The Funny Farm

Amusing, affecting and endearing account of one woman upping sticks and heading North to live the 'Good Life' on her very own farm...

Jackie Moffat is a Londoner, born and bred, but in 1982 moved to the Eden Valley in Cumbria, where she still lives and farms. As well as breeding Manx Loghtans (a rare breed of sheep, originating from the Isle of Man), she also writes a column for Cumbria and Lake District Life magazine.

How often have you thought you might like to chuck it all in, leave the steaming metropolis and its noise and dirt behind and make for pastures new, to begin your life again? 
 
We often talk about it but people rarely do it. Jackie Moffat is one of those who did. In 1982 she and her family - armed with a bucketload of optimism, stout boots and a highly developed sense of the ridiculous - upped sticks from London (where she'd lived all her life) and went North, to Cumbria. Their destination was the Eden Valley, and a small stock-rearing and dairy farm called Rowfoot, and there they have spent the past twenty years getting to grips with the practice of running a working farm, keeping sheep, cattle, pigs and horses, becoming part of the (often eccentric) community, coping with the ups and downs (Foot and Mouth devastated them) of farming life. 
 
For the past ten years, the author's written a regular column for the Cumbria and Lake District Life magazine, and it was this that inspired her to write about her life in rural England and the trials, tribulations and pleasures of running a farm.

Jackie Ellis

This journey through the changing seasons at Rowfoot Farm - tupping time in the autumn, winters as wet, bleak and cold here in Cumbria as elsewhere, lambing and the glories of spring, a bucolic, bee-filled Eden Valley summer with its many shows and fairs - will reveal much that you need to know about the countryside, its quirky customs and ways, and most likely a great deal that you don't. They no longer burn witches (not because they're lily-livered, it's just that getting the necessary timber from sustainable forests is a real chore). You'll find nothing here about welly-wanging either. Jackie doesn't wang her wellies, she just gets them muddy. You won't need to, of course, as this book will ensure you experience rural life vicariously and very cleanly. 
 
Along the way, Jackie bumps into friends old and new, peeps back over her shoulder every now and then to recall times past, oh and it wouldn't be her if she didn't have the occasional impassioned rant or take the odd pop at the establishment, but rest assured she's quite gentle with them. 
So join Jackie (and Katie the Lurcher, Blossom the Cob and Rowfoot's many other residents, four- and two-legged) as she recounts the occasional pitfall and many pleasures of running a small farm in one of the most beautiful parts of England.

Jackie Ellis

Books by Jackie Ellis

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