This is rainy day, winter cooking at its best. A deeply nourishing hearty bowl of brothy chicken soup with wild garlic, chunky veg and pearl barley which has such a pleasing texture. Incredibly easy to make, all in one pot and just a handful of ingredients. The first shoots of wild garlic are here and I could not be happier. If you can’t get your hands on any wild garlic yet, just use some frozen spinach chucked in at the end, and grate in a little smidge of raw garlic while the soup is still hot. Wild garlic or not, it’s a damn good soup.

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This week’s recipe is a belter. Onion, parsnip and beetroot bhajis! They’re spiced with ginger, green chilli, curry leaves, cumin and turmeric, with a coriander and lime yoghurt to dip and dunk. Everyone loves a bhaji right, but it’s such a lovely recipe to play with. Onion is great and classic for a reason, but a parsnip bhaji wow! And the beauty of a beetroot one. I’m already looking forward to making asparagus and wild garlic bhajis in spring. Once you’ve got the recipe down, it’s great fun to play with.

Anyway, firstly I just wanted to say I have been such a terrible Substacker and all I can do is apologise and thank you for sticking with me. I’ve been in a whirlwind of a shitstorm. Renovating an old crumbly farmhouse is brutal. So exciting and god I can’t complain, but financially and energetically it has been a bit crippling. Exciting news is that I’ve finished and shot the first chapter of my next book! Which is coming out next year. We had the shoot in December, and getting the kitchen built in time for that, whilst also testing and writing the recipes, just took me away from everything else. But it’s good to be back. I feel like I’ve got a mountain of work finally behind me and the important part of the house done, so I can re-focus and get back to work.

Farm wise all is well. It’s a bit grey, cold and muddy and I’m definitely looking forward to spring. But the goats are well, blasting their way through 4 bales of hay, which is quite a lot to keep up with, and the haystack is getting pretty low. The sheep are being very naughty and completely ignoring their electric fence, barging their way through and romping around my neighbours farm (who was not best pleased). I think I’ve got nearly 50 pregnant ewes this year, so lambing is going to be insane. I haven’t bred any goats, which I am quietly really regretting. A year without kid goats is a sad prospect.

Veg patch designing, building and planning underway. Bulbs to plant. Grass to sow and much to come. More on that soon.

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This week’s Substack brings a fantastic recipe of crumbed lamb chops with anchoiade and bitter leaves.

Apologies for being absolutely terrible with my Substack. To those of you who have stuck with me, thank you! I really appreciate it and am sorry for the silence. I’m in the midst of a tricky few months of recipe writing for my next book. With a hard deadline for the winter chapter at the end of November when we’re shooting the photos. I’m also quickly trying to build a kitchen for us to shoot in at the same time. With a farm to run too of course. It’s been a bit of a juggle. The whole year’s been a juggle. House restoration completely takes over your life. I’m so impressed by those who can handle it.

Autumn has been stunning so far. It came in quite abruptly after the hottest summer I’ve ever known. But I love being knee deep in mushrooms, apples and sloes. I’ve been doing a pottery course which is so much fun. If any of you have ever been tempted, throwing pots is one of the most satisfying hobbies I’ve ever known, and a great source of easy Christmas presents.

The house feels like it’s been nearly there for so long. All the walls stripped back and lime plastered, re-wired, re-plumbed. But the last curveball… is that some stone walls that were lime plastered last year, after 12 months of curing, are still soft enough to push a finger through. The lime just won’t go off. The house has been built straight on a bed of clay, no foundations. Dug into the side of a very wet hill and the walls are acting like a sponge. We’ve dug French drains, removed banks of earth the house is built against, re-pointed, removed inches of concrete to let it breathe… nothing has worked.

Luckily, I found the most fantastic builder who has bravely lifted a few tons worth of impeccably laid flag stone floors, some of which are over 6 ft long and a few inches thick. Dug the floor a foot down and created a damp proof membrane with vermiculite and limecrete, to then lay these giant stones back in place. And I hope the issue is finally solved.

The next step is paint colours and a kitchen to quickly cobble together. Which is great fun. And in the midst of all that I’ve got 20 recipes to create for the winter chapter of my book. A few favourites I’m looking forward to playing around with are a Ham hock pie with leeks and lots of wholegrain mustard, pork and ricotta meatballs with chickpeas and a chocolate stout cake. Exciting times! I can’t wait to get the team back together and start taking photographs.

Animal wise, everyone is well. Summer was tricky. Intense drought this year meant no rain and no grass. It felt like I spent the whole season praying for rain, and putting back escaped sheep who were desperate for greener pastures. But autumn has been kind. Wet and warm, the grass is flying, electric green, dewy and lush. I could almost eat it myself and love sitting with the sheep listening to them munching away. We’ve got apples coming out of our ears, which they devour by the sackful. And I’ve just brought the ewe’s home, they spent the last few months at mum and dads. Separating them from greedy lambs for a few months of quiet rejuvenation before the ram goes back in with them on November 5^th. Bringing them home, they knew exactly where they were going. And once let out of the trailer, they walked themselves through two gates and three fields, to their favourite spot without needing a nudge. I love the idea that they have a sense of home.

Crumbed lamb chops with anchoiade and bitter leaves

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This week I have the most fantastic recipe for you. A beautiful roast chicken with tomatoes and tarragon. It’s easy to cook and unbelievably comforting. Growing up, the dish I always begged my parents for was roast chicken with rice. To me that was utter heaven. The garlicky roasting juices poured over the rice, salty crispy skin and a juicy chicken. To this day I still think one of the best accompaniments to a roast chicken is just a bowl of rice with a green salad on the side and the other day after a particularly long week, that is just what I felt like. Tons of sauce, unctuous chicken infused with tarragon and slow cooked garlic and tomatoes melting into the gravy… it’s unreal.

First a little farm update. I know I’ve been terrible with keeping up with Substack and I apologise for that. Thank you to all of you who support nonetheless. I will get better! Just struggling with the building project, work and farm life. It’s a bit of a juggle.

Anyway, where are we? It’s been a bit of a crazy summer here in England. We’ve had an absurd amount of sun and barely any rain. Great for growing veg and flowers. But the struggle has been that there is no grass! Usually you rotate sheep around the farm, as they finish a field you move them onto the next one. With say 3 fields per flock (my sheep are split into 2 groups, ewes and lambs, and last year's lambs), by the time you get back to the first field it's grown back and you just repeat the cycle. This is called rotational grazing, which, when done right, is a great way of feeding the soil and reducing the build up of worms and other diseases that affect the sheep. This year though, by the time we got back to that first field in the cycle, it just hadn't grown back. Climate change is well and truly here in Dorset. That has meant escaping sheep, and feeding them hay and feed that ideally we’d be saving for winter. A great season for sun bathing but a hard year on the livestock front.

Speaking of the sheep, I had our shearer here the other day. Always such a fun, busy and exciting day. Way back when, one of the main reasons to keep sheep was the wool. Sadly nowadays, with us all wearing cottons and polyesters, wool has little to no value. Especially black wool, as you can’t dye it to any other colours. So shearing is purely for the sheep’s benefit. It gets that great big woolly coat off them, which at the height of summer is a great relief. But the main reason is that it protects them from fly strike. A horrible thing where if a sheep gets any muck in their wool, flies find it and lay eggs, that quickly turn to maggots, eat the muck, but then horrifically go on to eat the sheep alive. It’s like a scene out of a horror movie.

Shearing starts early and is a big day. We had 90 sheep to shear this year. I use a lovely local lad called Ben Lloyd, who, if you’re down this way and happen to have sheep, I highly recommend. I caught the sheep and walked them into the barn the night before with my brother, this stops the sheep from eating grass all night and means they’re a good few kilos lighter which makes shearing much easier. It also means you can start early and in the shade. Shearing always seems to fall on one of the hottest days of the year and is sweaty and itchy work. Your hands and body are covered in lanolin, the waxy substance that sheep produce to make their wool waterproof. The barn is a racket, 100 ewes and lambs all calling to each other as we separate them. You don’t shear lambs as their wool grows too slowly in the first year and they wouldn’t have it back by winter. So you run the sheep through a race (alleyway of hurdles), shearing the mums and letting the lambs go. Two lads shearing, working hard, their chests on harnesses attached to strings above them taking the weight off their back when leaning over. I keep the sheep moving through the hurdles, separating the lambs and rolling up the wool and putting it into bags. We spent half the morning at my place, then we went to mum and dads to shear the Hoggets there (last year's lambs soon for sale as hogget). Followed by the most deserved and delicious Baboo ice cream.

The next big moment of the year is Hay making! A large portion of our farm is made up of hay meadows. Flowery meadows that the government pays us to look after in a certain way. They are thick with flowers, butterflies, bees, insects, voles, moles and mice. Supporting foxes, badgers, swallows, snakes, owls, buzzards, hawks and kestrels. Sadly, a lot of the countryside here is over-farmed with little room left for nature. These little pockets are havens for wildlife and we get paid to keep them as such. They are left purely for nature, from April to August. When August comes around we make hay, which spreads the seeds in these fields and lowers the soil fertility. This is what enables them to be flowery meadows, as the grass is held back (it would otherwise take over).

This year we made 400 hay bales… double what I made last year and thank god, because the way things are going we’re gonna need it. You wait for a weather window, baking sun with some good drying wind for at least 3 days. Leaving the grass to lose its moisture and turning it each day so it dries evenly. Then, when it's dry, spin it into lines and bale into small bales that are easy to transport around the farm. It's lovely work. Finally we stack the hay onto trailers and load it into the barn. This is the hard part. 400 bales at 25kg each, loaded on and then off the trailer, that is 10 tons that my brother and I moved over the course of 4 hours. You should have seen the blisters. My lord it was a beautiful evening though!

That takes us to now! This morning we’re digging a pond, testing recipes for book 2 and eating fritto misto for lunch. The goats are sunbathing, the sheep sheltering in the shade and I just found a wild Mirabel plum tree that is dripping with the most incredible honey coloured fruit.

Oh also I’ve seen some fantastic films recently.

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This week is a love letter to Caponata. The Sicilian dish that celebrates the best of summer produce. Dark and savoury aubergine in a braise of courgette, onion, tomato and celery with lots of vinegar and sweetness to hold it together. Finished with handfuls of basil and spooned onto a pool of creamy burrata. One of the best lunches I’ve had in a long while. It’s great with fish, lamb, or even tossed through pasta. An absolute joy to make, it’s such a lovely cooking process, and so rewarding to eat. This one I think you’re going to love.

First a little life update! I wanted to apologise for my sporadic posting on here. Farm renovations, intense weather, too many animals and the busiest time of year has had me frayed a little thin. Living in a building sight and total chaos is never great when you have a list to get on with as long as your arm. Anyway, luckily things are coming together and I hope to be much more consistent on here, with recipes and farm updates every two weeks.

I promised a while back to give you a glimpse of this project I’m working on. So today, a little glimmer… with more to follow soon.

I’ve lived with my parents for most of my life. Left for university and some cheffing, but have essentially been farming with them for the last 10 years. Growing, farming and working with nature together has been a fantastic opportunity and a total joy, but obviously comes with some downsides. Sadly the nature of farming is that you need land, which is incredibly expensive here in England, and completely out of my reach, as it is for most young people. Home was a great place to get started, as it is for many young farmers. But 32 felt like a time for change and about a year and a half ago I found a beautiful and dilapidated little farm just down the road. I’ve been quietly chipping along with the building for the past year, feeling a little shy of sharing that aspect of my life when so many are struggling. But now feels like a good time to show a little glimpse into what has been the most exciting, but stressful year of my life.

It's an old dairy farm that sits high on a hill, exposed to the harshest of elements, surrounded by wild and scraggly land. The trees are old, the hedges are wild and the views are epic. I love old houses, the crumblier the better! And this place is properly crumbly. An old stone farmhouse, haphazardly fixed by farmers who haven’t had a penny to spare for the last few hundred years. The walls were running with water and battened out with plasterboard, the stone concreted over, the drinking water straight out of the ground and red with iron, and if you flushed the loo no one knew where it went. The family who lived there before are the most wonderful people, who held onto much of the land and make the kindest of neighbours.

The project has been a case of stripping back and finding the old features underneath, of which there are many. Beautiful fireplaces, old elm floorboards and stunning timber framed ceilings. But as is the case with lots of old buildings, when you start stripping back, one job turns to many as you uncover rotting lintels, damp walls and leaking chimneys. Soon the bills start piling up and it’s been so unbelievably expensive, that I’ve been struggling to stay afloat.

Anyway, I’m up here with Ellie, my partner, the female goats and their kids and the ewes and this year's lambs. The billies, hoggets, veg patch and last year’s lambs down the road at mum and dad’s. Life’s a bit of a juggle and my hair is rapidly turning grey, but the potential is epic.

We’re nearly finished with the bones of the place and I’ll go into more detail soon. There’s some exciting design decisions coming soon and I’d love some advice. But for now, we’re hay making and the sun is shining. I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Caponata with Burrata.

I love the way Italians do veg. Caponata is just so good. Summers best produce, all in one dish. It’s sweet, sour, savoury and nutty… each element is distinctive as you eat it. You can individually taste the richness of the aubergine, the crisp celery and the juicy tomatoes, but they also exist in total harmony. It’s a wonderful play of flavours. Caponata is great with fish, squid and scallops, it cuts right through the fattiness of lamb and would be fantastic with cold sliced beef. I love it tossed through pasta and eaten at room temp on a scorching day, or eaten on its own with focaccia and prosciutto, but it’s particularly good with burrata (or any dairy for that matter, whipped ricotta/mozzarella/stracciatella).

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Finally, I am thrilled to say that I am now able to offer you Hebridean hogget, reared in small numbers, on thriving biodiverse wildflower meadows here in South West Dorset, delivered to your door by Aurox.

Hebridean is a breed of sheep from the northern islands of Scotland. It is an old breed that is much smaller and slower growing than modern sheep. They are beautiful, with distinctive horns and wiry black wool, that fades to brown in the summer and goes grey as they age. They have a lovely nature, are tough as nails, make wonderful mothers and are a joy to look after.

Because they are an old breed, and smaller than modern sheep, I rear them not to sell them as lamb, but as hogget. Lamb is a sheep under a year old, and traditionally that meant keeping lambs for just under a year. Born in spring, and grown until the following spring just before the next batch were born, eaten as spring lamb! Now, with modern breeding and high protein feed, they are grown much faster than that, and are often sold in supermarkets at around 5-8 months of age.

My Hebridean sheep, being an old breed and naturally raised, are much smaller and slower growing. At 5-8 months they are still absolutely tiny. So rather than selling them as lamb, I rear them to hogget (hogget are sheep between 1 and 2 years old, mutton is then anything above 2 years). My sheep are raised for 23 months, with every second of that spent outside, on wild and staggeringly beautiful land. This slow natural growth, results in meat that is still tender, with wonderful marbling and a deeply nutritious and slowly developed flavour. They are raised on diverse grasses and wildflowers, in fields that haven’t seen a chemical in 40 years! In my mind, it is as good as it gets.

This is hogget from a farm where we are lucky enough to be able to put nature first. And in a world with the extinction rate at 1000 times its natural level, many species here in England are living on the brink of survival. With the climate in flux, our own human health declining and the UK’s biodiversity in crisis, considered in the bottom 3% of the planet, I think the health of the planet and the way in which we treat the natural world directly correlates to our own health. The way we eat and where we source our food from has never been more important. By eating less meat, we have more to spend on higher quality meat. Allowing more room for nature, and supporting farmers directly. It’s all about quality, not quantity.

To bring this to life I have partnered with Aurox, Dorset neighbours with a shared philosophy: we should all eat less meat, ensuring it is of the highest quality and raised as ethically as possible. They specialise in bringing deeply flavoured, fully matured meat to restaurants and home cooks. Each online order is flash-frozen to lock in the flavour, insulated in sustainable wool packaging, and delivered straight from the butchery to your doorstep.

LINK HERE - https://auroxmeat.com/collections/hogget/products/half-hebridean-hogget

Thank you for reading, and for those of you that get your hands on some of this hogget. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for supporting this style of farming.

Back soon with an update on house renovations and a delicious recipe, really excited to share what’s been going on!

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This week, I bring you one of my favourite recipes from my book, The Farm Table, and for paid subscribers, the recipe for the perfect steak sandwich.

It is sometimes the simple things in life that bring the greatest pleasure. Cooking and eating this with my brothers was utter delight.

I’ve often made or eaten steak sandwiches that are just too complicated, with slow cooked onions, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, chips etc… and they just fall apart, the flavours lost and fighting one another. Here simplicity is perfection. A damn good steak cooked well, in a soft, toasted ciabatta with the best sauce and a massive handful of rocket. It’s peppery, mustardy and buttery creamy. The steak shining through.

Get a cold beer, cook this for yourself or some friends outside and revel in the joy. I’ll be back soon with a proper update. Much love to all.

Spring on a Plate

This is so good I could eat it every day. Light, zingy, fresh and healthy, this dish is one of my late spring highlights. It’s based on vignarola, an Italian classic of braised spring vegetables that usually revolves around artichokes. I find young artichokes tricky to find in Dorset, so I’ve gone with the things I grow and love at this time of year: peas, asparagus, broad beans, gem lettuce and herbs.

This dish involves braising; a technique of wet frying, where things are kept steamy and juicy but not so wet they get soggy. I do this with a bottle of white wine next to the pan, adding a little splash every now and then to stop things from drying out, but you can use water if you prefer. Whatever you use, the key is little splashes. Keep tasting and checking the textures as you go until each individual element is cooked to perfection. The trick to this is all in the well-timed dance of ingredients into the pan.

Serves 4

800g broad beans, podded to yield about 250g

5 tbsp olive oil

1 large brown onion, finely diced

3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

1 bunch of asparagus, about 250g, tips left whole, woody ends removed and stalks cut into chunky rounds

a bottle of white wine (you won’t need all of it)

200g frozen peas

(or 400g fresh peas)

1 gem lettuce, roughly chopped

a bunch of fresh mint

and basil, finely chopped

2 unwaxed lemons

250g ricotta

Bring a pan of water to the boil, season it well and chuck in the broad beans. Cook for just a few minutes, then drain and immediately plunge into ice-cold water to stop them cooking further. Pinch the shells and pop out the lovely green beans.

Pour the olive oil into a wide pan, add the onion and garlic, season well with a pinch of salt and cook for 10 minutes or so, being careful not to colour the garlic, until the onion is sweet and tender. Add the asparagus with a little splash of wine. Keep stirring and cooking for a few minutes, until the asparagus is nearly but not quite tender, then add the peas. Again, season as you go and add a splash of wine here and there to keep the pan juicy. Don’t overdo it, you want to keep the pan from drying out but you don’t want it too wet either. Keep tasting as you go and check that the texture of the veg feels right.

The peas won’t take long, so keep trying until they’re ready. At this point, add the lettuce – you want it to gently collapse but still retain a nice crunch. Turn the heat off just before the lettuce is ready, as the residual heat will continue to cook things further.

Add the broad beans and most of the herbs (holding back some for serving). Grate in the zest of one lemon, stir, then have a taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Finally, put the ricotta into a bowl, and whisk well until it becomes light and fluffy. Grate in the zest of the second lemon, add a pinch of salt and the juice of half a lemon. Whisk to combine, then taste to check the seasoning.

Spoon a bit of ricotta on to each plate and spread it slightly, then top with the warm vignarola and finish with a drizzle of olive oil, some more herbs and a squeeze of lemon. I like to serve this with crisp toasts rubbed with garlic, but it is magic in an omelette or with fish or lamb.

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I just wanted to say how much I am enjoying writing for you all on Substack. The moment I sit down to reflect on my week fills me with such peace and joy. Last time I wrote something more vulnerable than I am used to, about a state of overwhelm and struggle that I’ve been grappling with and god I’ve had a good week since. Busy and chaotic, lots has gone wrong, but I’ve found a new state of mind. I think writing something down really makes you own it and that helps instill change. So thank you for being here with me, for listening and supporting, I really appreciate it. If there is anything you’d love to know more about or things that you’d be interested in me writing about please do comment below.

This week has been utterly stunning. Holiday weather. Dorset has felt like the south of France, scorching hot, not a cloud in the sky, 25 degrees. Everything is starting to really grow now. Cow parsley spilling in the hedgerows over bluebells and pink campion, the grass in the fields is flying at last and nearly all the leaves are out on the trees, lime green and electrically vibrant. I have burnt my back to a crisp, digging and composting the garden between endless sheep checks. The lambs are thriving, we still have more to come, but are down to the stragglers now. I used one ram for my 45 ewes this year, I think the upper limit for one male, and let's just say I think his plums ran a little dry towards the end, so the last few to give birth are being quite sporadic. The lambs are pure joy, tearing around the field in great mobs, hopping, skipping, nibbling and literally jumping for joy, then calling loudly for mum and running back for a vigorous drink. I could watch them all day (and have been).

It has also, excitingly, been a week of bees. On Monday, I took Penguin, a beautiful billy goat, over to mum and dad’s. He was born earlier this year but sadly his mum died shortly after giving birth, so Ellie and I have been raising him ourselves on the bottle with another sweet girl called Wren. They live with the flock and are huge fun. Penguin is a real beauty, with symmetrical markings of grey, black and white. Far too pretty to castrate, which is what I usually have to do with males, so I’ve kept him as a breeding goat. But, at only 3 months old, he’s suddenly started humping all the girls, some of whom are also only 3 months old, which could lead to an absolute disaster and has done in the past. So I quickly bunged him in the car with a few friends he can’t get pregnant and took him far away! Goats are such horny little devils that once they get it in their heads nothing will stop them. They will escape from anywhere with sex on the mind, locked trailers, electric pens, horse boxes. I find 10 miles on a different farm seems to do the trick.

While dropping him off, I heard a huge swarm of bees buzzing above me in the apple orchard. One of our hives had swarmed! Tens of thousands of bees in the air with their queen, off to find a new home. It’s incredible the noise, the whole sky roaring above you. The simple way to explain swarming is that when a hive gets too big it splits in two. The old queen leaves with half the bees to start a new colony, leaving behind a young queen to carry on her legacy. It’s how bees spread and populate the wild.

Often we just let the bees go! It’s nice to know that our healthy hives are thriving and populating the countryside around us. Pollinators (and all insects really) are having a staggeringly hard time with modern farming, lack of habitat and pesticides, so looking after them and helping them flourish is one of the main reasons we keep bees. But sometimes, we catch these swarms, to set them up in a safe home where we can look after them. The issue with swarms is that naturally they find a crack in an old oak tree, or a hole in a mighty ash. But a letter box makes a great home, as does someone’s chimney or crack in a roof and often, as a result, they get exterminated. So having just moved house I have no bees and this swarm seemed a golden opportunity to build my own hive and give them a great home!

When bees swarm they eat a load of honey to fuel their journey, then spill out of the hive with their queen in a great cloud. It is an awesome sight. They find somewhere safe to land, usually the branch of a tree or tangled bit of bush, and settle there with full stomachs in a great buzzing ball with the queen at its heart. While the scouts, ranging miles, search for the perfect home. It can be quite an intimidating sight, a huge cloud of bees, but in this mode they could not be safer and are totally uninterested in stinging you. So if you ever see one in your garden, or on the street, have no fear and just let them BEE. Anyway, this moment when they are in a ball is a great time to catch them if you know what you’re doing. You have to be very careful, and I’m not going to go into detail here, but I managed to catch this swarm and carefully put it in a Nuke box - a temporary hive that they can live in for a while with food and some bee frames for them to build on. It also has a door so that I can safely transport them to a good site on my new farm. Having turned up with a car full of goats I left hours later with a car full of bees!

When you set up a hive, location is everything. Bees need to be sheltered from the worst of the weather, in a place with morning sun, and obviously not next to your favourite sunbathing spot in the garden or by a track that you use often. Once you pick the spot and set down the bees you can’t move them! That position is set in stone. Bees need to be moved either under 3 feet or over 3 miles, any more or less and they leave. One of my cousins in Australia got in trouble with his neighbours after his bees stung one of their kids! They asked him to move his bees to the other end of the garden away from their fence. So every couple of weeks he carefully moved the hive 3 feet. It took him 8 months to slowly swap them from one side of the garden to the other. Anyway, I found the perfect spot, sheltered by a vast sycamore, in lieu of a hill, near enough to the barns for my bee equipment, but far enough away from any paths or high traffic areas with great morning sun. I set the bees up in their new spot, sun setting on the horizon, the sky warm and hazy, after a magical and bountiful day.

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This week’s recipe is an idea that’s been brewing for a while. A fragrant curry base, quickly brought together with curry leaf, ginger and whole spices. You cook it down with coconut milk to get a wonderful sauce, that you then fry eggs in much like Shakshuka for a speedy breakfast curry with lemony basmati rice. It is absolutely delicious! And a curry base that works with so much more, use it with chopped grilled chicken thighs, some gently cooked white fish, or even simply with boiled potato and spinach.

But first, a reminder to slow down. For a while now, I’ve been going through life at entirely the wrong pace.

Restoring an old house, lambing season, 4 months of bottle-feeding kid goats, work, the pressures of social media, filming videos, managing builders … all while living in the chaos of a building site. It’s a lot to juggle.

They are all individually wonderful things, but collectively it has been a lot and I’ve been drowning under the weight of it for a while now. Totally overwhelmed by a list as long as my arm. And I’ve been wondering… is it just a state of mind?

The other evening I got back from a long day. Part of me wanted to just sit down and crash, but there was such a stunning evening unfurling, I wasn’t ready to pack it in. A gentle breeze, the birds twinkling, sheep calling their lambs on the wind and the sky a warm pink. My car is in a state at the moment, as are many things in my life, filled with tools, lambing gear, sacks of feed and piles of hay, so I decided to give it a clear out while enjoying the view under a setting sun. Tidy car… tidy mind.

We have a skip outside the house for the building project, (more on that soon), so I drove the car up beside it to drop off a few things and began unloading and sweeping out a load of crud. Then all the sheep who are lambing in the field next to me heard the car, thought it was feeding time, and came over to stand by the fence calling loudly with 40 playful lambs in tow. This completely sidetracked me, who could resist. So I grabbed a sack of feed and went over to the most beautiful flock of sheep the world has ever seen.

In the low light thousands of bugs flittered in rays of sun above them, the grass electric green and vibrant, huge oaks with leaves unfurling towering over hedges frothing with blackthorn blossom. Lambs gambolled around the field (one of my favourite words), hopping, springing and chasing each other in a great line, followed by worried mothers desperate to keep them close. Often I would take this in for a few minutes, but then head elsewhere, worrying about what’s next, I’d feed them and carry on with whatever task. This time however, the majesty of such a night dug its claws in deep and urged me to properly take it in. I sat down, took a breath and really watched, breathing it in. Warm sun on my face, curious lambs edging themselves closer to me and Bramble, a tame ewe who I bottle-fed a few years back, nudging at me to open the sack of feed. A woodpecker was hammering away on a dying ash in the wood below us. I noticed two truly awesome oak trees standing next to each other, one with no leaves out, the other almost in full leaf with pollen tassels hanging from every branch and I enjoyed the first returning swallows gliding above the field and catching bugs.

I felt myself slow down… but also noticed the power of a busy mind interrupting my presence in such a beautiful moment. So I decided, damn the car and spent the next two hours ambling around the farm, walking along hedges and paths and hopping over streams in a random route with no aim, fully taking it in. Bluebells, anemones and campions. A huge beech tree growing in a mossy bank above a ditch. A stream flowing right through its roots, creating a deep trench around it with a small cave, 6ft deep. I tiptoed through a wildflower meadow I planted last year in a field that had been used for maize for decades, stepping around all the little wildflower seedlings coming up, like the most complicated game of tic tac toe ever played. I spent two blissful hours, with no agenda, no plan, captivated by the majesty of nature, focussed entirely on beautiful little things, determined not to worry about a list of all the things I haven’t done. To stay present, breathe and be mindful.

I am a very relaxed person by nature. I am at my best in my own company and I spend most of my life outside, doing things that I love. But as I said earlier, recently things just haven’t been quite right. I’m not at my best. A big part of that is that I am in quite a complicated phase of life, I’ve taken on too much and need to simplify. But it’s funny the things I’ve taken on, I love and am extraordinarily grateful for. I don’t want to feel overwhelmed by it, I want to enjoy it. And I wonder, that evening, walking around the fields - maybe I could treat every day like that? All the little moments through the day and the lists, if I approach them like I’m ambling around the field, maybe that feeling of overwhelm will become one of joy and peace.

So just a message to anyone who this resonates with… slow right down. I think so many of us are living in survival mode! Frantically jumping from one thing to the next. Whereas actually we just need to be. Want less, worry less and do less.

I want to just be.

Three things I encourage.

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Hello lovely people. I just wanted to start by apologising profusely for my absence on Substack these last two weeks. I was struck down by the most violent case of Covid and have been properly bed bound for a week which is very unlike me. I think it’s the most ill I’ve ever been. I could hardly open my eyes, let alone taste or cook. So I’m afraid I’ve just been resting, desperate to get back on my feet, looking out the window at the most glorious spring sunshine and limping up and down the hill to check the sheep as much as possible. This week I’ve written up a recipe for the most delicious sausage, white bean and rosemary pasta. It's a thick, hearty Italian stew, with lots of garlic, rosemary and bay, salty salsiccia sausages spiked with fennel, and pasta that gets cooked in the sauce, thickening it all together, becoming one. Finished with lots of parmesan and olive oil, it’ll light a fire in your belly that’ll keep you warm all day.

Luckily I began to recover in the nick of time as we began lambing at pace. The first morning I went out we had 15 lambs born overnight. Mostly twins, all healthy and well. I moved the sheep to a sheltered field right next to the house, walking the field all day, making sure I’m around if anyone needs help birthing. So far, it’s all been pretty breezy and I’ve only had to step in twice. Hebridean sheep are a tough old breed that hasn’t been messed with, they’ve been around for a very long time and have all their wild and clever instincts intact. Fantastic mothers, tough as nails and fiercely protective.

The first birth that needed help was a first-time mum who was clearly struggling with the pain, she couldn’t quite settle. She would find a secluded spot to begin contractions, start pushing, but then get flustered and walk around again for a while before settling down and repeating the process. I watched her for an hour, never wanting to intervene when it’s not necessary, but decided it was time to make sure everything was ok and offer a helping hand. When she was lying down in some rushes, I snuck up from behind and grabbed her. The lamb was presenting the right way, nose and feet showing, but just struggling to get out. So I untucked its legs and gave her a helping pull, working in rhythm with her contractions, and in 30 seconds the lamb was out. I cleared its nose and mouth of mucus, immediately passed it to her and she began cleaning right away. A model mother, it was such a joy to be part of the process.

The next birth that needed help was the opposite - one of the trickiest and most stressful births I’ve ever been part of. I went out in the morning for a routine walk of the field, noted any new lambs, and checked all the edges for anyone separated from the flock looking to give birth, but all was ok. On the way back up to the house for my coffee, I walked through the main body of the flock, passing all the ewes who haven’t given birth yet, and saw one running around with the rest of them, with a lamb head hanging out of her, its tongue blue and swollen, its head bouncing as she ran around. She’d clearly been giving birth for a while, but the lamb was stuck and she’d given up. It’s quite easy grabbing a sheep who’s mid labour as they slow right down and you can often sneak up behind them when they lie down, but this sheep had decided she was done with labour, and was galloping away from my prying hands at full speed. I chased her for a while alone, then grabbed Ellie for a second pair of hands. The poor lamb’s head was bouncing and choking as the ewe bombed around the field. Very distressing, eventually we caught her and things were not looking good.

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This is a morning with the sheep below, taken a few days ago when it was much colder, but listen to those birds. Note the width of the sheep, middle left at the back, next to the ram. That’s what I mean by impossibly round.

A good sign they’re about to give birth is when that barrel shaped width drops and hangs underneath their belly. That’s a sign the lamb is moving into position in the birth canal. The other key signs are their udders suddenly doubling in size as they fill with colostrum. And then separating themselves from the flock. A sheep will take herself off to give birth and then stay away from the flock for a good few days to make sure the lambs properly attach to her. If you keep sheep too tightly together during lambing, you get a lot of mis-mothering. Confused lambs wandering off after the wrong mum and getting lost. Or ewe’s stealing lambs that they thought were theirs. You don’t want an ewe with twins, taking another lamb from a mother who only has one. That’s a lot of strain on a ewe suddenly looking after three lambs, and deeply sad for the mum who has lost her lamb. Interestingly, it can also be quite a useful device. Say a ewe did have triplets, if another sheep gives birth at a similar time but only has one, you can take a triplet, cover it in the amniotic fluids of the ewe who had one and give it to her. Then instead of triplets being very hard on the ewe and all being smaller because of the strain, you get to have two sets of singles. Equally, if a ewe lost her lamb, you can get her a lamb from elsewhere, maybe one whose mother died in childbirth. So we avoid mismothering, but can also use it to give lambs and mums the best chance where necessary. A little lambing ramble for you there! Lots more stories to come soon.

This week's recipe is an absolute beauty. You are going to love it! And I implore you to cook it. Pork and beef meatballs with parmesan, tarragon and lemon zest, cooked in a rich broth with spinach and orecchiette. My lord, sweet juicy parmesan meatballs swimming in a lip smacking broth is utter heaven. It’s based on an Italian soup called Minestra Maritata, which loosely translates as wedding soup, named after the wonderful marriage of flavours. I’ve oomphed it up a bit and created a lovely base to begin the soup, which gives a lot of extra depth, and added short cuts for a few aspects of the recipe to make it super easy to cook at home. This is an EASY one, where the flavour/reward massively outweighs the effort. The one thing you really must do is make some chicken stock. I think for a brothy dish like this a stock cube just doesn’t cut it. If you can find some really good quality ready made bone broth like Borough Broth or Freja here in the UK, that’s ok.

I’m not going to write a recipe for chicken stock here because it’s just too easy, but I will tell you how I do it. Buy a couple of chicken carcasses from your butcher, sometimes they give them away for free, along with six chicken wings. Place these in a large pan with a carrot, quartered, just the green top bit of a leek, an onion, quartered (with the skin left on), a head of garlic, halved and a parmesan rind (or bacon ends) – a great use of some things that otherwise goes to waste, but not essential if you don’t have any in the fridge. Cover with cold water and bring up to a simmer, skimming off any grey foam that rises to the surface as it comes to the boil. Then leave this on a gentle simmer for four hours and strain. I keep tubs of stock in the freezer for dishes such as this.

One last little note – traditionally these meatballs are made with beef and pork mince. I have a real thing against bad quality pork, I just don’t eat it. When you’ve kept pigs and know what real pork looks like, you stay away from the bad stuff. I find it hard to find quality pork mince – so for this recipe I’ve used some of my favourite local sausages that I know and trust. If you happen to have access to some great pork mince and want to use that, add a bit more bread to the meatballs, as I’ve accounted for the rusk in my sausages and therefore used less bread. The bread is there to make them juicy, it absorbs the fat as they cook and gives a lovely bounce to the texture. Any gluten free folks out there, use gluten free sausages, or just leave out the bread as the meatballs are still delicious.

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I wanted to start by thanking you for such a warm and supportive welcome to Substack. To all of you who’ve joined so far, thank you, it means the world. I’m still figuring out how it all works, but looking forward to sharing more and more. Last week I did my first live, with Finn Harries, as part of Grubstack which was such a great conversation and made me want to do more. Maybe live lambing? Or veg planting?

This week I’m sharing another farm diary and a recipe that exploded on my Instagram, I think it has 12 million views total. An unusual version of shakshuka that I had whilst on holiday in Morocco a few years ago, with little bits of spiced lamb mince poached in the bubbling tomato sauce, cooked in a tiny little café hidden in the bustling streets of Essaouira.

On the farm EVERYTHING is geared towards lambing. I have 45 sheep due to start giving birth at the end of March, which means a month of madness is about to begin. Late nights, early starts and extreme animal husbandry. I am fizzing with excitement.

Lambing is pure joy, intense highs and pretty desperate lows. It’s raw and real, a time when you feel deeply connected with the best of nature. Witnessing the complex sensitivities of animal instincts on an intimate level. Lambs born at 2am in horizontal driving sleet, soaked to the bone and surviving on warm bursts of milk, sheltered from the worst of it by a mother’s intuition to stand on the right side of the wind with the protection of a hedge. The weather plays a vital role in those fragile first few moments and it’s often a fine line between life and death. Breached lambs, lost lambs, rejected lambs, mis-mothering confusion and prowling foxes. The more you are out with them the more chances you have to save them. This year I’ll be setting my tepee out in the field and camping alongside them for the most important moments, fire lit, pot bubbling, lantern glowing. Just got to hope this incredible weather holds!

Our farm earns income through selling hogget, an older, slow-grown version of lamb that’s not quite mutton, and through government subsidies for all that we do to protect and provide for nature. The sheep are the key to maintaining our wildflower meadows and of course providing the hogget I sell each year. So this next month is critical to what are already pretty non-existent margins. If the weather is brutal and I haven’t done a good enough job nurturing the ewes over winter it can be a gruelling month on the farm.

To prepare I have been moving the ewes around the farm each week, dividing up the fields into sections with mobile electric fencing and rotating them around the grass we managed to save from autumn, and the little that has been growing through winter. As we get close to lambing I also feed them a little grain every other day, as a lamb puts on 75% of its foetal growth in the last 6 weeks of pregnancy, a small bit of hard food does wonders for the mothers when there’s not enough forage.

Yesterday I moved them into a field that I’ve been saving all winter, in fact it hasn’t been grazed or touched in 2 years. It’s just been sitting wild and unkempt, covered in large tufts of dead tangled grass, thousands of dried wildflower seed heads, rushes and patches of gorse and bramble. It’s beautiful. One side is banked by a huge hedge with giant oaks, holly and blackthorn. The other by an undulating spring water stream crowned by catkins and willow blossoms. It’s a field fizzing with life, every step you take out pops a vole or mouse from a tuft of wild grass, the owls hunt there all night and the hawks by day. Insects flitter in the low lying light and it’s stringed with deer tracks and bolt holes hidden in the wild tangled hedge. The birdsong is a waterfall of noise, and I’ve left it like this for nature to thrive there. But a good graze now will do it some good. Dynamic change in habitat is important. The tall tufty grass provides a lot of room for the small mammals, but it also chokes and diminishes the wildflower, so a quick and intense graze by the sheep will knock back the grass and open up the ground for a fantastic wildflower season. It’s a field covered in knapweed, corky fruited water dropwort, hawkbit and birdsfoot trefoil - excellent butterfly and insect fodder. The grass will grow back in no time and it will continue being this wonderful habitat as a hay meadow until late autumn.

Late yesterday, my brother Lucian and I took the tractor around the edge of the field, topping a little path for the electric fencing so the long grass wouldn’t short the current. We then spent the evening rolling out wire and bashing in metal posts with a pair of tawny owls calling to each other from the woods below. Early this morning we went up the hill, laid down the sheep’s current fence and walked them down the hill by shaking an empty bag of feed for them to follow. They did so with glee, hopping and skipping down the hill with a slightly heavier and wobblier gait than usual, Lucian following behind in the gator to round up any stragglers who took a wrong turn.

I have a tame bottle-fed ewe in this flock, Bramble, who grew up by the aga with a baby goat Hazel. For years Bramble was convinced she was a goat and didn’t want anything to do with the sheep. But eventually I managed to persuade her to join this flock and she is incredibly useful because she’ll follow me anywhere, and when you get one sheep moving, the others follow which makes jobs like this much easier when you don’t have a sheep dog. Eventually we made it down, tucked them through a little break in the hedge and they exploded onto the grass. Watching your sheep enter a new field is one of the most rewarding moments of being a farmer, watching them foraging in the abundance, walking the edges, inspecting their new surroundings. A field becomes a home to a sheep, they get very attached and don’t love leaving somewhere they’ve been for a long time, even when the grass has completely gone and they’ve been nibbling at nothing to survive. My brother and I sat for a while, enjoying the fruits of our labour, a job done well. Watching and listening as the sheep ate avidly for a while, then collapsed on a bank and basked in the sun, chewing the cud in peace. We grabbed a water trough and filled it from a mobile tank, gave them a salt lick and left them to it. They’ll be here for two weeks, then I’ll move them closer to home just as they begin to start lambing.

We then went up to our neighbours farm to stock back up on hay as ours had run out. Lucian’s looking after things while I take a few days off before lambing, so we’re stocking up on feed and getting all the big jobs done to make it easier for him. We fed our neighbours cows quickly while we were there. Topping up their barley straw and enjoying the deep guttural moos and sounds of the barn, dust sparkling in the low dying light, steam puffing from their noses as they grabbed great mouthfuls and chewed contentedly.

Anyway, this shakshuka. Ellie and I were on holiday in Morocco taking a break before lambing a few years ago. We’d spent a few wild days in Marrakesh eating the most extraordinary food, before escaping the madness of the city and heading to the coast. Essouaria is a beautiful windswept seaside town, roaring with culture. Incredible fish markets, wild dunes rolling into the sea, stunning colours, people and carpets but it’s quieter than Marrakech, a nice change of pace. Although we had been struggling to find food of the same calibre as the capital, the restaurants in the old town felt touristy and didn’t have the same oomph. So we were mostly cooking at home, saffron spiced agrodolce courgettes with eggs and flatbreads for breakfast, fresh fish bought straight from the harbour grilled on a little barbeque for lunch and a sour carrot tagine with spiced sultana rice inspired by a dish we’d had in Marrakech for dinner.

On our last day we were bumbling through the market looking to buy a few pots of saffron and spice blends to take home, when we stumbled past a tiny little restaurant rammed with locals, always a good sign. We sat down for some bread and olives, had a very simple vegetable tagine and then ate this incredible shakshuka with little pockets of lamb spiced heavily with cinnamon gently poaching in the harissa spiked tomato sauce. Runny yolks and warm flatbreads, heaven. It’s become a staple at home, and makes a very good start to the day on a cold grey spring morning, a proper fire in your belly. Enjoy!

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This Thursday March 13 at 15:00 GMT I'll be joined by of The Seeds Will Grow in the Substack app for a live video conversation.

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Our session takes place as part of Substack’s food festival Grubstack, which is bringing together top food writers, chefs, and culinary voices from around the world for live cooking demos, virtual tastings, and in-depth discussions on today’s biggest food trends. You can see the full schedule here.

You’ll need to download the Substack app to join our conversation. This is for everyone, whether you have a paid subscription or not. If you enable notifications, the app will notify you when I’m live on Thursday March 13 at 15:00 GMT. Just tap that, and you’re in.

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You will also to be able to watch other participants go live as part of Grubstack simply by checking out the Food and Drink tab on your home screen on desktop (pictured below) or in the Substack app:

Have any questions related to our topic that you’d like for us to answer during the live video session? Leave them in the comments below, and we may just get to them during our conversation.

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Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday March 13 at 15:00 GMT!

I am sitting on a tree stump, soaking up the sun on the first day of spring. There is a woodpecker hammering away at a tree in the woods below me, the coconutty smell of gorse rolling down the hill behind me and the birds are loudly exalting the returning warmth of the sun. God it feels good!

I imagine you’ve come here from my Instagram, a platform I love and owe much. But lately I’ve been craving a new space, playful and uninhibited, with room for written seasonal recipes and longer form content around food, farming and nature . So welcome to The Farm Diaries, a written, audio and visual diary, with thoughts on all things food and the wider world of nature, that is so entwined with the way we eat.

The core will be a weekly seasonal recipe, simple cooking, made with love, that you can easily replicate at home. If you’ve enjoyed watching recipe videos on my Instagram but wanted them written up to cook at home, this is the place. And I’m going to start with a few of the big hitters, lamb mince Shakshuka, chorizo, leek and potato stew, courgette, ricotta and basil tart, a few variations of sardine pasta. And then we’ll just see where the year takes us. Around each weekly recipe will be a diary-like space for all sorts of exciting things: updates from the farm, lambing stories, goat escapes, bottle feeding and veg growing. I see space for nature writing, audio clips of birdsong, and thoughts on the changes I’d love to see in the world of food and farming. I look forward to sharing my favourite songs, books and cooking equipment. Smallholder tips and advice on growing at home whether that be on a kitchen windowsill, balcony or in the garden. Expect guest recipes from some of my favourite cooks, like my partner Ellie Hix, who’s food is some of the best I’ve ever eaten. And lastly, we’re just in the process of moving house, so some interior design queries that I’d love your help on, paint colours, veg patch planning, meadow restoration and habitat building.

There is of course a paid element to Substack and the support of paying subscribers is what gives me the room and time for proper in depth writing and recipe testing. If you’ve been a long time follower, for the price of a cup of coffee you will be massively supporting me and what I do. In return, expect the best of me, and the most intimate window into this little corner of the world I inhabit with delicious seasonal recipes too. If you were a fan of my book The Farm Table, this is a space I think you will love.

To begin…

We have had a relatively easy winter on the farm. It’s been cold, stormy and the weather brutal at times, we’ve lost a lot of trees which is devastating, but it’s been dry and that makes life so much easier. It’s incredible the misery living in perpetual mud brings, and I’m glad that's not been the case this winter. Last November (breeding season), I decided not to put any Billies in with the nanny goats and take a year off to scale down my goats, instead going bigger on Hebridean sheep which we breed for hogget. I added 15 more breeding ewes into the flock and now we have 43 due to Lamb at the beginning of April, which should mean around 60-70 lambs as they tend to have twins 50% of the time. But, of course, nature had other plans and just my luck on Christmas Eve a pair of twin goats was born… and then for the next 2 weeks, they just kept popping out. 14 kids born in the freezing cold, out of season and unplanned. An escaped Billy back in August, must have jumped the fence and done the deed. Not ideal. Heat lamps, hot water bottles and drying off wet kids against my chest at 2am in the morning on new years eve. What a start to the year. In spite of this they have of course been an absolute joy, there is no animal more playful, curious and idyllic than a kid goat. But the weather has been hard on them and the nannies, even in a warm bedded barn being fed every day with an endless supply of hay. We lost 2 kids, one mother died and Ibis, who had twins, lost milk from one side of her udders. So we are bottle-feeding two kids goats, Wren and Penguin, 4 times a day.

As we approach Spring, the grass is just beginning to grow and the weather is warming at last. The birds are singing louder, sap rising and buds on the trees. Catkins swing from banks of hazel, wild garlic is just beginning to shoot and the wild daffodils are flowering in the woods and meadows. The returning warmth of Spring is the most glorious feeling after the tough months of winter. It has started with a dry sunny spell that is heavenly, but I’m sure we have some gritty weather to come. My haystack is nearly empty and I’ve had to borrow a few trailer loads of hay from our kind neighbours. The sheep are looking round and slowing down high up on the hill. I’ve been rotating them around the farm all winter giving them what little grass has been growing but even that is beginning to run out. This is a funny little hungry gap.

The weather has me thinking of the growing season to come in the garden and I am about to order my seeds for the year, always later than intended, distracted by my animals who come first. I am a reluctant gardener, I love the produce and results, but I’m not so great at the diligent dedication it takes. Preferring the wilder more instinctual aspects of animal husbandry and I find the characterful individuality of my animals deeply rewarding and profound. This year my plan is to grow a lot of a few favourite things, rather than a little of everything. I want to be self-sufficient in the veg that I love and those things that taste particularly good when homegrown. And these few weeks before Lambing are a great time to get planting before chaos begins. I’ll discuss my seed order and garden plan when I get to it!

This week's recipe is for a Portuguese inspired chicken stew. It feels like the kind of thing your granny would make if you were ill. Unbelievably nourishing and comforting to eat, with textures and flavours that delight the body and soul. It’s also incredibly easy to make, which I love, and yields a big old pot that should last you for days. I have become obsessed with this coriander and garlic paste that the Portuguese use so much in their cooking. Stirred through soups, on grilled meat, with veg… it is epic. This is a big hearty chicken stew with fennel, lemon, bay and celery, thickened with rice and chickpeas and finished with this magical coriander paste. It uses a whole boiled chicken, the meat stripped from the bones, then the bones back into the pot to make a delicious broth. You then fry off some veg with herbs and spices, add the broth, thicken it with rice and chickpeas, then finish with the chicken and a really generous amount of the coriander paste with lots of lemon. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve made in a while, and will 100% be in my next book, but a sneak preview here as a special treat for the first of you to arrive. Much love, enjoy and happy cooking. Thank you for joining this new venture! Your support means the world and those of you who’ve already become paid subscribers… you warm my heart, thank you!

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