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, before a period of ill health forced her to step away from teaching. She began writing a blog about country living, organic gardening and sustainable living, which unexpectedly grew into a business making recycled knitwear. Years later, after another period of burnout, Sue found herself returning to something she had always loved: writing.
At 58, Sue showed everyone that you’re never too old to head back to university and now finds herself, at 64, with two published books and a third in the works - alongside several other exciting plans and hobbies.
It’s quite a story.
Some of our biggest takeaways?
* It’s never too late to start something new, we still have “plenty of stories to come”
* Follow your curiosity, it’s amazing where a hare in the garden can lead you…
* Rejection doesn’t mean you should stop, even after you park the book in a drawer for a while
* You don’t have to do it all alone, there’s a lot to be said about the people who help us to become the people we are becoming.
* Maybe we should all take a trip to Venice? Just because you don’t need to go somewhere, wanting to go can be enough of a reason to.
Episode 62 of the Countrywoman’s Guide Podcast with Sue Reed really is an episode for all, packed with so many wonderful stories, anecdotes and heartfelt honesty. It’s available to listen to now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Sue has recently launched the second book in her Molly Mcflynn Trilogy, you can find signed copies of all her books here.
Sue also writes regularly on her own Substack Channel, RIPE, which you can find here.
If you would like to keep up with Sue on social media you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
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“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 decision to become a little clearer.
Having grown up spending every possible moment outdoors, usually with the horses, that sense of freedom was certainly not unfamiliar to Lisa Supple, this week’s guest on The Countrywoman’s Guide Podcast. But it wasn’t until later in life, after Lisa donned a backpack and a pair of trainers and embarked on the rather ambitious idea of walking the Two Moors Way across Devon, that she began to see just how much clarity the outdoors could offer her.
Lisa is a self-confessed Horse Mad Mum, with a career that has taken her from banking and publishing, to running her own marketing company, and now working in the equestrian charity world. Throughout all these different chapters, one thing has remained a constant - some of her best ideas usually arrived when she was outside. Whether she was with the horses, swimming, or walking, time outdoors always ended with her brain feeling quieter, calmer and bursting with ideas.
That first long-distance walk in Devon was just the catalyst for Lisa’s next venture, an experience that stayed with her and lead to the newly launched Wild About the Walk. A space dedicated to exploring what can happen when we give ourselves time outdoors to think and talk. The walking itself is the vessel, but it’s the conversations and connections that happen along the way that really makes Wild About the Walk stand out. It’s about showing others how a simple change of surroundings can shift your perspective without you necessarily realising it.
In this week’s conversation, Lisa and Emma talk about the mental baggage so many of us carry around and why walking alongside someone can make difficult conversations feel very different. Moving through the landscape together can make it easier to work through a problem, without the pressure of sitting opposite someone and trying to find all the answers at once.
They also get into the less predictable (and very realistic) side of trying something new, including Lisa’s own experience of feeling completely out of her depth during her recent outdoor leadership training. Alongside lovely conversations about the different versions of ourselves we can hold at once, and how moving into something new doesn’t necessarily mean leaving everything else behind.
It’s an episode that might just make you look at your next walk a little differently. It will no longer be something to squeeze in around everything else, but instead be a little space of your own to finally give your brain the time it needs to think.
If you would like to discover more on Walk About the Wild you can find their website here, Facebook page here and Instagram page here.
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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 businesses.
It’s an idea that grew from her own childhood in rural Cumbria, where local food was simply part of everyday life. They enjoyed milk from Tom’s cows in the village, beef from Airey’s Farm Shop because they could tell Kate’s dad which field the cow had grazed in, and baked goods from the local bakery in town. Finding good produce wasn’t something you had to think about, you just knew where to find it.
Years later, after a career in corporate marketing and a long battle with Long Covid, Kate found herself travelling around Scotland in a camper van with her dog, Sybil. She began looking for the local producers she remembered from childhood and realised how difficult they had become to find. The village noticeboards, local magazines and pub conversations that once pointed people in the right direction had been replaced by an online world where, despite all the information available, brilliant local producers were still be remarkably hard to discover.
So Kate decided to put them in one place.
Produced Near-by is now a UK-wide guide, with farmers, growers and makers able to list themselves for free. Kate also travels around the country meeting producers and finding the people and places she thinks are worth discovering, from small farms and market gardens, to farm stays and unusual experiences. It’s one guide, with four uses - to buy from them, eat their produce, stay with them and learn from them.
On occasion, the connections Kate makes lead to ideas of their own…
Just like the ‘Pub Pig’ initiative, an incredible idea that connected people across the village - take a listen to find out more!
The ‘Pub Pig’ is just one of the lovely examples of what Kate is trying to make easier - not just finding good produce, but finding the people behind it and creating a connection that might not otherwise have happened.
There are plenty of lessons in Emma and Kate’s conversation for anyone building something of their own, too. Kate talks about being on her third version of the Produced Near-by website, learning to stop waiting for perfection and, perhaps most importantly, getting out and talking to the people she is trying to help rather than assuming she knows what they need.
They talk about finding your niche, knowing where your time is best spent and learning, the hard way, that looking after yourself has to be part of building a business that lasts.
A very CWG conversation.
And her advice for buying local is wonderfully simple: just switch one thing…
Listen to this week’s episode wherever you get your podcasts and hear more about Kate’s journey, the people she has discovered along the way, and what she has learnt from building Produced Near-by.
Join our growing Community of people who value building a business that fits your life, rather than a life that fits in round your business.



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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 are starting, so for him I am currently website designer and marketeer. We have a second son who has just graduated and lots of dogs, cats and various farm animals.
I know it sounds a lot, but in the middle of all of this, I also manage to find some time for myself.
But it hasn’t always been like this, I worked up until eight days after our first son was due (he arrived two days later - what was I thinking of?), I was back at work for my first Board meeting ten days after having a Caesarean (utterly stupid of me) and eventually jumped out of my corporate manufacturing job a year after my second son was born, because my long hours meant I wasn’t seeing my boys.
Then I started my own business and the hours started creeping up again, but you can’t just stop when you’re establishing your business.
So I knew that something had to give, and managing time better was my way of achieving it. But how could I actually do that?
I see so many women struggling with this and always feeling like they’re falling short and in the wrong place at the wrong time, running here and there and pleasing nobody, least of all themselves.
A lot of the time, these ladies don’t lack capability, but with every single minute of their day filled, they don’t think they have the capacity to change anything.
They keep adding things to their lists of things they are responsible for and to make things worse, the voices in their head admonish them and tell them that they’re not doing well enough.
So they keep on, keeping on and the situation gets worse and feels even more overwhelming.
The continuation of that story is often burnout and having hit that wall early in my career, I know that is not a good place to be.
So I developed a way of working that lets me live my life alongside running my businesses and have some time for me.
This is why we always introduce our podcast as helping you to live life well and do business better, because my life mantra is that both are possible - they’re not mutually exclusive statements.
At times, the life bit takes priority over the business and at other times it’s the other way round, but work/life integration works.
But you have to be disciplined enough to take the time to change the way you work.
I’m sharing the behind the scenes of how to move towards working like this with our paid members, and in today’s podcast I share some of those tips with you too.
We start with making sure that you are spending time where it matters and adding value when you spend your time on something.
Again, having the time to delegate even small jobs, seems like an impossibility sometimes, so in our group, we talk about how you can make that work, sharing tips and ideas.
Then, over the next few months, we’re going to get clear on your values as a decision making tool, the importance of knowing where you’re going and how to focus on getting there, as well as actually harvesting the money your business ideas.
If this sounds like it would be helpful to you too, then please do join us by hitting the subscribe button below and upgrading to our paid membership.
If it’s not for you at the moment, then take a listen to this podcast as I’m sure you’ll find it helpful in some way or another.
As always, thank you for reading and thank you for listening.

Join our growing Community of people who value building a business that fits your life, rather than a life that fits in round your business.



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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 ticked off your list yet, wondering where the year has gone, mourning summer’s long evenings and warmer days, while also starting to dread the inevitable wind, rain and shorter days heading your way. It can be very easy to look at September as the point where the year starts running out.
But what if you looked at it differently?
This episode explores ways of enjoying the last quarter of the year and taking the load off as we approach the busy time of Christmas.
Why not join our growing Community of people who value building a business that fits your life, rather than a life that fits in round your business.

Photography credits: Jake Eastham, Kate Cullen, Rachel Collins, Matt Sweeting


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