"We didn't intend to be farmers," Bob Paton says. In their 50s, he and his wife, Ann, envisioned "one more move". They lived in Newcastle upon Tyne and had a checklist for their dream house: "Northumberland, stone-built, a bit of character and a reasonable garden," Bob says.
The place they found ticked every box but one. Instead of a reasonable garden, it had six acres. As they walked the grounds，Bob turned to Ann and decided they could turn this into a small farm. Eleven days before his 60th birthday, he retired as a managing director with the IT company Accenture. Ann, 63, had already sold her grocery. Together they began to farm.
The next two years were a struggle. The four fields were badly fenced and waterlogged. The soil was poor. Growing vegetables was not a common thing to do in this cold，wet and windy area of Northumberland. They dug up thousands of stones, which was backbreaking, but they were never going to give up. As the son of a coal miner, Bob grew up in Ashington, 15 miles north of Newcastle and helped his father on his allotment (小块菜园）."Sunday lunches in mining communities were big things. My dad used to dig up potatoes. They melted in your mouth - the freshness! The memory stayed with me. But I think it was the sense of trying to achieve something." Bob recalled.
Now one field is home to a two-acre orchard. Two others house polytunnels, herbs and 50 varieties of vegetable. The fourth belongs to their Tamworth pigs. As Hexhamshire Organics, they sell 100 organic vegetable boxes a week, and supply Northumberland's only Michelin-starred restaurant." I used to say I retired，but now I say I had a career change，'，Bob says. They have never worked so hard. "It's usually the light that stops us, uAnn mentions. She brings a career in catering and retail to bear on the business, while Bob is the planner. Plan tomorrow today. Plan next week this week. Plan next month this month. His spreadsheet logs "every single vegetable", from sowing to harvest, and calculates output to the square foot.
