Fresh-faced and full of inspiring ways to help us live more simply and wholesomely, Kate Humble approaches life in ways from which we can all benefit. She speaks to Gemma Calvert about her love of nature and her unforeseen TV ambition!
Words: Gemma Calvert. Images: Andrew Montgomery
I wrote my new book Home Made because I have a huge admiration for craftspeople. I did a series for the BBC a long time ago called Back To The Land, which was about rural businesses and people who had stepped away from the train tracks of “This is how you go about life” to do something different. Everyone loved that series, so I wanted to find artisans that are proof that there is still value in what we think of as a slightly old-fashioned way of making a living.
I made a list of 20 people, and when I went to see them, every single one had an astonishing story. I got what I needed the first time around. That never happens!
The 60 recipes in the book then came really naturally because everyone I spoke to had a connection with food in either an oblique or a very visceral way. We talked as much about food as we talked about their crafts! The recipes are a mixture of what artisans shared with me and those I was inspired to find.
Amanda Rayner used to teach basket and willow weaving at our farm in Monmouthshire. She once came to the house to teach me how to make pea frames for the veggie patch and arrived in her old car with a homemade roof rack made out of willow. She brought me a bag of cherries from the tree in her garden. As far as I’m concerned, cherries are addictive.
So I had to have a cherry recipe, and because I use an Amanda basket every day to collect eggs from my hens, I also included an egg recipe. Then there is a wonderful fisherman called Hayden Scamp, whose dad was a great fisherman who used to put dry roasted peanuts and butter in the cavity of a fish, wrap it up with wet newspaper and cook it in the oven until the newspaper was dry. When I tried that recipe, I thought, “Oh, my God, it’s delicious!”. It’s my new thing and, of course, is in the book!
Happy adventures
I’m a nightmare when I’m writing. Not so much cookbooks, but non-fiction. When I get to the final bit of writing, I usually go away because I’m so impossible.
To give you an example, I had a deadline recently for a newspaper article. Ludo [Kate’s husband, TV producer, Ludo Graham, 63] and I were away in north Wales having a mini break, but it was raining, so I decided to write at 3am in our very nice hotel. I was up typing because it suddenly came into my head how to restructure the copy.
Luckily, Ludo wasn’t awake, so I was able to do it really quietly, but that’s what happens. I become all-consumed when I’m writing, so he doesn’t get fed, and I become a bit of a s*** wife!
Quality time for Ludo and I means going for beautiful walks, finding a lovely place to eat or, what’s unbeatable, enjoying time with friends. People think, “How many friends have I got on Facebook?” but nothing beats spending time with real friends.
We’ve got a lovely group of very special people in our lives and adore hanging out around a kitchen table or at the local pub. It’s nothing fancy-schmancy. Real happiness comes from proper contact. It’s giving someone a hug.
I’m still friends with my former Springwatch co-hosts Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan. Ludo worked with Michaela when she was on The Wide Awake Club years ago, so we’ve known her for years. She’s a top bird and comes to stay when she’s over from her home in South Africa. We all spend a lot of time talking.
Just being me
I was at Bordeaux airport, returning from my lovely friend’s funeral, when a young woman came up to me and said, “I’ve been watching your programmes since I was tiny and I’ve become a biologist because of you.” I was in a mess anyway, but that made me so emotional.
I know that not everyone wants to live up to their thighs in mud and covered in dog hair and never go anywhere glamorous, but some people do. I’m a very ordinary, normal person who’s been given a lovely chance to do my thing and share it with other people, and hopefully, that makes it attainable. I’m not out there on a pedestal with a multi-million-pound lifestyle. I’m just me.
The simplest way to reap the rewards of nature costs nothing – just leave your phone behind and go to a green space. We’re really lucky in this country. We’ve got fantastic parks, canal towpaths, nature reserves and amazing countryside within easy reach of towns.
Give yourself an hour outside with no notifications pinging away, look at the sky and the trees, listen to the birdsong – do what people did in lockdown. In that terrible time of complete turmoil and uncertainty, social media was full of pictures of blossom. People went out and hugged trees and lay on the grass.
When everything was going to pot, Mother Nature was still ticking away. And it’s not about remembering lockdown, because no one wants to remember that, it’s about carving out a tiny part of the day where you go into a green space and appreciate it. Don’t take photographs or selfies, just enjoy it.
Being slightly removed from telly now, I’m fascinated by how it’s playing out, but the bottom line is, there’s very little work for somebody like me. I could bitch and moan about that, but there’s no point. It’s just changing.
We’re now at a point where old scheduled terrestrial telly, our cultural heritage, is going, which I find sad, mainly because that was the way we had a shared cultural experience. We all watched The Morecambe & Wise Show and The Generation Game, and, up to a point, you get that with Strictly Come Dancing, but you can see that TV experience disappearing over the horizon.
At the start of my TV career, when I started presenting on TV show Holiday, which I never planned to do, I thought, “The only way I’ll get away with doing this is to only do jobs that I really want to do, that I’m really interested in, and that I feel I can genuinely bring something useful to.”
I still feel that way, so if the sort of telly that I want to make is not being made anymore, then I won’t do anything.
My dream TV show would be Love Island – but not the one that you think! I’d love to do a live broadcast from South Georgia in mating season. I’ve never been, but it’s one of the most wonderful wildlife spectacles on earth!
Reluctant TV star
The biggest compliment anyone ever paid me was a BBC commissioner a few years ago, who said, “You’re the only on-screen talent we have that will sleep in a ditch then get up the next morning and do a piece to camera.” I thought, “I’ll take that.”
In 2017, I was filming in Afghanistan, and we camped overnight 4,000 metres up a mountain with shepherds who were moving their sheep up for the summer. This weird thing always happens to me at altitude, where everything swells up – my fingers bloat, my eyes puff up.
I came out of the tent looking like a complete monster and did a piece to camera going, “This is what happens to me at high altitude.” Everyone thought it was hilarious!
So I’m not interested in being on telly, per se. I just love facilitating people telling their stories, whether it’s Afghan shepherds, Mongolian nomads or utterly relatable, regular folk in the UK who say, “I really love doing this, and I’m bloody well going to give it a go.”
I didn’t have children because I didn’t want children, not because I couldn’t have them. I, for whatever reason, just didn’t feel, and have never felt, the need to be a parent. However, one of the things that I have loved about the journey that we’ve had with the farm is being able to have kids come to the farm and for them to have what could prove to be life-changing encounters and experiences.
We once had a family stay for a week working – a mother, her mother and two children – and after they went home, the woman wrote me a letter saying that before they arrived, they’d just escaped a very violent domestic situation.
She said her children had PTSD and her son hadn’t been verbal for 18 months, partly because of autism and partly because of the experience that they’d been through. She also said that at the farm, her son was able to talk to the animals and the stay had brought her boy back. I read the letter in absolute floods of tears.
Making life count
At this age, you become aware of mortality. When you start losing people and you’re in your 50s, you start to understand the great privilege of good health and do absolutely everything in your power to keep it that way.
I eat hardly any ultra-processed food, but neither did my lovely friend who died in France. With cancer, there’s no rhyme or reason, but there is a great reason to try to stay as healthy as possible and take joy in it.
I love exercise. As well as walking every day, I do a strength session twice a week with a trainer, and that’s really important for women going through or, like me, coming out the other side of menopause.
I’d rather spend money on that training than on buying a new pair of shoes. Health is an investment.
If I’m going to use social media, and I do it slightly unwillingly, I want to be a force for good. Somebody once said to me, “I follow you on Instagram and I love what you do because it’s always so positive. It’s always pictures of the dog or a nice view.”
I thought, “That makes me feel less dirty about doing it,” and now I want to use it as a force for good and do something that cheers people up, or makes them think, “Gosh, she’s old and she’s just walked 160 miles, maybe I could do that too.”
I might appear positive, but I doubt myself all the time! I remember reading Stephen Fry, who was talking about imposter syndrome, and thinking, “Surely not!” But perhaps we all have it.
There’s definitely a power in tapping into your own vulnerability. The power is to recognise it and try, in however small a way, to overcome it, even just a little bit. It makes you feel a bit brave and a bit strong and helps you the next time you feel vulnerable.
I don’t have tangible goals, but as I get older, I realise the importance of having time to do the things that I love. For me, that’s being outside – going for big walks and swimming in rivers – cooking for friends, and seizing opportunities to try new things.
As for what’s top of my bucket list for 2025 – it’s to stay healthy!
Home Made: Recipes From The Countryside by Kate Humble (£26, Gaia) is out now. katehumble.com/
