From City Lawyer to Happy Glamper

Written by Jess; Founder & Owner of Home Farm Glamping

My childhood at Home Farm

Looking back on my childhood growing up around Home Farm, I can remember very little about the interior of our house but I can remember pretty much all of the garden and surrounding farm and fields. I remember feeling completely free and being (voluntarily) by myself the majority of the time. I would build dens and make elaborate tree root houses for my toys, collect precious objects like acorns and conkers and spend time hanging out with our collection of animals: chickens, sheep, horses and a very grumpy guinea pig called Angelina.

One summer I found a vole that had been injured and decided I would be able to save it by building it a cosy house in a cardboard box lined with cotton wool and bathing its wounds (I couldn’t save it, and the heartache when it inevitably died stays with me to this day). I had a fat little pony called Goldie I would ride all over the farm, regularly being thrown off and having to walk home by myself thinking up dire punishments for the extremely unrepentant Goldie.

My mother managed to get the perfect parenting balance. In hindsight I realise that she always knew where I was and what I was doing, but she managed to make me feel like I was independent and gave me the freedom to use my imagination and learn to keep myself busy, life skills which we are constantly reminded are vital to our mental health and happiness as grownups.

The move to London

I grew up, left school, went to university in Newcastle and then moved to London to work out what I was going to do with my life. I trained as a lawyer and got a job at a large international law firm near Moorgate where I spent 6 years “being a grown-up” with a “real job” and very little spare time for imaginings of any kind. I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, but, as a farmer’s daughter, there is really nothing like a 70 hour week in a hermetically sealed office on the 14th floor of a London tower block to make you dream of the countryside..

In Spring 2014 my father was rushed into hospital for emergency treatment, and amidst the drama, my mother called me to say that “someone” was going to need to help out to keep the business running. (I’m the eldest of four, and my three brothers were, at the time, 24, 21 and 14, so I don’t think there was much doubt in her mind who that someone was going to be).

I joked that I didn’t have a choice other than to sacrifice my career for my family, but in truth it was perfect timing. I was feeling completely burnt out by my job in the City and had reached that stage when you’re so accustomed to hating it that it has become normal and it’s hard to find the energy to escape unless you have a catalyst. I decided this might be a way to have a break from my legal career, help my family and work out what I wanted to do.

With a naïveté that seems quite funny in hindsight, I really thought I could work on the farm for 6 months or a year and then go back to a “real” job (and yes, I still use those speech marks in my head when I think about my job compared to those of my friends, even though I have come to realise how incredibly lucky I am to be unable to take my job seriously because I enjoy it so much that it doesn’t seem like work).

The seed of an idea was sown

Whilst I was considering my options, in May 2014 I went on a friend’s hen do at a glamping site - my first ever experience of glamping and the seed of an idea was sown...

We were sitting round the campfire gossiping about how we might improve the place if we were running it (as you do), and it suddenly occurred to me that I could actually do this at Home Farm. I’m not particularly spontaneous and I’m usually quite risk averse, but this idea completely took root so that I couldn’t really think or talk about anything else. There was no angle I could consider where it didn’t seem like a good idea.

We have a beautiful farm, wood and lake, it’s extremely accessible from London, I love being outdoors, I like meeting new people, there was a field that was hopeless for crops, the farm needed a new revenue stream and I didn’t know much about farming but I knew a lot about hospitality (although in hindsight by that I meant as a customer, in fact I knew nothing at all about running what is effectively a small hotel in a field). I could suddenly see a way that I could work for the family but create a business that suited me and my skills, and which allowed us to make the most of our land and share it with others.

A place for hard-working Londoners to reset

The perfect place to escape with friends

So initially, of course, Home Farm Glamping was set up for people like me as I was then. Young professionals who have come to the city for their careers and spend 60+ hours a week in an office with windows that don’t open, breathing recycled air. People who have breakfast, lunch and dinner at their desk and can go for days without knowing what the weather is like outside.

As a lawyer I would sit at my desk and fantasise about summer evening walks in the woods at Home Farm, and this finally became a reality when I first started setting up the glamping site.

I was still working three days a week for a smaller, more flexible law firm in Holborn and I would finish work and hop on the ThamesLink from Farringdon at 6pm, 23 minutes to Elstree & Borehamwood and be at the farm by just after 6.30.

The joy of our site is that you can be there in less than an hour from almost anywhere in central London. And we aim to provide everything so that you don’t have to lug a bag into work with you. You just have to bring your toothbrush and some spare pants - you can have a night outdoors and be back in your office by 9am.

A love of being outdoors

Five years on, and a mother myself now, a love of being outdoors is still the core message that flows through everything at Home Farm Glamping. I’ll talk more in another blog about child sized adventures we are setting up on site, but whether you come to stay with a partner, friends or family, we hope that you’ll be able to reset yourself, take some deep breaths of fresh air, and just slow down for a bit.

I never forget how incredibly lucky I am to have had the opportunity to do this project, and I don’t pretend for a moment that it is something that everybody can do, but I hope that by sharing our story I can help give you that little bit of inspiration you need to make the change you are considering in your own lifestyle to improve your happiness and wellbeing.

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