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MY dream farm - following smallholders on Channel 4 (From Smallholder)
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MY dream farm - following smallholders on Channel 4
8:50am Thursday 4th February 2010
After a two-year absence from our screens, Monty Don returns to Channel 4 with My Dream Farm. The programme follows Monty Don as he helps six different families to realise their dream of returning to the land. They’re all determined to leave the rat race behind and transform their lives, but with few skills and no previous experience, it’s going to be far from easy.
With over forty years of involvement in farming, Monty Don is on hand to guide our novices through their first, tentative steps. Filmed throughout the farming year, the series is a celebration of rural skills and crafts and will help inform and inspire viewers about raising animals and producing their own food at home.
Tonight’s episode features stressed executive Karon Roberts and her partner Simon Sanders, who have given up the rat race to rear rare breed pigs in Suffolk. Simon inherited a 13 acre site from his farmer grandfather, and after years of travelling the world, he wants to give something back to the village he grew up in.
The couple have grand plans and expect to spend nearly £1 million transforming their derelict land with pigs, vegetables and an enormous barn housing a farm shop, café and art gallery. It is not farming as Monty Don knows it, but he is keen to help as these first-time farmers charge headfirst into a scheme many landowners would think foolhardily ambitious.
Monty quickly realises that the urban outsiders’ plan relies on the goodwill of local residents and helps the couple to make their farm a visitor-friendly hub of activity. But the whole scheme is threatened when some of the pigs fall ill with a devastating agricultural disease.
My Dream Farm 4th February, 8pm on Channel 4
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Rick Blain, Daskot, Bulgaria says...
10:29am Sat 6 Feb 10
Three year's ago my partner, Jean and I bought a house in Bulgaria with one acre of land and some small barn's, we now keep chicken's for meat and egg's, we breed rabbit's for excellent meat and fur we have a pair of Muscovy ducks and last year our sow gave birth to 16 piglet's, our freezer's are full with fruit and veg from the garden, and meat from pig's chickens and rabbits, we do this with all the set back's and obstacles living in a foreign country can throw at us not to mention the extreme's of weather. in the UK and on our budget much of this would not be possible because of all the H&S law's and regulation's, if we need to take our sow to the boar we just load her onto a trailer, no certificate required, if it's time for slaughter then it takes place on our land done the traditional way. Ok so we are not completely SF yet but we are heading in the right direction with no help from Monty or any tv program makers, don't misunderstand me, if someone came along with a bag full of money I would be a fool to refuse it and as a fan of Monty and a interest in SF I would certainty be tuning in to channel 4, should I be able to receive it.
I suppose SF can be defined in different ways by different people and I also suppose that these way's may depend on how much money one has in the bank but I think that to the real "Good lifer's" it's all about self achievement, getting satisfaction from one's own labours, enjoying the outdoor's and above all being happy in what we do, Jean and I have never been happier.