How has the pandemic affected you professionally?
We've been very fortunate as we own land and live in the countryside. This also means we will be able to maintain our turnover and while some imported goods have gone up in price, we've held our prices down. Spring is our big time. There's lambing and we are trying to get the veg planted after seven months of heavy rain. I am hugely busy, partly because since the coronavirus began, we've tripled turnover in the farm shop. Lots of local people are looking for local produce and realise they don't need to go to the supermarket. In the shop we practise social distancing with a two metre pause in the queue; we have sanitisers and polystyrene screens.
What about personally?
It's amazing how quickly you adapt to change. I'm starting to sound like my 90-year-old mother, Ruth. As she says, her generation was asked to go to war, our generation has been asked to sit in the house for a few weeks. During the last 30 to 40 years, we've been accustomed to a very soft lifestyle, short of nothing, but the older generation saved for a rainy day. I have five siblings and we share responsibility for Mum. She's doing well and two of us do the day-to-day help – we talk to her through the window.
What's the worst thing about it?
It's awful, especially for so many people in nursing homes. A doctor friend of ours got coronavirus in her clinic and was ill but is happily getting better.
Are there any positives, in your view?
Life is a team effort now. You have to work hard not to argue or kill each other, but we try to avoid that all the time. One of our daughters is a teacher who's joining in the business and Mother is holding it all together. When the girls were young, I was the Saturday night cook and we had a competition to see what we were going to make for dinner. For my 60th birthday, I got a Big Green Egg barbecue and we've set it in our woodland. We're making charcoal and nothing beats the roast vegetables and roast meat on the Egg. You get to appreciate the simple things in life and realise what you don't need, also how vulnerable we all are. Nature will always win and you've got to work with it. Pollution levels are down and I hope we change the way we do things.
What keeps you going?
Red wine, I like French wine from the Rhone (a Chateauneuf du Pape on special occasions) or the Languedoc or the Loire – anything good made with a grape that comes from the land.
