Why this all started.

In 2018, my amazing friend Josh and I decided to document my mum and the family farm for 12 months. It’s fun to look back on that first ever video we made in January 2018 .

We wanted to tell the stories that happen on small family farms. We’ll get onto why that’s important a little later.

I was living in London at the time, and I vividly remember returning home to help mum in between Christmas and New Years. That’s when the penny dropped.

Cold, wet and uninspired… not my favourite time of the year, but farms have this amazing way of making you smile and bringing you back around.

You just have to be open to the idea.

A smile came after a walk down to the barn with my mum. I saw a sheep (or ewe) just hanging out with no gate, or wire, or barrier in sight.

I’m used to seeing sheep with more than enough freedom, but this ewe really did have the opportunity to dream big – roads, cities, counties were within reach.

I said to mum;

• “What’s going on with this sheep? Has she got out?”

To which the answer was:

• “Oh what Doris? No, she’s fine. I really ought to be getting rid of her, she’s too old now – but I can’t do it.”

She was one of mum’s oldest breeding ewes.

Doris.

At this point, I’d talked to enough Londoners about farming to realise that it’s become known more for the killing of animals – than the care of them.

That’s a real shame.

There’s so much more emotion, tradition and nuance to it than that.

As you can tell from that first video we made , and everything we’ve covered since.

Just take my mum as 1 simple example.

An example of how family farms in the UK think about their responsibilities to the animals and the land.

Shoot, this email was supposed to be about her wasn’t it – in the next few weeks I’ll follow up with part 2 of this story – my mum.

Speak soon,

Rufus
(Newsletter friends call me Ru)