There’s a quote by Carl Jung that’s particularly relevant here: 

“Life really does begin at 40. Up until then you are just doing research.”

It couldn’t feel more true.

At around that age, I found myself standing at a crossroads, exhausted, frustrated, quietly wondering if I was meant for something more. I’d spent nearly two decades working in marketing across industries like fashion, retail, travel, and finally a fast-paced tech startup, where I began to discover my entrepreneurial spirit.  

Ouseburn Farm turns 50 next year. Through all that time, the city farm in the heart of Newcastle has been home to goats, pigs, chickens, bees, and thousands of people who’ve found a place to belong. From its radical beginnings in the 1970s to its role today as a charity supporting adults with learning disabilities, difficulties, and autism, the farm has always been about more than animals and vegetables.

We speak to Katie, its manager, about the farm’s history, its future, and the power of community.

In September 2021, my clever, creative, lovely mum unexpectedly, inexplicably, impossibly, died. She’d been diagnosed with cancer only six months before, just as lockdown restrictions were lifting. She was a wonderful mix of contradictions – as happy turning Deep Purple to maximum volume as painting delicate watercolours, forever patient but no-nonsense, unbeatable in a pub quiz and able to hit a baseball clean over the house with one hand, an avid reader and boundless traveller, mild mannered until she was watching the football, gentle but courageous, reserved but competitive, calm but occasionally a little wild.