You can't live your life being risk-averse...

YORKSHIRE SHEPHERDESS AMANDA OWEN ON THE 'ABSOLUTE JOY' OF GIVING HER KIDS THE FREEDOM TO THRIVE. BY LISA SALMON

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SWIMMING in natural pools and playing in caves, Amanda Owen's youngest children are "feral" at the moment, she happily declares.

But the mum-of-nine, whose family life on a 2,000-acre working farm has been chronicled in the TV series Our Yorkshire Farm and Our Farm Next Door, insists the unparalleled freedom her children enjoy is an invaluable lesson for the rest of their lives.

"Life here prepares you for life anywhere," she says.

"It gives you a can-do mind-set, common sense, and a work ethic. It teaches you that you can turn your hand to anything, that you won't give up, and that sometimes life is hard and you don't get the results you want, no matter how hard you try."

Amanda, 50, has children Raven, Reuben, Miles, Edith, Violet, Sidney, Annas, Clementine and Nancy with ex-husband Clive, with whom she's currently renovating a 200-year-old property near the family farm in Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales, as documented in a new series of More4's Our Farm Next Door.

She says some of the kids have recently been playing "extreme hide and seek", and explains: "They've got places to climb, and they've even got a cave. They said, 'You'll never guess where we've been - we've been caving.' I said 'That's fantastic. I bet you didn't have all the caving kit on.

"That's the absolute joy of it, just being able to give them that freedom. We're blessed because we've got this space around us."

But in today's culture of over-protective parents and "cotton-wool kids", doesn't Amanda worry about her children - and particularly the youngest ones - Nancy, aged eight, Clemmy, nine, and Annas, 11?