New farm is for children's future - Amanda Owen

Celebrity farmer Amanda Owen has spoken of her desire to secure her children's future by renovating a dilapidated farmhouse.

Also known as the Yorkshire Shepherdess, Owen is restoring the building on land near to the tenanted farm where she lives at Ravenseat in Swaledale.

Her efforts are being followed by TV crews for Channel 4's Our Farm Next Door.

Speaking to BBC Radio York, Owen, who has nine children, said: "I think this project is the very solid foundations for something for the children."

Owen rose to fame through a series of TV shows focusing on her life at the remote farm in the Yorkshire Dales where she has lived with her now ex-husband, Clive, for nearly 30 years.

She said she did not know which members of her family would move to the new farmhouse, know as Anty John's, and who will stay at Ravenseat.

"Don't ask me who's going to move in, I've no idea," she said.

"But I have plenty of people who are vying to move in.

"It's all about looking to the future, the children and making it that they have the ability to stay around here and to be able to find work around here."

She said owning Anty John's marked a major change after so many years as tenant farmers.

"When you live in a tenanted place, like Ravenseat, it is home and I love the place, but in the middle of the night when you're having a bit of a stress and a worry of course you think to yourself 'but actually, it's not mine'. So it's about security."

Renovating a derelict farmhouse does not come without challenges, though Owen is the first to admit she and her family are known for falling "head first into ridiculous challenges".

"I have daily regrets," she said. "I have regrets about taking it on, particularly on those bad days when I'm thinking it's going to fall down and I've got paperwork to fill in and I've got people asking me questions that I don't know the answer to."

But she said she wanted to show her children that "nothing is insurmountable, that you can turn your hand to anything and you can achieve things".

Of the building work itself, Owen said the project had been hampered by "horrible" weather, adding that she had "never been so appreciative of a roof and windows".

"We're on an exposed hill end, which is why we have this wonderful view, but I do sometimes wonder if that is why, 100 years ago people said 'let's move out' and here we are moving back in," she said.

However, she said she had been encouraged to keep going by a series of diaries which recorded life at the property 200 years ago.

"The legacy that we've been reading about through the diaries is what inspire us," she said.

"We're trying to keep as much of the original features as possible and working with the materials we've already got.

"We're well behind schedule and it costs a fortune, but it's worth everything."

Our Farm Next Door is on More4 at 21:00 on Mondays.

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