The Countrywoman’s Guide to Work, Life & You…

Every now and again you meet someone who seems to have collected several lives worth of stories along the way, today’s Countrywoman’s Guide guest, Sue Reed, is certainly one of them. Sue is an author living in Northumberland, but the world of writing is a relatively new chapter in her story. She spent many years as a teacher, working with students with multiple and profound learning disabilities,...

“I was just blown away with how putting one foot in front of the other gave my brain time to… think.” Now there’s a line many of us can relate to. It’s quite incredible, the power that a ride, a walk, a few hours outside with the dogs or simply stepping out for some fresh air can hold. It creates space, proper uninterrupted space, for our thoughts to come through, for a problem to untangle, and a...

How well do you know what is being produced just down the road from you? It’s a question that is at the heart of today’s podcast. This Sunday, Emma chats to Kate Todd, founder of Produced Nearby , a guide created to help us find the farmers, growers and makers producing proper produce close to home, and then actually connecting us with them, helping us buy what they produce and support their busin...

Some of you will know me as Emma from Countrywoman’s Guide, but in my day job, I’m MD of Hiho Silver , I run Dimpsey Somerset (shepherd huts on our farm), I do the business development and marketing for Blackdown Shepherd Huts (who build beautiful shepherd huts) and I also mentor another growing hospitality business. As a family, we also have a farm business that our eldest son and his girlfriend...

As we find ourselves midway through September and settling into the rhythms of the month, we wanted to take a moment to look ahead at the last quarter of the year and share with you three suggestions for how you can make the last few months of 2026 brilliant ones. This stage of the year can often feel just as daunting as the beginning. You find yourself looking back at the things you haven’t ticke...

Here at CWG, we’ve had a busy old few weeks. With visits to the Game Fair and Defender Burghley Horse Trials and the launch of our Countrywoman paid membership, it doesn’t feel like our feet have touched the ground really. The Game Fair is one of our favourite events and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Clear Scribbles , Charlotte Hurst and I went up on the day for Friday and it totally lived up to...

We asked the CWG team a question this week. What are the best words of encouragement you’ve ever been given? Why? Because today is National Encouragement Day. A bit cliché, we know, but it also feels like a rather good excuse to stop for a moment and think about something we believe in all year round. Encouragement can come in all sorts of forms. It might be someone giving you the confidence to ju...

What happens when an agriculture graduate decides she doesn’t want to be a farmer, dreams up a fabric business, gets turned down for funding… and ends up becoming a full-time artist instead? Well, you get Tilly Lock Art . This week on the Countrywoman’s Guide podcast, Emma sits down with Tilly Lock to talk about the rather unexpected route that took her from studying agriculture and working in int...

On Monday 17th August, we held our first CWG Community Zoom, and the following Thursday evening we landed in your inbox with a brief insight into just what our Membership Community could offer you. On today’s Podcast and through this article, we’re exploring the membership even further. Diving deeper into its offerings, and shining a light on the discussions we had during our call. Monday was simp...

So here we are. I’ve switched on the Paid Membership for Countrywoman’s Guide, quietly and without a lot of fanfare, because we want you to have the space to decide if we’re the right group for you, rather than we hustle you in and you realise we’re not. I’ve chatted in the video above about why we’re doing what we do, and how we believe that a group with a mutual aim of helping each other to move...

Some businesses begin with a five-year plan, months of arranging, organising and every fall back plan put in place before they even begin. Others begin with a couple of suitcases full of jackets. And that is more or less how the amazing Peshawar Jackets came about. The business was born from a connection between Pakistan and the British countryside, when founder Bertie Alexander returned from runn...

There’s a lot more to Chapman than just making very good bags, as we discovered when we first met Cedric at Badminton Horse Trials in the early May of this year. What began as simply admiring the quality and craftsmanship of the products on their stand, grew into an inspiring conversation around building a business that cares deeply about their values, materials, quality and customer experience. N...

So today it feels appropriate that I write you a letter, from my kitchen table to yours… If I had your addresses, I would have written you an ‘in-real-life’ letter that would have plopped onto your doormat and delighted you as you flipped through your post and realised it wasn’t a bill and that someone had taken the time to write your name and address by hand. Because that’s what Countrywoman’s Gu...

There are some podcast conversations that leave you thinking long after you’ve finished recording, and today’s brilliant episode with Megan Haigh is certainly one of them. Megan describes herself as a fledgling business owner. After being made redundant during covid, she found herself starting again, and discovering a love for a new hobby that gradually evolved into the business we see before us t...

This week I’m joined by Somerset farmer, ruminant nutritionist and newly crowned Dalemain World Marmalade Champion, David Hinkins. After his wife spotted the competition in Country Life magazine and entering it for eleven years, David finally achieved what many would have given up on long ago, winning the World Marmalade Championships with his Seville Orange and Passion Fruit Marmalade. Not only d...

50 episodes , countless stories and one incredible community - that sounds like something to celebrate doesn't it! As Emma admits in this week’s podcast, she didn’t even know if Countrywoman’s Guide would make it this far, just like any new venture you always doubt at the beginning whether it will work out, how well it will be received, will people actually like it? But here we are 50 episodes lat...

This week I’m joined by Tess Annan, whose mum founded Welligogs 26 years ago, starting with hand-painting wellington boots around the kitchen table. Today Tess is leading the next generation of the business, balancing fresh ideas with the heritage that made customers fall in love with the brand in the first place. We talk about everything from navigating Covid, building an online business, designi...

Lucy Scudamore is one very driven lady and as we heard last time we chatted, her juggling skills have to be supremely efficient to fit everything in. Given that she only started her business last year and had been really busy during the 2025 Game season, Lucy was expecting the Defender Deli to slow down a bit out of season especially as her other equestrian job is busier in the summer. But it seem...

This week’s guest is Katy Theakston from The Owl and the Apothecary . Now, depending on your perspective, the words witch and wild woman in the introduction may either intrigue you or make you slightly nervous. But you needn’t worry, there’s no hex throwing or cliched pointy hats in this conversation - as long as you too love nature and the countryside, you’re going to find common ground as you li...

Jacob Lockwood of Lockwood Smocks was a career soldier in the Coldstream Guards and set to stay there for life. Until he got restless and extremely fed up of consistently getting soaked through on exercise, and he became convinced that he could make something better. That started him on a journey that led to him and his ever-supportive partner Ruth starting Lockwood Smocks, a business that has con...

This week I’m joined by author, illustrator and entrepreneur Hannah Russell. Many people will know Hannah through Little Alf, the miniature Shetland pony who first inspired a series of children’s books that went on to become bestsellers. What began as a blog written during recovery from a serious back injury has grown into a career spanning 20 published books, a thriving creative business and a lo...

I’d seen Lancashire-based footwear brand Lanx pop up on the show circuit that we’re on with Hiho , and their boots have become firm favourites with the menfolk in my family, but I didn’t really know that much about the brand. So when I was thinking of people to interview for the Making Stuff Up channel I was presenting for Do Radio , Marv immediately came to mind. At the end of the 2025 show seaso...

Eleanor Mills is a Founder, Speaker, Bestselling author, Award-winning journalist (ex Editorial Director of the Sunday Times and Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine) - and now the UK’s premier expert on all things midlife. After a 30-year career at the top of British journalism, including senior roles at the Sunday Times, Eleanor suddenly found herself out of the corporate world at 50 - a huge shi...

We’re no Monty Don (sadly!), and this certainly isn’t Gardeners World… But we do have a great little suggestion for your bank holiday weekend in case you were having a think about how to spend your time. Plus it may require a pre-planting trip to the garden centre…which can also involve coffee and cake. A match made in heaven for a spring weekend! There is something rather special about planting s...

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this conversation isn’t for you because you don’t need to know how to make sure that your message lands well, because in so doing you will miss out on a whole raft of great life advice. This week on Countrywoman’s Guide, Emma sits down with presenter, actor and communications expert Dominic Colenso to talk about leadership, clarity and how to communicate in...