How I found my good life
Both a voracious traveller and intrepid presenter, Kate Humble believes her sense of adventure is genetic. ‘My mother’s father was a very restless soul,’ she explains. ‘He was from Yorkshire but spent a lot of his youth travelling around. He had been a rear gunner in the Second World War and we recently discovered that he had been part of the Great Escape too. He was quite a feisty, travelling sort.’
Humble certainly takes after her grandfather. Her love of exploration and the natural world was evident with every smiley appearance she made on Springwatch and Autumnwatch (she has now left the shows), and in many ways she is as free-spirited and curious as the animals she still so enthusiastically observes. Indeed, having grown up in Berkshire, she opted to travel to South Africa instead of attending university at the age of 20 because she ‘felt it would serve me rather better’.
Visiting the country during the last grips of apartheid was a life-changing experience. ‘It was a really interesting time to be there. What nobody realised – certainly not my Oxfam-coat-wearing student friends who thought I was evil incarnate for going to South Africa in 1988 – was that there were plenty of white South Africans who hated apartheid and were fighting against it, too.’
Humble joined the marches. ‘I got rather caught up in it. Just in a small, rather teenage way – I was hardly going to change the world – but I felt very emotionally attached to South Africa and to what happened next.’
She spent the subsequent years trying to find a way to live in Africa full time. Following Nelson Mandela’s election as president in 1994, she and her husband Ludo, a television producer, even applied for work permits. ‘Funnily enough, Mr Mandela’s government decided that two white people who were useless at everything, except making television programmes, probably weren’t worthy of a work permit. But we went anyway and stayed for as long as we could eke out our money.’
Humble chronicles her African adventures, her years of feeling like a ‘bumpkin’ in London, and her subsequent move to a smallholding in Wales, in her book, Humble By Nature. Describing the establishment of a farm in the depths of Wales may not sound like gripping reading, but Humble’s good humour, sense of the ridiculous and affection for the great outdoors, suffuses her words, making it as engaging as the lady herself.
It is also moving in its depiction of how, after much restless soul-searching, she found her spiritual home. ‘I spent many years trying to live in Africa. I’ve only really felt I have a home in the UK, a proper root here, since we came to Wales,’ she smiles.
But Humble By Nature – the name of her business as well as her book – is more than just a home. It is a working farm and a visitor destination aiming to reacquaint people with nature. ‘There are lots of things I thought were good that I somehow wanted to knit into the fabric of my life,’ she says.
Things like mud and wellies?
‘Absolutely. It’s going to sound spurious, but things like being connected to the seasons, to knowing where food comes from, to getting people to get mud underneath their fingernails and not care. I suppose it’s the good life,’ she laughs. ‘In the 1970s I would have been Felicity Kendal and Ludo would have been Richard Briers.’
Although she ‘had a ball’ living in London in her younger years (‘I was living in a squat and eating nothing but crisps’), Humble could never escape the ‘feeling of claustrophobia, the sense of not ever having a moment to just sit and look’.
On her smallholding, she makes a point of enjoying such moments. ‘I can spend an embarrassingly long time just standing in my field watching the chickens. And I’m probably a saner person for it.’
She now wants to share that joy and the value of nature. ‘I think the problem is that we’ve all become so detached from the way nature works. Things such as the horsemeat scandal have really brought that back to the fore. We have got used to having very cheap, very plentiful food, which just isn’t sustainable.’
Humble believes that immersing people in nature will open their eyes to the reality. ‘I love eating meat, but I know that to produce it from a happy, healthy, free-range animal takes an enormous amount of time, effort and cost. Therefore for me, meat is a treat, and that’s what it should be. Consumers are so cushioned from these difficulties, whereas they should support farmers and understand that sometimes we all have to pay more.’
Living in rural bliss with her husband of 20 years, and a menagerie of animals, Kate is often asked why she has not added children to the mix. She is very open in her response: ‘I never, ever wanted any. As far as I’m concerned I have no maternal bone in my body. I find them quite frightening. I think it’s still quite contentious, even now, to say that you actively chose not to have children. People find it very strange.’
She is kept busy juggling her life on the farm and a television career that is still flourishing: this year alone she is involved in three programmes. They are all working titles, but with focus on shepherding, the behaviour of the sun and the challenge of living without power for weeks, Humble has not strayed far from her favourite theme – nature.
As well as travelling the globe, these TV gigs do require her to come to London from time to time. ‘I’m there with my return ticket sweaty in my palm,’ she says. ‘I’m always desperate to get back to Wales.’
Humble By Nature, by Kate Humble, is published by Headline, priced £16.99.
Humble certainly takes after her grandfather. Her love of exploration and the natural world was evident with every smiley appearance she made on Springwatch and Autumnwatch (she has now left the shows), and in many ways she is as free-spirited and curious as the animals she still so enthusiastically observes. Indeed, having grown up in Berkshire, she opted to travel to South Africa instead of attending university at the age of 20 because she ‘felt it would serve me rather better’.
Visiting the country during the last grips of apartheid was a life-changing experience. ‘It was a really interesting time to be there. What nobody realised – certainly not my Oxfam-coat-wearing student friends who thought I was evil incarnate for going to South Africa in 1988 – was that there were plenty of white South Africans who hated apartheid and were fighting against it, too.’
Humble joined the marches. ‘I got rather caught up in it. Just in a small, rather teenage way – I was hardly going to change the world – but I felt very emotionally attached to South Africa and to what happened next.’
She spent the subsequent years trying to find a way to live in Africa full time. Following Nelson Mandela’s election as president in 1994, she and her husband Ludo, a television producer, even applied for work permits. ‘Funnily enough, Mr Mandela’s government decided that two white people who were useless at everything, except making television programmes, probably weren’t worthy of a work permit. But we went anyway and stayed for as long as we could eke out our money.’
Humble chronicles her African adventures, her years of feeling like a ‘bumpkin’ in London, and her subsequent move to a smallholding in Wales, in her book, Humble By Nature. Describing the establishment of a farm in the depths of Wales may not sound like gripping reading, but Humble’s good humour, sense of the ridiculous and affection for the great outdoors, suffuses her words, making it as engaging as the lady herself.
It is also moving in its depiction of how, after much restless soul-searching, she found her spiritual home. ‘I spent many years trying to live in Africa. I’ve only really felt I have a home in the UK, a proper root here, since we came to Wales,’ she smiles.
But Humble By Nature – the name of her business as well as her book – is more than just a home. It is a working farm and a visitor destination aiming to reacquaint people with nature. ‘There are lots of things I thought were good that I somehow wanted to knit into the fabric of my life,’ she says.
Things like mud and wellies?
‘Absolutely. It’s going to sound spurious, but things like being connected to the seasons, to knowing where food comes from, to getting people to get mud underneath their fingernails and not care. I suppose it’s the good life,’ she laughs. ‘In the 1970s I would have been Felicity Kendal and Ludo would have been Richard Briers.’
Although she ‘had a ball’ living in London in her younger years (‘I was living in a squat and eating nothing but crisps’), Humble could never escape the ‘feeling of claustrophobia, the sense of not ever having a moment to just sit and look’.
On her smallholding, she makes a point of enjoying such moments. ‘I can spend an embarrassingly long time just standing in my field watching the chickens. And I’m probably a saner person for it.’
She now wants to share that joy and the value of nature. ‘I think the problem is that we’ve all become so detached from the way nature works. Things such as the horsemeat scandal have really brought that back to the fore. We have got used to having very cheap, very plentiful food, which just isn’t sustainable.’
Humble believes that immersing people in nature will open their eyes to the reality. ‘I love eating meat, but I know that to produce it from a happy, healthy, free-range animal takes an enormous amount of time, effort and cost. Therefore for me, meat is a treat, and that’s what it should be. Consumers are so cushioned from these difficulties, whereas they should support farmers and understand that sometimes we all have to pay more.’
Living in rural bliss with her husband of 20 years, and a menagerie of animals, Kate is often asked why she has not added children to the mix. She is very open in her response: ‘I never, ever wanted any. As far as I’m concerned I have no maternal bone in my body. I find them quite frightening. I think it’s still quite contentious, even now, to say that you actively chose not to have children. People find it very strange.’
She is kept busy juggling her life on the farm and a television career that is still flourishing: this year alone she is involved in three programmes. They are all working titles, but with focus on shepherding, the behaviour of the sun and the challenge of living without power for weeks, Humble has not strayed far from her favourite theme – nature.
As well as travelling the globe, these TV gigs do require her to come to London from time to time. ‘I’m there with my return ticket sweaty in my palm,’ she says. ‘I’m always desperate to get back to Wales.’
Humble By Nature, by Kate Humble, is published by Headline, priced £16.99.