It’s a tale we’ve heard before, and one we’re hearing more and more: person leaves stressful job (usually in advertising) in the city, moves to the countryside to reconnect with nature, and lives happily ever after.
“Well, it all sounds very idyllic,” Kathy Slack tells me. She would know, having moved to the Cotswolds in the hope of some respite from the rat race. But, now with an extra four-hour commute on top of an already packed schedule, burnout and depression took hold. She quit, with no idea what to do next.
It was in the garden that Slack found solace. Wandering, weeding, scattering the first seeds of what would eventually become a prolific veg patch from which she rebuilt a new career, a new life.
“Without sounding too glib about it, part of the reason I love vegetables so much is because they have been my saviours,” she writes in her debut book From the Veg Patch, which chronicles a full year in the garden, celebrating her 10 favourite things to grow and the most exciting ways to eat them. This has since evolved into a podcast of the same name, in which she aims to provide “15 minutes of rural tranquility” to her listeners.
As her favourite time of the gardening calendar approachs (“Late August, early September is the heaven … there aren’t too many jobs and the harvests are spectacular”), we catch five minutes with the busy cook to talk about the effect switching to an agrarian way of life has had on her mental health, managing the ebbs and flows of a busy veg patch schedule, and her advice for novices and green thumbs alike.
In your own words, how did you get to where you are now?
I’m not sure I’d recommend burnout and depression as a way to discover your true purpose in life, but it was certainly the push I needed to change things, if a little dramatic. I always hankered after country life and the idea of growing, though my only experience of it was a few fuchsias in pots on my basement flat windowsill in London and binge-watching River Cottage. So it seemed a natural refuge when I was unwell.
Once I recovered, I didn’t have a grand plan to shift careers and become a food writer. I just did things I enjoyed, delighted to be enjoying anything again and grateful that I had the security and freedom to do that. I worked in a kitchen garden, then a cookery school, then did some private cooking work, started writing a bit more, started photographing the veg and just kept on going, learning and loving it as I went. No direction apart from towards the joy.
I think it’s sometimes tempting to create a narrative that’s straightforward – got ill, got better, made new life that was shiny and wholesome – but it’s really not like that. Life isn’t Instagram. I wasn’t a linear progression, just bits and bobs that accumulate over time, and there have been many twists, wrong turns, ups and down along the way.
How does being in the garden and growing and cooking your own vegetables affect your mental health?
It’s magic, really. At once calming, but also engergising and inspiring. To see nature carrying on regardless is very reassuring and makes my worries seem smaller. It also gives you agency, to see something you sowed as a tiny seed turn into a huge plant is very empowering. And at the same time, all the harvests are filling me with ideas and inspiration so it’s the perfect combination for me.
Name 3 of your biggest garden mistakes, and what you learnt from them.
1. Thinking bigger is better. I had a few different growing spaces on friends’ smallholdings before I build a small raised bed kitchen garden at home. The former were big spaces, three or four times the size of the home plot, but I much prefer growing small and growing at home. It’s more manageable and so inspiring to see the veg from the kitchen window.
2. Running before I could walk. When I first started growing I went all in and tried to grow crops that were, unbeknownst to me, really technical like melons and cauliflowers. It would have been much better to start simple and have a few easy successes.
3. Growing potatoes. I know this will be controversial, but honestly, why did I bother?! They take up loads of room, are cheap as chips (literally!) in the shops, and don’t really taste much better home grown than shop bought. I don’t really even eat many potatoes. If you’ve loads of space, then fine, but I’ve crossed them off my growing list.
What’s your favourite time of year for growing and/or cooking veg and why?
Late August, early Sept is the heaven. There aren’t too many jobs to do apart from weeding and watering, and the harvests are spectacular. You have the summer crops in full swing – courgettes, aubergines, beans etc – but the autumn crops like kale and other brassicas are just starting to arrive too.
How organised do you have to be to keep on top of the veg patch? Is it a full-time job or do you sometimes just wing it? Do you have to plan the rest of your life around planting and harvesting?
I very much wing it. I do have a planting plan, but I never adhere to it because I get distracted by, for example, a packet of x I see in a shop which I can’t resist and have to make room for.
‘From the Veg Patch’ was shortlisted for a Guild of Food Writers award this year
