one family's efforts to escape the rat race and build a different life in rural Wales

Bringing up a young family in the city has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience. However, after years of servicing the competing demands of modern life and getting increasingly fed up with the traffic, pollution, emails, meetings, and general humdrum that defines the rat race, we decided to take stock. Diaries of a smallholder follows the experiences and challenges of uprooting a family in the autumn of 2019, and gradually swapping city life for the wilds of mid Wales and a more sustainable lifestyle. This roller-coaster journey involves a global pandemic, the renovation of old properties, eventually giving up mainstream work, acquiring four and a half acres of land, adjusting to a rural life, setting up a market garden, and gradually achieving the goal of self sufficiency and self reliance on a fledgling smallholding. Concepts such as permaculture, micro farming and no dig horticulture will be gradually explored, as we mould our lives around a new and more sustainable rhythm. But how do you just dig up and forge a new, greener, creative and more productive existence - and does it really enhance family life?