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Hi, I'm Sue!
I'm a wife, mother and grandmother and have been described by some of my friends as a bit of a hippy or earth mother. But I think I’m just a real old fashioned country girl at heart. I was born in a little cottage on a farm in the heart of Dorset, just a short distance from the county town of Dorchester. My childhood was quite idyllic; long summers spent free-ranging on the farm and although I didn’t realise it at the time, my parents were educating me in so many things that I now use and value.
At the end of the season we would gather and store apples, wrapping each one very carefully in old newspapers. Carrots would be put in a barrel with layers of sand and my mum, who was and still is an incredibly good cook, would be pickling and preserving all that she could, from piccalilli to runner bean chutney, jellies and jams.
My brother and I would gather blackberries and return home with faces and hands stained from the juices, proudly handing over the bowls of plump berries we had foraged for jam making. We lived by the seasons and from the land and had a varied but extremely healthy diet. Lots of veg, stews and my mum's amazing roast dinners which the family still get excited about when invited to join mum and dad for Sunday lunch!
We ate rabbit, pheasant and venison alongside your more normal beef, lamb etc. The smell of my mum's cooking was always drifting through the house, large vats of stew slow cooking on a log fed Rayburn. Something becomes ingrained in you when you are a farmer's daughter.
I get an indescribable urge as spring approaches to turn the soil and plant and nurture and as the seasons change so do I. At harvest time I feel a need to gather and store and fill my freezers to the brim ready for the pending winter months.
I have an allotment which I love tending to and apart from when I’m working as a hypnotherapist, I find myself immersed in growing , cooking and crafting, again most projects driven by the season. I love nothing more than being surrounded by my family; my three wonderful very grown up children, their partners, my granddaughter and of course my amazing husband / chief food taster and very handy handyman.
He is always building and constructing things on my request to grow things up or put things in.
I adore living in Dorset and could not imagine being anywhere else. I love it’s incredibly stunning landscapes, outstanding beauty and the wonderful people. Dorset is steeped in history and tradition, from the writer Thomas Hardy to Dorset knob throwing contests! There are so many fabulous producers of cheeses and wines, meats, cereal and honey and so much more. And I love nothing more than using local produce in my home and in my cooking.
The farm was a mixture of livestock and arable and we had our own chickens, sheep, pigs and my Dad's incredible vegetable patch. From an early age myself and my brother were given responsibilities around the farm; feeding animals and helping Dad with the watering of the vegetable patch during the summer months, while he was working long hours harvesting and hay making. He use to leave rows of buckets of water for us in the morning by the veg patch and after school it was our job to ensure each plant was adequately watered (each young cabbage plant had a mug of water.)
Another duty was picking caterpillars off the cabbages. I then, without Dad's knowledge, would keep them in a large jar and feed them and eventually release them. I don’t think I understood completely the damage they caused to his crop.
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