals, always wanted to be outside - and in the woods and fields, not the streets , always been the person people bring problem animals and animal problems to, always knew where the badger sett was and could find wildlife and sign of wildlife in the woods.

On holidays on farms as a youngster, I'd be up and out at 6am, helping the farmer in the byres for hours before the rest of the family rose.  Always wanting to stay and work on the farm, not join the family on a trip to the beach or whatever.

We all assumed I'd be a vet, and I trained for it, which included doing farm practise in my late teens.  Loved that 

Book larnin' turned out not to be me - not good at remembering facts - so me and the vet course gave each other notice to quit.

Got a summer job on one of the farms I'd done farm practise on.  Loved that     Good at it, too.

But, failed to get a permanent job in farming, needed to be earning a living, got a job in computing.

20 years on, divorced and redundant, decided to go back to that crossroads and take the other turn. 

I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had got the job on the pig farm in the first place.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I should always have been a stockperson.  Growing up, a townie child of townie parents in a townie school, I didn't know you could be, thought you had to be born a farmer to do that, I guess.  (And maybe you do.)  And I seemed to be clever academically, so being a vet seemed the logical path.  Not right for me though.

Doing what I do now feels like coming home

BH is the son of a farmer, and the grandson of a farmer.  Luckily for him, neither of his siblings wanted to farm, and even more luckily for him, neither of them thought they ought to get a share of the farm since BH had always worked on it and they hadn't.      We see a fair few farms locally being sold by the offspring of the deceased farmer, all parties wanting as much money as possible, hence going along with the agent's advice to sell it in lots to incoming horse-owners etc .  The son-who-farms is sometimes near suicidal at this, seeing the entity his father and he have nurtured over the decades disintegrated for mammon, but sometimes even the farming sibling goes along with the sell-for-the-most-money approach, as his/her share will only make a contribution to buying a farm for him and his family.   Such a shame. 

[thestephens]

im a townie but both parents came from the country and one grandfather was a gamekeeper, the other a farm worker. Married a farmer, he knew I was a keeper while on a date I was left in a field with a prolapsed sheep while he went to get a needle and thread! I now have my smallholding of kune kune sheep, hens, chicks, wee flock of oxford downs, a rabbit, a bassett hound and a new pony on husbands farm!