The Farmer's Wife: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

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Was ich mittlerweile ebenfalls als Bestandteil dieser Kultur kenne: Frau mit leidenschaftlichem Kinderwunsch stellt nach erster Niederkunft (nach eigenen Aussagen) überrascht fest, dass Mutterschaft komplette Fremdbestimmung bedeutet, Dauerbeschallung durch Babygebrüll, Schlafentzug, keine Sekunde für sich selbst, sie ist bis ins Mark erschöpft und ausgelaugt. Findet das aber so erstrebenswert (Helen Rebanks betont mehrfach, dass sie sich das schließlich selbst ausgesucht hat), dass sie weitere Kinder bekommt. The words in this book flowed out of me. I loved writing it. I am grateful to Louisa and the team at Faber for seeing the value in my story.’

Compelling. This feels like a book she has been bursting to write. Without the Helen Rebankses of this world, everything would fall apart.’ Country Life What was great about my grandfather is that he looked like he belonged in his place in the world. Maybe not a very good dad to his son, but very kind to me. He knew the answer to anything I could conceivably ask about our land and this valley, more aware than other people – for example, he knew exactly where the foxes went under the wire fence, as he kept an eye out for fox hair. And he did something which I thought magical. While others ran around, unable to make things go as fast as they wanted, he’d be in a slow gear and yet get loads done. He seemed really smart and I admired smartness, despite having no interest in school. I tried to emulate him. I wanted to spend time stopping and really looking at things.If we focus on women in the media that are now doing jobs that are traditionally done by men, that is all well and good, that’s really shifting the balance where these roles that have been dominated by men in the past. But then we’re completely dismissing and ignoring a whole history of women’s work and lives. It is not just historical; there’s quite a lot of women still living out this role. I’m doing this for all the other quiet lives of women out there that are well lived,” she adds.

Helen Rebanks is a farmer, a businesswoman, a teacher, a conservationist and a working mother – and a cook.A few years later, Grandma only came on Fridays, when she came to get her hair done by Mum. As Grandma leaned over the kitchen sink with a towel around her shoulders, Mum would pour jugs of water over her head from a basin and rub shampoo into her grey curly hair.

James has just pulled into the driveway. ‘Can you come and give me a hand tagging lambs?’ he shouts. ‘It won’t take long, there’s not many in this batch.’ Any excuse to avoid the paperwork, I think, and I push it to one side.

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The focus is the family kitchen table,” she tells me. “What I am trying to do is connect who is doing the cooking with where our food is coming from. This includes good family and traditional mixed farms, eating well-sourced produce and championing British provenance. It’s also about the choices I’ve made to be a stay-at-home mum.” I’m saying let’s have a look at under the surface of this role. This invisible, unpaid role,” she tells me. “I’ve been made to feel like dirt several times in my life by people saying, ‘oh well you’re just the farmer’s wife.’ What I’m trying to do is reclaim this role. I am saying it is one of the most rewarding ways to live a life and I’m proud to be a farmer’s wife. Then she desperately wants to be a mother, but none of the stories she tells make that seem like a good decision. She obviously suffered from postpartum depression but though her midwife expresses a concern, she's not treated (what?!?) Even the "good" stories she tells about her children seem forced. She seems happiest sharing all the disgustingly gory details about her labor and delivery for each child.

Any male lambs that don’t make the grade for breeding as they grow are castrated and sold for fattening in the autumn. I bend the white-coloured plastic ear tag into the handheld tagger and pass it to James.

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I put the oven on and find an aubergine in the fridge that needs using, so I start by cutting it into cubes. Tom wants to help, so I ask him to put the cubes on a roasting tray. Standing on a stool, he loads them up in the front loader of his toy tractor and drops them on to the tray. I season them with some mixed spice, salt and pepper and a little olive oil. While the oven is heating up, I brown the mince with an onion in my big heavy pan that has a lid. Pour the red wine into the browning pan, sizzling it up and scraping everything from the pan into the liquid, then tip the wine mixture over the meat and vegetables and add herbs if using. OFFERMAN: I love to go participate in the whole thing. When I'm spending time and communing with the Rebanks, then that makes me aware. It redoubles my attention in the rest of my life. Where's this food coming from? - no matter where I am in the world. Who made this, and do they care about us in our health, or do they care more about their profits? SIMON: Helen Rebanks, you know, I don't believe I have ever asked this question of a philosopher or a poet, but I'm going to try it on you. You see a lot of life on the farm. What's life all about? After my grandfather died, when I was 17, my life revolved for 20 years around my father. It was quite tense and painful – we were different people and clashed quite a bit. But in the last 10 or more years of his life he either improved or I changed my perception. Without becoming overly soppy here – with that whole northern father and son thing – he ended up as my best friend. I was writing The Shepherd’s Life when I found out he was dying of cancer and the manuscript changed. In my mind it became a letter to him. I wanted to tell his story, my story and say why I loved him. To my surprise, he was very proud of my book.