When artist and filmmaker Maria left London for the Lake District she wondered if she’d miss the culture of the capital. She needn’t have worried, she tells Lilibet Williams

When I get the urge, I’ll write in the morning, before the alarm goes off at 7.30. It usually plays Doris Day or some nice gentle music. I’m working on a memoir based around one night in the lambing shed, from midnight till 6am.

The night always feels a bit more reflective to me. I like that time of being alone with the animals. It’s a different headspace, more enclosed – no traffic, no phone ringing. As I look after the lambs and the sheep, I think about how I grew up and how I ended up on a farm in the Lake District. My birthday is in April, when lambs are born. Birthdays tend to make you think about your life. So the book parallels those relationships on the farm, alongside personal reflections, and it’ll be published at lambing time.

In the morning, I usually take the dogs for a walk while my partner (and business partner) John Atkinson makes the coffee. I take them up the road and into the field with the chickens – who, in a surprising twist on cats and mice, usually manage to scare the dogs! When I get back, John’s usually listening to Farming Today and the cats have come in from the night and are busily trying to lick the foam off the top of the coffee. I’ll have a book open at the kitchen table. Currently it’s A Flat Place by Noreen Masud, which is also a memoir. Masud lived in Pakistan until the age of 15, then moved to Scotland. I grew up in Scotland and my father is Pakistani so there’s a nice connection. She finds flat landscapes soothing as they reflect something in her emotional landscape. I’m interested in other perspectives on physical terrain. Masud is an academic; I studied art, so there’s a different visual sense. Hers is more in the head, mine feels more through the eyes.

It’s interesting that the word “familiar” comes from the Latin root of the word “family”. When a landscape becomes familiar, it feels like your home. If you’re constantly moving, you don’t have that. It’s also something I talk about in this book, how John’s roots go back at least 600 years to this place, within three miles of where we farm. My connection to place is completely different, but similar to most people who grew up in an urban setting.

There is a drive towards rewilding in the Lake District. People think the best way to do that would be to get rid of the farmers and let nature take its course, but they just don’t see what they would be wiping out. They’re thinking theoretically, projecting onto the landscape rather than understanding it. It would mean a loss of knowledge, culture and history of a place that goes back hundreds of years. That’s what I’m concerned about and why I am writing about it.

After breakfast, John usually feeds the pigs, turkeys and chickens and collects the eggs. Meanwhile, I’m at work on our business, Soap Dairy. I try to have my meetings in the morning to stop me constantly clock-watching. I get all the orders packed up and sent so I can spend the afternoon making soap products, using excess milk, in the building where John’s dad used to milk the cows – hence the name. Usually, I’ll listen to an audiobook. Although I could teach someone how to do it – and it would be one less thing on my to-do list – I enjoy that it’s quite practical.

Often, I help John with the animals, rounding up sheep and bringing them into the farmyard if he needs to check them. It’s not always idyllic. For example, if a cyclist decides to bike through the sheep at high speed and they scatter, you might lose some of them in the woods.

When I first started on the farm, ten years ago, I worked with John a lot. But as my side of the business has grown, I do less farming and more work on diversifying. The exception is lambing time, because I love it so much. John does the daytime and I always do the nightshift. I take midnight, 3am and 6am. Sometimes I will get up at 3am and if there’s loads happening I’ll wake John to help and we’ll end up working around the clock.

I’m not keen on routine, I like every day being very different. There are lots of big moments that happen yearly, like lambing and shearing, but the day-to-day is varied. This morning I had a Zoom call with a fashion brand who are interested in using British wool in their collection. Then I’m working with an estate in Scotland, helping them to create products with their own wool. So although I’m working on the farm and with our products, there’s quite a lot of outreach. It’s basically rural development, supporting other people with whichever wool projects they want to do.

John used to work full time off the farm. He was at the National Trust for 25 years. A lot of upland farmers have to do that as they don’t make much in the way of profit. Unless you’re diversifying or intensifying. We didn’t want to intensify. We wanted to reduce our numbers but maximise what we could do with them. That’s why I began to initiate all these projects. As well as Soap Dairy, I work on Lake District Tweed, The Wool Library – which I co-founded – and the Great British Wool Revival website.

In nature, everything grows according to its conditions. An oak tree might take a lot of energy to get going, but it then becomes shelter and food for other elements within the ecosystem, thus giving back what it has taken. I feel like we’ve got to that stage now. I don’t want the business to grow in terms of getting bigger and bigger. I think about success in different terms. Are you happy when you wake up in the morning? Is life too stressful? I could have grown the soap business so that I had lots of employees and sold to supermarkets, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to make the soap myself and sell it online. It’s enough to sustain me and the members of staff I do employ.

In the summer we stay up fairly late, as we work to the sun’s rhythm. We have to wait up to lock the hens in, since they won’t go to bed until sundown. By 4 o’clock in winter they’ll be asleep. That’s when we hibernate and things begin to slow down. That’s when I write more. I’m not too particular about my writing practice. I don’t need to have a clear desk or spend hours trying to get it perfect. I don’t need that kind of pressure.

I used to live in London and when I first left, I wondered if I’d be leaving all the culture behind. I haven’t found that at all. It’s a different culture here and it’s enriching in a different way. You’re more in tune with nature. In London the seasons or weather don’t matter so much. Here they entirely lead what you do with your day.

Find out more about Maria’s work and forthcoming book on her Instagram @dodgsonwood or on her website dodgsonwood.co.uk. For more on Lake District Tweed see lakedistricttweed.com/pages/our-farmers.

This article is from Idler #107, January/February 2026 – out now.

Subscribe to the Idler here and get 12% off the shop price plus a FREE copy of Idle Thoughts by Tom Hodgkinson, worth £8.95.

Subscribers may comment. Please add your idle thoughts using the box below.

A Drink with the Idler

“A Drink with the Idler” returns at 6pm on Thursday 15 January, when health psychologist Dr Kari Leibowitz will be revealing her secrets to finding joy in the darker months. Book here.
It’s FREE to subscribers.

Our January/February 2026 issue Idler #107 is available in Waitrose, Waterstones, Smiths Travel outlets, select Smiths high street branches and around 100 indie stores. Click here for your nearest stockist.