Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Chief Executive of the Soil Association, an organic farmer and campaigner known for pioneering organic pig systems and sustainable farming.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39How does the farm inspire you?
Oh, it does completely. I think everything that I've done in life and that I do in life is really about the farm and the countryside. When I'm outside, when I'm walking the farm, that's when I feel really me. The wildlife, the animals, the sense of stewardship, the privilege actually of being able to be outside and in nature.
Presenter asks
3:23What one thing would you say is most important about farming and the Soil Association?
Well, I guess it's basically about helping people farm better and eat better. I mean, you know, that's a big subject. But we need to keep treading more lightly. ... The Soil Association's job and organic farming's role is to try and make more space for nature and enable farm animals and wildlife and people to thrive while we farm.
Presenter asks
5:09Tell me about your five great aunts, Millie, Molly, Cora, Nora and Nina.
They were amazing women. They lived over on the Morvern Hills and farmed there. They had a wonderful independent life. They were so full of optimism and vibrancy. And I admired the life they were living and the independence that they had. ... And I knew I wanted to have that sort of independence in my life and that ability to forge my own way.
Nelson Mandela
Because A, I haven't read it and I want to. And B, it might teach me something about incarceration.
The luxury
Sculpture of Gaia by David Lomax
I'm going to take a wonderful sculpture that I have by David Lomax, who's a wonderful local sculptor, but he's amazing. And she's Gaia. She's an African woman carrying behind her back in a very elegant way an ostrich egg, which is a symbol of the world. And she always inspires me.
Presenter asks
13:53What happened when your brother Philip became ill during your A-levels?
I just stopped. I mean, I was literally in the middle of the exams. I never finished my A-levels. I went straight to the hospital and stayed there with him and his wife for several weeks while he was deteriorating. So it was a very rapid end to my school career.
Presenter asks
28:03Why did you take over the local pub?
Well, because I loved that particular pub. I'd spent a lot of my teen years there and it was going downhill horribly. My partner Tim actually, you know, it's his baby really. And I wanted something that was really local, that was in our community. I wanted to be feeding our own people and to start to generate a food community around the village. And the pub was a bit of a way into that.
Presenter asks
33:19What book will you take?
I'm going to take Long Road to Freedom, Nelson Mandela.
“She's Gaia. She's an African woman carrying behind her back in a very elegant way an ostrich egg, which is a symbol of the world. And she always inspires me.”
“I'm always a farmer, first and foremost.”
“I wanted to spend some time where nobody knew me, where I could explore more myself.”
“Farming is a really hard way to make a living, actually. We might have capital assets, a lot of us farmers, but actually trying to make a margin on what you do is really hard.”
“I was more interested in nature and being outside and farming and animals than I was in people. I thought people were actually wrecking the world, the world that I loved.”