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It’s been a year since TV presenter Kate Humble bought a run-down farm in Monmouthshire with a view to bringing it back to life. She tells Abbie Wightwick about her first year in business and why Wales is the perfect place to strip off and get back to nature... in more ways than one

Running a Welsh farm that had lain empty for a year was more terrifying than walking the hills of war torn Afghanistan.

At least, that’s what television presenter Kate Humble says.

Almost a year to the day since she and husband Ludo Graham bought the farm in Monmouthshire she is taking time off from mucking out goats to talk about the project.

The effervescent presenter of wildlife and science programmes seems more than up to the challenge of both farming and filming in Afghanistan, but admits to having moments of paralysing fear – though not in Kabul.

This time last year Kate and television producer husband Ludo were finalising buying the former council-owned farm in the Wye Valley and she is now living the reality of being close to nature as well as making television programmes about it.

We’re used to seeing her getting her hands dirty on programmes like Lambing Live and Springwatch and she’s roughed it making programmes in Africa and the Middle East, but never before has Kate been responsible for her own farm.

The 100-acre property had been empty for a year and had fallen into neglect by the time she and Ludo got the keys early last November.

A year on they have carried out extensive refurbishment, found tenants for the farm and launched a business called Humble by Nature, teaching rural skills from the comfort of a rental holiday cottage on site called The Piggery.

The farm, which for four generations was tenanted to young farming families with no farm of their own, was to be broken up and sold off in lots after the last tenant retired in 2010.

Spotting the sale Kate and Ludo were determined to buy it and keep it as a going concern with new tenants and new business ventures running alongside.

“Sometimes you have to take a leap into the unknown,” Kate reasons.

“We live in a state of near paralytic terror and have done ever since we heard the sale had gone through.

“It’s partly because we’re doing it very publicly so all our failures, if we have them, will be public.”

So far, though, there haven’t been any.

In the last 12 months the couple have restored the property and launched rural skills courses as well as seeing the farm become a working enterprise again.

And they’re now welcoming paying guests by renting out a holiday cottage complete with its own chicken run, so you can collect your own eggs for breakfast, and vegetable patch – yours for £700 a week in high season.

Kate says she knew the project was going to work once their new tenants, Tim and Sarah Stephens, moved in with 200 Welsh ewes and a herd of Hereford cattle.

“Over the year the farm lay empty it had fallen into quite serious disrepair,” says Kate.

“All of us, Tim, Sarah, me, Ludo, local builders and craftspeople have worked non-stop to bring the farm back to its former glory.”

The two-bedroom cottage for holiday lets took its first customer last spring and visitors can spend half days on the farm with Tim learning how it all works.

“We want people staying in the cottage to get that sense of what it’s like to grow and pick your own food and it gives people access to a proper, working farm,” Kate explains.

She is passionate that everyone should have a chance to get closer to the land and find out how it works.

After more than a decade presenting nature programmes like Lambing Live, Kate says she’s been privileged to see how farms run behind the scenes and now wants to share that with people visiting Humble by Nature, either to attend a course or renting the cottage.

She hopes they’ll be as enthusiastic as she is about wild foraging, wreath making and charcuterie, which are just some of the courses on offer.

Others, which range from £95 a person, include sausage making, keeping pigs for beginners, printing your own cards and wallpaper, book binding and food preparation for Christmas.

“It’s really frightening when you think of running these courses and wondering whether people will come or not,” she admits with a laugh.

But come they have; the first course, on hedge laying held last spring, attracted people from as far away as Lancashire.

Despite her success on screen and in getting her latest venture up and running, London-born Kate, who has lived in Wales for five years now, says she is still sensitive to criticism.

She’s baffled by the disapproval her farm scheme came up against in the early days and says she hopes people will see what she and Ludo are doing will help breathe new life into Meend Farm which is near Penallt.

“Quite a lot of people criticised us. Some people are nervous of change and it was, ‘It’s that girl off the telly, what silly ideas has she got?’”

But such is her commitment to the project Kate, who lives just down the road from the farm on a smallholding with Ludo, tries to be there as much as possible while also keeping her television commitments.

This year she’s presented Volcano Live for BBC Two and has just returned from filming a programme called Extreme Shepherdess for broadcast on BBC Two next year, 5,000m up in the hills of Afghanistan.

She flew out to Kabul with Cardiff-based independent production company Indus – the team which brought us Amazon with Bruce Parry – after plugging the idea following a holiday to the area three years ago.

Kate insists that contrary to popular belief there are safe areas in the war zone.

“I went to an area called the Wakhan Corridor in the north east of Afghanistan, a finger of land between Tajikistan, Pakistan and China.

“We were with the most amazing group of Afghan shepherds.

“They are the most fascinating people and so cut off from the outside world.

“If you’d been there 500 years ago nothing would have been different about the way they worked with their sheep.

“It is the most traditional shepherd culture and incredibly peaceful.”

Despite having worked in remote parts of Africa and the Middle East during her career, she knew that flying into Kabul was potentially dangerous and the crew was subject to lengthy security checks.

But it was worth it in order to visit some of the most remote sheep farms on the planet.

“We flew into Kabul, drove to our hotel and didn’t leave it for 24 hours before we left at 4.30am in the morning to fly to the north east.

“We were in a potentially dangerous place but only for 24 hours.”

Once in the Wakhan Corridor, it was safe for this Western woman to walk around alone as she found that all the locals were extremely friendly.

“It’s one of the few places you feel completely safe, even for a woman on your own. it’s very relaxed.

“The women don’t wear veils but cover their hair and wear full length sleeves, but so did I because it was -12°C at night.”

Arriving back home in Monmouthshire in the early hours of the morning, Kate was up a few hours later for mucking out the goats at 8.30am.

The farm, she says, grounds her.

Although she’s busy with television work – she has another idea in the pipeline which she can’t yet discuss – Ludo now works full time on the farm.

And while broadcast projects are coming in thick and fast at the moment, the 43-year-old is realistic enough to know that her age may affect her on-screen career at some point.

“I’ve worked in television long enough to know that there are not very many older women on TV,” she admits.

“But there are a lot of men too who have had very successful careers on television for a time and then not.

“Television, like everything else, is subject to fashion and trends.

“I am very, very conscious of the fact that someone in a position of power in television might think, ‘We have had enough of that scruffy blonde, let’s move on’.

“You have to take the rough with the smooth in TV and I know I can’t do this job forever and probably wouldn’t want to.”

Having said that she feels “incredibly lucky” that the subjects she’s interested in – predominantly wildlife and science – are subjects viewers never tire watching programmes about.

“But who knows what they may want next year?” she adds with a wry laugh.

For all those reasons, Kate and Ludo decided they would give equal weight to the farm and TV work.

“Ludo works full time trying to make the farm work and no one’s paying him so my television work is keeping us afloat,” she adds.

And if the worst happens, the land and the animals will always need her.

“There will be a time when no-one wants me but the goats will still need mucking out,” she laughs.

While this doesn’t sound as glamorous as being front of camera, Kate says getting her hands dirty and getting stuck in has always been what motivated her.

When not cleaning out her goats or flying to far flung parts of the globe she likes nothing better than walking in Wales.

She has hiked part of the new coast path, loves the view from Pen y Fan and across the hills from her farm to Tintern.

As she puts it: “Wales is the most beautiful country in the world.”

Finding remote places here or elsewhere means Kate can also indulge in her other passion – naturism.

“Yes, I am a keen naturist.

“Sometimes having clothes on is entirely inappropriate.

“If there’s no-one about and you’re in a beautiful landscape there’s something lovely about a nudie dance or a skinny dip.

“But I’m very private and it’s not for show,

“I can promise the people of Monmouthshire that!”

More information about courses and renting the cottage can be found at www.humblebynature.com