Amanda opened up on Good Housekeeping‘s podcast, My Life in a Biscuit Tin.

Amanda Owen has become one of the UK’s best-known farmer, having opened up her life to us all for her Channel 5 series, Our Yorkshire Farm and, more recently, Channel 4’s Our Farm Next Door. And while being in the public eye appears to come naturally to her, during an interview on Good Housekeeping‘s My Life in a Biscuit Tin podcast, Amanda opened up about the challenges that have come with being a woman in the media and how it sparked something of a reset.

“Doing what we do with being in the media and all that, it’s a great conversation starter!” she said during the podcast. “[The kids will go] ‘Do you know what they’ve written about you mum?’ No, what now? ‘You’ve ridden a horse in a bikini.’ Yes I did and I put it up online and I am proud and I’m definitely not bothered that somebody said I looked like a cadaver.”

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Asked if she’s had to become tougher as a woman in the public eye, she nodded. “Yes, it’s resilience. I had a couple of funny years where I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to cope with this, I don’t know what to do’. And then I was like, I have choices here. I either give in and try and be everything to everybody and keep everybody happy – it’s not happening, why be a martyr, what does that teach anyone? Or I say, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m going to have a reset, look at what’s important and go with that.”

Amanda’s nine children range in age from nine to 24 and while she split from her husband and their father, Clive, in June 2022 after 22 years of marriage, the pair continue to live on the same farm and work together on their TV series Our Farm Next Door. And the children get just as involved, too.

“There has never been any expectation of them to perform because it’s not that,” she said of her children’s involvement in the show. “And interestingly, Nancy is going through a stage where she’s very thoughtful. Clemmy is naturally quite chatty and then she’ll go through a quieter stage. The dynamics are always changing.

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“Violet went through a different stage where she was more insular, but now she’s back out there. And when you’re doing reality, the clue is in the name. People say they want reality and then sometimes they realise they don’t want reality. But this is our reality and that’s what we put across. And the reality is the sometimes the children are there and sometimes they’re not, and sometimes things go right and sometimes things go wrong – and you get to see it all.”

So do they show any signs of wanting to leave the farm? “One of the things people say to me is, ‘Do you think the children will stay?’ And I think to myself, I hope not,” Amanda said. “They have to venture off the hill and go and have their own adventures. But it would appear that at this very moment in time, they don’t seem to want to go away. I haven’t got the empty nest yet. My nest is overflowing!”

LORNA ROACH

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Amanda also shared how her animals as just as much of a part of the family. “It’s all about kindness and you can see that in a horse’s eye,” she said. “They’re a member of the family and they stay. [My horse] Joe was 40 when he died and I wrote his story in my book, cried about it. He was a little so and so, but he taught the children so much. You don’t forget them. And life on a farm, you get to see life, death and bit in-between, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have an affection.”

You can listen to My Life In A Biscuit Tin series 2, sponsored by DFS, including the full episode with Amanda Owen, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch the full interview on the Good Housekeeping YouTube channel. Christmas Tales from the Farm (Puffin, £14.99) by Amanda Owen is out now and available from Amazon. Amanda is on tour from 5^th November until 7^th December. Tickets are available at nothird.co.uk.