about

Incase you’re interested, here’s a bit of background about why slowr.co.uk exists.

Our journey to here.

Birth to 1999 - Going back through the mists of time…..in the beginning…. we went though the usual UK school process for kids in the late 80’s/90’s. Average students, GCSE’s –> A-levels –> Degree –> Graduate training scheme - the system churned out good corporate employees.

1999-2010 ish - we did about 10 years in the South East working in IT, got mortgages, promotions, moved jobs, ate out loads, joined gyms, had fast cars, bought all the crap that is supposed to demonstrate how successful you are. A fairly Instagramable life.

2010 - we had the opportunity to take over a family farm tenancy - the idea was sold to us that we’d be joining the good life, a life full of happy rosey cheeked locals with lots of cider drinking fun, a la Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall River Cottage at the time.

It wasn’t and it’s not.

2018 - after about 8 or 9 years, our landlord decided to sell a chunk of their huge estate including our farm. After much stress, and rejection, we were able to buy about 3/4rs of the farm my family had rented for a few generations.

Amazing opportunity, harder to make it all work financially, big mortgage compared to rent, less land to earn a living from.

Not complaining.

We’re very lucky to have got to this point.

2022 - we’re making it work. It’s tight at times. In the grand scheme of things we’re fairly asset rich (although I’m sure my neighbors are all richer… everyone thinks that!), but generally much cash poorer than we were in our past corporate life. The big thing is that we’ve got options. So whilst challenging at times, it’s a better place to be than many….we do consider ourselves lucky (and work hard).

So here we are. We’re running a smallish (grazing) dairy herd and a camping business on the farm. We’ve got 3 boys.

Slowr is somewhere for us to publish some thoughts about our lives and what we’re working on.

Space, privacy, lots of opportunities, lots to be proud of…and also lots of mud, blood, sweat and tears.