How a forced change of direction flowered into an income - and a passion

This month we meet Dawn Pearse whose need to avoid sunlight due to developing Lupus) led to a quite different way of managing her smallholding...

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Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease, is a surprisingly common illness, with 1 in 1000 people in the UK thought to have it. It causes joint/ muscle aches and pains, rashes, depression, inflammation, and extreme fatigue, and with 60% of sufferers having light sensitivity, it is not an ideal illness for the smallholder!

Dawn Pearse's Lupus began several years ago and in keeping with many smallholders hit with ill health, she and her husband John continued to manage their commitments (sheep, horses, pigs, poultry plus a very productive vegetable area) as best they could. Gradually though, as Dawn's illness became worse (she suffered a systematic breakdown) alongside looking after elderly relatives, their five-acre smallholding was scaled right back to the horses and just a few poultry plus with their daughters leaving home, a much smaller veg plot.

LOCKDOWN DAHLIAS

When Covid hit, as with a lot of smallholders, life took on a slightly surreal, stress-free existence. Those of us with land were lucky to have the space to relax, and with livestock to manage, enough to do to stop us becoming bored or frustrated. And so it was with Dawn and John. During the first lockdown, Dawn decided to grow a few dahlias in some of the land vacated by her reduced veg growing. With 35 years of gardening experience (both professional and at home), this proved a real success, and having posted a few photos on Facebook, people then started to ask if they could buy them (the flowers, not the photos). In Dawn's words: 'Following those first few enquiries, I then kind of fell into the idea of growing to sell.' She spent a very intense three months researching and learning (lockdown proving a particularly useful time to do so) and joined a variety of groups and forums including 'Flowers from the Farm' and 'The Best Bunch' (membership associations for cut flower growers in the UK).