About Us

Newhouse Farm has a bit of a ‘commune‘ feel about it. It may be home for the Strawbridge family, but we also have a lovely team of helpers who have helped make our smallholding function. If you are interested in any of us doing talks, green audits, presentations or demonstrations please go to the ‘Contact‘ page or follow the links to our individual websites.

So, who‘s who?

Brigit Strawbridge cares about people and the planet.
She is living in the West Midlands where her life is currently dedicated to setting up her charity ‘The Big Green Idea‘. The charity‘s mission is to show people how sustainable living can be easy, healthy, inexpensive and fun. It does this in an accessible and hands-on way - using a specially adapted eco-bus which is now ready to take bookings for 2009!
It is fair to say Brigit is different - she quotes long passages of ‘The Hobbit‘(!?) at the most obscure times, is a great healer/listener and sometimes appears to be away with the fairies. That said, she could also be classed as an athlete as she ran the London Marathon a couple of years ago for Children with Leukaemia.
Brigit cares very deeply about nature and the planet and was probably the main driving force behind the family going green.

Dick Strawbridge reckons he is probably the simplest to understand as he is rather conventional in his outlook. After retiring as Lieutenant Colonel, he moved to industry where he was a successful programme manager and trouble shooter who was known for getting jobs done to time and budget. It is fair to say his sensitive side is a little underdeveloped and (apparently) he has some issues with his Yin and Yang not being balanced?
Richard is on the record saying he thinks the most exciting things about the Newhouse Farm project are the self sufficiency and the engineering challenges. He care about the cost of being green, has issues with being preached at by worthy people, and thinks that marketing using a ‘green wash‘ (making theoretically true, but vastly inflated claims on the green credentials of a product and thereby justifying an increased price) means there is very little that can be taken at face value. For details of all of his television work, visit his website here. Or to see what Dick's up to right now, check out his twitter page.

James Strawbridge is artistic, athletic, writes poetry and books full of philosophical thoughts and absolutely loves nature and being outdoors.
He qualified from York University with a first class honours degree in modernl history. From a very early age James has cared about the planet, but a gap year in Nepal, conducting environmental projects with the locals, made him even more convinced that something has to be done.
I think it‘s fairly accurate so say James has a bit of an eccentric streak... If you want to find out more about the man behind the scythe, visit James‘ website here. Or to see what James is doing at the moment, check out his twitter page.

Charlotte Strawbridge is a singer songwriter and studied music in Newcastle. She spent 6 months at Havana University learning Spanish language and guitar and has recently been living in Madrid where she qualified to teach English as a foreign language.
Like the rest of the family, Charlotte is outspoken but she is extremely passionate about human justice and ethical consumerism.
Charlotte is currently setting up her own record company Snorkmaiden records. If you want to listen to her music visit her website www.charlottestrawbridge.com , there is also a link to her ‘My Space’ with more music on it!

Holly Radford found life in London far too easy so she moved down to Newhouse Farm for a sabbatical in February 2009. Life on a smallholding can‘t be that bad because since then Holly has decided to forsake the comforts of city slicking in order to stay at the farm for good! You can follow her exploits on her blog: From London to Land Girl, or you can follow her tweets on twitter.
We take life a bit for granted down here, but Holly reminds us that we may not be normal.

Jim Milner is our technical support at Newhouse Farm.
He was a research scientist at QinetiQ who had lots of experience in eco-engineering. He‘s our answer to Charlie Dymock and is even working on his pecs. If we don‘t know the answer to a question or if we need to source some special little widget, Jim will be found on the internet sorting it out - very useful!! In 2008 Jim joined Dick to co-present the new look Scrapheap Challenge!