Growing up on a farm then working in the city has given Anna Jones a rare insight into the gulf of understanding between urban and rural Britain. But where does this divide originate and can it be healed?
I have lost count of the times that I’ve introduced myself as a “farmer’s daughter”. I feel strangely compelled to flag my connection to land and to agriculture; it is often one of the first things people learn about me.
I can trace this conversational compulsion back to the moment I left our small family farm on the Welsh Borders to go to university at the age of 18, when I found myself living in a town for the first time. The irony of the fact I spent the first 18 years of my life trying to get away from the farm to chase more exciting urban adventures does not escape me, yet still I would doff my hat to the hinterland at any given opportunity – just so people knew where I really belonged.
I am good at city life; happiest tapping away at my laptop in some hipster café, sipping an Americano. Yet simultaneously, and oh-so-powerfully, I am terrified of disconnection – losing the part of myself that grew up in a rural culture, in the upland farming community I call home. This fear, silly as it may seem, pops up in my deepest thoughts, poking its nose into fundamental life decisions: “Do I want to be a parent? My child would not be a farm kid. They would not have what I had.”
A dear friend of mine, a single mum and fellow farmer’s daughter, struggles to fathom life with someone not from a local farming background, substantially narrowing her dating options. For her, the continuation of rural culture, identity and community are the most important considerations for her and her child.
I am convinced many millions of people around the world – the great rural diaspora – would recognise what I describe. The shift from a rural identity to an urban one is a big deal, even if you wanted to leave. My family (on both sides) have been farming along one small section of the border between Shropshire and Powys since the 1700s, and probably long before. Those roots run deep.
In terms of generational disconnection from the countryside, and especially farming, the first cut is the deepest. Afterwards – second, third, fourth generation – memories fade, cultural ties loosen and identities change. The grandchildre
