There is a saying that “You should never work with children or animals,” but Allison Lee did exactly that, and she lived to tell the tale.

After retiring as the owner of a small chain of children's day nurseries, she swapped childcare for animal care when she and her husband bought a twelve-acre plot of land and a dilapidated barn ripe for conversion with a dream of starting a smallholding.

She found her idyllic lifestyle wasn’t everything she had hoped for when she had to take on the local authority in a heated fight for planning permission - a fight she took on with gusto and finally won!

Follow Allison’s journey through the highs and lows of caring for animals, from pet pigs with a fetish for bedding to playful puppies with a shocking sense of taste and smell, and kamikaze goats who wake up every morning with new ideas of how to escape and wreak havoc on the countryside.

The first book in the series of an entertaining, amusing and honest account of life as a smallholding owner.