DON'T TELL ME I CAN'T… ...live the good life

For Clare Macnaughton, there’s nothing better than enjoying the fruits (and veg) of her labour

- ANNA MATHESON

Laying aside my trowel, I sat back to survey my handiwork. A huge crop of potatoes, courgettes and French beans lay in a bucket at my feet and I beamed with pride.

It was September 2011 and six months earlier, I’d planted seeds for all my children’s favourite vegetables. Now, along with my pots of spinach, herbs and tomatoes, we had veg to last weeks.

What’s more, the three ex-battery hens I’d rescued a few months earlier were laying regularly, too – so, that night, I made a vegetable frittata with my haul and was delighted when my kids gobbled it up.

I’d always imagined living the good life– like the hit 1970s show – and growing my own produce, but my ex-husband was in the military and we lived in quarters for years, so there wasn’t much space to experiment. Still, in the winter of 2008, there was a particularly bad snowstorm and we had trouble getting to the shops in Dorset, where my ex was stationed at the time. I was stuck using tins from the cupboards and wishing I’d grown something fresh of my own.