Rat's enough! We're off to live in Mayo..

A FAMILY swapped their suburban house in England for a rural homestead in Co Mayo - and now grow their own food and chop wood for heating.

- JAKE MEESUS-JONES

Amy Johnson, 34, and husband Peter, 46, decided they'd had enough of the rat race during the Covid-19 pandemic.

So they moved their four children to County Mayo - buying a six-acre property for €230,000 after selling their previous property in Lincolnshire for €317,100.

The family now does its best to live off the land, growing fruit and veg and fetching water from a well.

They estimate they're now saving roughly €327 monthly on utility bills and hope to slash their current €500 monthly food shop to €200 after harvesting their crops. And Amy, previously a receptionist but now a full-time homesteader, said they couldn't be happier following the July 2022 move.

She said: "Throughout the pandemic we re-evaluated our lives. Wed paid off our mortgage of our first house and we realised we didn't have as much life satisfaction or job satisfaction.

"We looked in Wales, but prices had gone up and we saw the opportunity to move to Ireland and we just thought, why not? We fell in love with this NEW LIFE From sem one. Packed up," quit work and moved over."