Read this first - how it all began…

I am a farmwife in Wales, never happier than when I’m up to my elbows in pastry, flour and home-grown strawberries.

We live on a twenty-five acre farm, where I cook dinner for eight people every night - slapping down homemade bread, huge pots of stew and our own roast lamb - in true Seven Brides for Seven Brothers Style.

Some of the gang at the farm

But my life wasn’t always like this. A long time ago, I was a journalist and radio talk show host in California. I hired a maid to clean the house, sent all my clothes out to be dry-cleaned, and scarcely knew how to boil an egg…

And then I came to Wales and through a series of comic-tragic adventures, ended up as a single mum, living on my own with my two children, Joli and Benjamin, in an isolated stone cottage in the hills of South West Wales.

Joli, 10, and Benji, 3

I had been on my own for what seemed like a very long time, and had just about given up on men altogether and decided to become a nun, when I met Rich. He was a tall, lanky, bearded, green-eyed Welsh harp maker with a pirate’s laugh and wood-workers hands…

He took me out to lunch, and we talked for such a long time that all the food had been sold out by the time we came to order. He made me laugh. And I started to think that maybe I wouldn’t be a nun after all…

Rich the harp maker

Rich brought me and my kids to  the beautiful farm by the sea where he lived with his two daughters, Ceris and Elly, and his father, Taid. There he wooed and won me with his famous roast dinner. (He told me afterwards that he even mopped the floor before I came over for the first time - what woman could fail to be impressed?)

Elly, 17, and her boyfriend James, 17

And after a brief but thorough courtship, Rich and his girls asked me and my kids to move in with them at the farm.

We all happily said yes.

Ceris, 18, and her boyfriend George, 19

And so the adventures began…

Now we all live at the farm together: me, Rich, Ceris, Ceris’ boyfriend George, Elly, Joli, Benjamin, Rich’s father Taid, two pigs, 26 sheep, 10 cats, and 17 chickens. 

Rich's father, Taid

 As an American living in Wales, there’s a lot to get used to. We have our moments of culture clashes… Pancakes, for example. In the US, we have them with syrup! In Wales, they eat them with lemon and sugar, and think we’re very strange if we eat fried ham on the side..

As a former city girl, I struggle with the gritty reality of farm life. It’s all very well having fantasies of grow-your-own veg and organic meat. But when it comes to the practicalities of killing and eating lambs and pigs that you know personally - well, that’s a different thing altogether. Although I must admit, I recently surprised myself by looking at the haunches of a fluffy lamb standing out in the field and thinking, “Yummm!”

And then again, as a professional woman and single mum, used to looking after myself and being completely, stubbornly  independent, there’s even more adjusting to do, having a loving partner who insists on looking after me and bringing me cups of tea!

I’m getting used to it rapidly, mind…

But I can assure you, life on the farm is never boring!

the farm