It's COUNTRY LIFE for us!

As we step into spring, we meet three women making their living from the countryside

- JENNY JEFFERIES

Karen Thompson, 60, is a farmer at Povey Farm, which lies in the picturesque Moss Valley in Derbyshire. Karen lives with her husband Stephen and has three grown-up children.

I grew up in Northumberland, and know and love the countryside and animals of all kinds. At seven I wrote ‘When I grow up, I want to live on a farm’, and I still have this piece of writing!

I left Nottingham University with a BSc Honours degree in animal science. Then I worked for an agricultural merchant before getting married in 1988 and leaving to work full-time on Stephen’s fourth-generation family farm. Together we manage the pigs and the arable farmland. We spend long summer evenings harvesting, bringing in bales and improving the field drainage, which is very hard work.

New wave

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, I was very much in a man’s world. I’d be the only woman at farmers’ meetings, yet I was determined to make my mark. Gradually, women started to be seen more at events and meetings. They were becoming decision-makers on farms and were starting careers in agricultural companies.

With all of our children, I worked until labour started. They were born in hospital, but our second child had an undetected congenital heart condition and tragically died at four days old. The whole family was profoundly affected by this experience, but harvest had to go on and the pigs had to be tended to, so we carried on farming while we grieved. There was no choice. As the children grew older, their tractor-driving skills became a huge help, and gradually we started to develop a a small butchery enterprise.