SPEAKER_01 0:00

Now in 2021, Stephanie Hafferty moved to rural Wales where she started to create a homestead on around half an acre. Five years later, I wonder how it's going. Stephanie, good to talk to you. How is it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Um well this month it's all been a bit bonkers, really, because it's gone from really really hot to really really cold and then really really wet and windy. So um it's not quite where I'd like it to be for this time of June, but other than that, it's going well. It's I just keep making more beds. Uh last year I had a second polytunnel put up, and I'm this year's project is making a food forest between the two polytunnels. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

In my mind, you're sort of bolted to the side of a hill. Is that a fair description, or have you got a a certain amount of of level land?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

For Wales, part of it's level. Um, yeah, so I'm on a hill, but I'm not I'm kind of up enough to have amazing views, but not so high up that there are sheep flying past the window when it's windy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

What's been the experience uh of of the past five years? I mean, when you when you moved in, there was a lot to do, wasn't there? And you're now much more experienced, it's it's your home uh and your homestead that you set out to do. What's been the the experience?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

It's been really interesting. Um, I mean, obviously there are challenges because I'd moved from Somerset, which is milder, to somewhere with um a lot more rain, but actually at the moment that's quite beneficial. So we've we've got lovely green grass everywhere. Um and deal, yeah, just dealing with things like the different environment and different weather patterns, and even within that, I think the fact that the winter times across the UK have got a bit stranger. It's adjusting how I garden to cope with higher winds and heavier rainfall, which is the brilliant thing about gardening, isn't it? That you're constantly having to adapt to different situations and learn new things.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

So, did you have a preconceived idea of what you wanted to grow and what you wanted to do that that has now had to change?

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Um, ish, not too much. I mean, I have been growing for well over 30 years in different situations, so I went there with a lot of experience, yeah. Uh but yes, certain it's timings. Timings is the one that I've really had to learn very quickly. That I grow a lot throughout the winter time, and the times that I would be sewing for the polytunnel, as they are now, and also for outside, in Somerset, it's about two weeks earlier where I am in Wales, just to allow things to establish before proper autumn sets in. So that the first year I slipped up, obviously, with the timings, and then it was like, okay, this needs to be done a little bit earlier just to get things in the ground because where I am in the autumn, I mean it's beautiful, but it's almost like an off switch when it's the light seems to go. And you've I mean there's still plenty of light because I'm high up, but the kind of growing light seems to go a bit. Are you self-sufficient? No, no, because I like coffee and tea.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Apart from the coffee and the tea, but even that would be a challenge for for you in Wales, wouldn't it? But but in in most of the other uh things that you you you grow uh and put on the plate, are are you self-sufficient-ish?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Ish, definitely. Things like fruit, um, vegetables, herbs, that kind of thing. I do a lot of preserving, I um make lots of pickles, p pickles, I can't say the word, um, and freeze things. I do a lot of canning in jars, so preserving things in a water bath canner, um, so that there's food throughout the winter as well when there's not things like tomatoes, that kind of thing to go in foods. But I've got things that I'm harvesting all throughout the winter as well in the garden. Um so to a degree, obviously um I don't grow bread to make uh flour to make bread, so there's things that I do buy, but there's it's exciting as well because the diet is always changing.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

You have a seasonal, very much seasonal diet.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, so we're moving, I grow oh the other one, asparagus. I grow asparagus in the polytunnel, which was had suggested to me, and you do get a much better crop than outside where I am. In Somerset, it was all outside, and um, so we're just moving out of asparagus in everything to peas and broad beans, so it's just a lovely transition, and then once we're coming out of the peas, we'll be full on into runner beans, which I adore.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

I talking to you, and I wish people could see the smile on your face because you're clearly so passionate about where you live and what you do. Um it can't all be easy and and as fluffy and lovely as as you would say. I mean, what have been the biggest challenges?

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Um rain, um, extreme rain. Uh sometimes it's I didn't get my apple trees pruned this winter because it was so wet and windy. I've got one of those beautiful tripod ladders, and I wouldn't have felt safe upper cutting the apple trees. Um, and then the you know, the obviously I work as well, so it's not like I've got endless free times waiting for like, oh well, this day's fine, I can go up the ladder. Um, I've got a solution for that now, which is a long-handled electric pruner, but so my apple trees weren't pruned, and that's a job I'm having to do. I thought I'd wait until the blossom had finished because I felt sorry for the bees if I cut the branches off. But it needs to be done because they need to obviously they need the airflow, and if they get too big, they shade the polytunnels. So um, so yeah, that's one thing, and yeah, it's um yeah, rain, I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

I mean you are busy at the show here at the NEC talking about all of the things that you're in involved in, and there will clearly be people who look at you and think, I'd like to do that. That's my ideal. What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Um it takes a lot of time, it's very time-consuming, and so I would think about how much time you have around all your other commitments. Um, I'm fortunate in that this is also my work. I'm a garden writer, so I do this to it is what I use in my books, in my um articles that I write, so it's part of my work. Whereas I think if you're going into it thinking I can do this on a Saturday afternoon, it's gonna you can, but you want a smaller amount of growing space. That's something that's more usable. And my children have grown up.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Ah, so they're that they're not there to help anymore.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Uh no, but also they're not little children, which is quite crucial. When I when they were little, um the garden over the past 30 years has evolved from it just got bigger and bigger as the children got older, and but then yeah, they're they're all adults.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

I I'm sure that more than one person sort of uh makes an analogy with you and the television programme The Good Life, where the intention was to try and be as self-sufficient as possible, coffee and tea notwithstanding. I is it is it possible to do that nowadays?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

If uh to be entirely self-sufficient as they were wanting to be, and they would not have had coffee, they'd have made it out of acorns and tea I don't know what the substitute, herbal tea or something, which is lovely, but it's not in the morning I want tea. Um you need no mortgage, you need a private income of some sort, because even if you're generating your own electricity, you've got to pay council tax and those kinds of things. These days it would be impossible, I think, for most people to live a life without broadband or a phone. Um, so those things were not part of life back when the good life was on. And are you gonna run a car? How are you gonna keep that going? I mean, if you live somewhere very rural, which they didn't, they lived in Serbiton, um, you need to be able to factor that in. So I don't know how realistic it is unless you've got private income and no mortgage. I've got a mortgage.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

So it's difficult to be completely off the grid as well, isn't it? I mean, how how rural are you? Where's your nearest neighbour or nearest village?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

I'm actually not as rural as it looks.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Um I chose that on purpose. I didn't want to fall off my ladder and never be found again. Um I'm actually so it it it looks like I'm in the middle of nowhere, but actually I'm ten minutes from um and the nearest, it's a tiny town, but it's got supermarket and a doctor's and whole food shops and petrol station, and you can buy organic coffee there.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah. I I guess it's about making incremental change, isn't it? And and not trying to do everything uh differently. What does the future now therefore hold for you? I mean, you've done so much and you've achieved so much. You're writing and you're talking at the shows, uh, as well as managing uh the homestead. What next? Have you set yourself any any bigger challenges or or what comes next?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Um actually I'm gonna decorate my house. I haven't touched it since I moved anything.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

You've done the outdoors and not the inside.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, inside now it's like okay, I've really I don't like that colour, it's got to go. Um it's I'm working on some new book ideas, and so those kinds of projects is very much so. This summer it's a mixture of decorating the house, making this new little forest garden in the back garden multi-layered, which I'm excited about doing. My budget is zero for that. I'm not allowed to spend any, I've set myself that challenge not to spend any money on it. Um I'm allowed to use tools I've already got, obviously. Um, and working on some new book ideas.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Hmm. Um the in the more information for people who want to know what it is you're doing, because you're a in fact it's no dig, isn't it? I do no digital. I was talking to somebody else about that, and it's um it it divides opinion, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, but I think that's okay, because I think everything in gardening divides opinion. You know, it's like um I really, really like wasps. I do everything I can to attract wasps because they're such an important pollinator and predator, and other people are just horrified by the idea. Uh, you know, we are all different. I think the thing with no dig, it's been around for centuries, it's a really old idea. Um I've got books about no-dig gardening that was written in the 1940s, you know, it's been around a long time. Um, just ideas move much quicker these days, obviously. Um I think if you don't want to do it, then it's not compulsory, is it? But we do know more about the soil now, and I think that is the crucial thing, and it's not saying to anybody, your granddad was wrong, like my granddad was Doc is a lotman, you know. He wasn't wrong, he was using the advice that was around at the time and the knowledge that was around at the time, but we now know about the importance of soil biology and soil life, and also the fact that soil locks in carbon. So being adaptable is important. So I think it's you're not telling people but they're wrong, but I think it would be look at the reasons why it's a good idea. But you don't there is an extreme no-dig as well, which you don't want to be doing that either. Where you know, if you dig a hole to plant a tree, they think that's mad, and it's like, you know, we're getting controversial territory. Yeah, Stephanie, are we?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Um what's the uh the website address if people want to know more about what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Fortunately, it's my name stephaniehafferty.co.uk.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

That's easily, doesn't it? I had another one which was nodighome.com. That's exactly the same website. Okay, good. Two ways of getting to it. Fantastic. Always a pleasure to chat to you, Stephanie. Thanks for popping in to see us. Thank you.