After years renovating a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Ireland, Nick and Lesley can finally relax and enjoy the quiet life. They hope to spend their days gardening, writing, and taking their dogs for long walks through beautiful County Clare. Although the years ahead may look sunny, there are dark clouds building beyond the horizon. 

When Rosanne and her husband left city life for the Cornwall idyll they knew little of farming, the seasons and milking, but over time they found their way, rising to each new challenge and embracing all that the land gave them. Growing Goats and Girls lovingly and invitingly charts the rural, hardworking and joyfully haphazard lives of Rosanne and her husband as they escape London to live off the land.

If Joe and Vicky had known what relocating to a tiny mountain village in Andalucía would really be like, they might have hesitated. They can have no idea of the culture shock in store for them...no idea they'll become reluctant chicken farmers and own the most dangerous cockerel in Spain...no idea they'll help capture a vulture and be rescued by a mule. Will they stay, or will they return to the relative sanity of England?

In Tales from the Farm by the Yorkshire Shepherdess, Amanda takes listeners on an evocative journey to Ravenseat, where she lives with husband Clive and their nine children, not to mention their flock of sheep, herd of cows, hardworking dogs and a formidable chicken called Linda. 

When he arrives in Bilbury, a small village on the edge of Exmoor, the young doctor doesn't realize how much he has to learn. But he soon finds the extent of his ignorance when he meets his patients. There is Anne Thwaites, who gives birth in the middle of a field and local rogue Thumper Robinson, who knows a good many tricks that aren't in any textbooks. And there is Mike Trickle, a TV show host, who causes great excitement when he buys a house in the village. The young doctor's employer is elderly Dr. Brownlow, who lives in a castle-like house and drives an old Rolls Royce.

Sally Urwin and her husband, Steve, own High House Farm in Northumberland, which they share with Mavis the sheepdog, one very fat pony and many, many sheep. Set in beautiful, wild landscape, and in use for generations, it's the perfect setting for Sally's (sometimes brutally) honest and charming account of farming life. From stock sales to lambing sheds, and out in the fields in snow and on hot summer days, A Farmer's Diary reveals the highs, lows and hard work involved in making a living from the land.

Following a drunken misunderstanding, Simon Dawson gave up his job in the city, moved to the wilds of Exmoor and became an accidental self-sufficient smallholder with an array of animals. But that was years ago now. Following up on his first book, Pigs in Clover, this is the story of what happens when he suddenly realises that his life is changing all over again. He's not quite the spring chicken that he used to be: he is, horror of horrors, getting older.

Maggie Coates is frustrated. Her longterm boyfriend, Dirk, recently moved to London to take a job she fears puts him out of her league. Despite the assurances of her best friend Renee, Maggie is convinced Dirk is slowly drifting away. All Maggie wants is to get married and settle down, but maybe Dirk has other ideas.

Emma Gray was just 23 when she moved to an isolated farm in Northumberland, becoming Britain's youngest solo shepherdess. In the seasons that followed, Emma fell in love with its rolling fields, sycamore trees and sturdy farmhouse, where she tended her sheep and trained her dogs - and even found romance along the way. But when Emma finds herself suddenly alone again, heartbroken, mourning the loss of loved ones and recovering from a serious accident, she can't help but wonder if her isolated existence is still such a sensible idea.

Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared.

In January 2008, Graham Naismith, 37-year-old IT consultant and former police detective and his wife Eirene, aged 38 and a former teacher, spontaneously, and with no prior experience whatsoever, decided to embark on a 30,000 mile drive to Australia with their three daughters aged one, four, and six. Having previously sold their house in anticipation of a drop in the housing market and with Graham's job at the infamous ID Cards Scheme looking precarious, the climate was right.

In this uplifting and inspirational memoir, Hannah shares how she broke the stereotypes of her 'townie' beginnings, took risks and faced up to the challenges of being a young woman in a male-dominated industry and followed her heart to become the Red Shepherdess. But behind the beautiful landscape, talented sheepdogs and eye-catching red hair was a steep learning curve. The physically and mentally demanding conditions she faced as she chased her dreams to build her own Cumbrian farm taught Hannah the values the holds true, including community, leadership, patience and resilience.

In Celebrating the Seasons, Amanda shares funny and charming stories about life with her family and their many four-legged charges and describes their activities at Ravenseat, from lambing and shearing to haymaking and feeding the flock in midwinter. Her gorgeous photographs showcase the famous Swaledale landscape she writes about, from the sweeping moors to rare wildflowers and the elusive hares glimpsed in the field.

Danie Couchman grew up on the move, her family never staying still long enough for her to say where she's from. At 25, and living in her 17th home, she finds herself drowning in the rush of London life and makes an impulsive decision: to buy a narrowboat and make it her home. Surrounded by an eclectic and itinerant community in the uncharted territory of the capital's urban wilderness, Danie becomes fully immersed in this hidden world. Each day on board her boat, Genesis, is an adventure full of disaster and magic.

From best-selling author Amanda Owen come more tales of life at Ravenseat, the remote Yorkshire hill farm she shares with husband Clive, eight children and 1,000 sheep. In A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess she describes the age-old cycles of a farming year and the constant challenges the family faces, from being cut off in winter to tending their flock on some of Yorkshire's highest, bleakest moors - land so inaccessible that in places it can be reached only on foot.