Return To River Cottage

About the show

It’s a year since Hugh arrived at River Cottage and he’s expanding his smallholding.

The life of the smallholder is a precarious one and in an attempt to generate some hard cash he rents the field over the river and installs a poly-tunnel to grow vegetables for market.

He also enlarges his livestock operation by buying a cow and calf and some sheep to join his pigs and chickens.

But his aim of self-sufficiency is knocked when his hay crop is devastated by rain and the tomatoes in the poly-tunnel are threatened by blight.

But ingenuity is his touchstone as he finds other ways to raise cash by turning bunnies into burgers, roasting one of his pigs at a Medieval fair and launching his own food brand The River Cottage Glutton.

In between all this, he still has time to throw himself wholeheartedly into local life: winning second prize for his sheep at the agricultural show, diving for scallops off the beach at West Bay, guesting on the open-mic slot at the local pub and even becoming the quarry for the local pack of bloodhounds.

At the end of the year, he cunningly solves his Winter forage problems by throwing a bring-a-bale barn-dance to thank all his friends for their help over the year.


For more information and recipes from this series, click here.