PASTURES NEW
Stinky porkers in the bedroom & chicks named after Posh Spice – how rich celebs are turning their gardens into farm dens
Famous faces are embracing the farmcore trend by installing coops, stables and pens out back
BEING famous brings with it a life of luxury except when you’re mucking out pigs - that’s when it becomes a very dirty business.
More celebrities are swapping stilettos and red carpets for wellies, shunning perfectly-manicured mansion gardens for mini farms.
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Dubbed ‘farm-dens’ on social media, it's part of a wider trend towards living the 'good life', and #farmcore has racked up 221k posts on Instagram alone.
And Stacey Solomon is the latest celebrity to jump on the trend, revealing the two new ducklings who have moved in at Pickle Cottage.
Here, we reveal the other famous faces who have joined the farm-den hoedown - and some are very surprising…
Spice Girls invasion
With her sparkling clean and crisp white home, you’d think Stacey's pal Sophie Hinchcliffe - aka Mrs Hinch - would be the last person who would want a herd of alpacas roaming around her £1m country pile.
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But the cleanfluencer moved in Raymond, Roy and Rodney soon after she set up home in the Essex countryside, after buying the threesome from a local breeder.
While they’re supposed to live in her vast back garden, they often creep inside.
“They fill my home, or rather my garden, with happiness. That said, they do come into the house sometimes, which is hilarious. Roy struts into the kitchen when he hears the plates because he thinks there will be some spare raisin going,” she revealed.
Sophie, who has sons Ronnie, four, and Lennie, two, also credits her brood for reducing her stress levels.
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She said: “Because they are so quiet, I go over and sit with them by their hay. They will come up and sniff my forehead and maybe have a little nibble at my hair. They completely switch me off from any other thoughts during that time.”
And her farm-den is expanding - she also has a growing flock of rescue chickens that she dubs ‘the Spice Girls’ who are led up by her original hen, Peggy.
Beckham and his chicks
David Beckham has always been a chick magnet – and now he has his own flock of rescue hens in the garden at his £12m Cotswolds mansion. The former England captain switched caps for coops after wife Victoria gave him the birds as a gift last Christmas.
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The Becks’ luxurious converted barn near upmarket Chipping Norton also has a vast greenhouse and fancy outdoor sauna, as well as an all-weather football pitch and a wildflower patch.
Dad-of-four Becks, 49, has been sharing the progress of his chickens on his Instagram, sharing his excitement when they laid their first eggs, while fashion designer Victoria, 50, posted a picture of her husband of 25 years reading ‘Keeping Chickens For Dummies.’
The retired footballer turned amateur farmer also dabbles in beekeeping and makes his own honey from hives in the garden.
His Valentine’s gift from Posh was a subscription to magazine The Country Smallholder – so watch out for pigs, sheep and cows on his social media soon.
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Simple life for socialites
She became famous starring in rural reality show The Simple Life with celebrity pal Paris Hilton and now, Nicole Richie has embraced the good life at home too.
The 42-year-old shares the backyard of her £8m Beverly Hills mansion with Bantam chickens, turtles and bees.
Nicole, who is married to rocker Benji Madden, said the decision to have chickens came by accident after she bought turtles for her son Sparrow, now 14, about ten years ago and heard that the two animals could live together.
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She’s revealed how she also wanted to follow in the footsteps of American lifestyle guru Martha Stewart who believes everyone should keep the birds to cut back on factory farming.
But the fashion designer and mum-of-two suffered farm-den faux pas when she bought a male chicken by mistake. She said: “He did not reveal himself as a rooster until about six months later and then he immediately got kicked out and had to leave.
“I knew something was off from the start. The energy was different in the coop, everyone was really on edge. Then all of a sudden I hear this loud ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ one morning.
“You know the sound you’d hear a rooster make in cartoons? It was that loud. The noise travelled for miles. I had to text all of my neighbours to apologise and be like: ‘He’s leaving now’.”
The celebs who are secret Old Macdonalds
Jeremy Clarkson has found a second career as a real life farmer - but did you know these other famous faces also work the land?
Calvin Harris & Vick Hope The superstar DJ and his Radio 1 presenter wife own 138 acres in Ibiza called Terra Masia, which is the island's largest organic farm and produces fruit and veg, eggs and wine.
Millie Bobby Brown Actress Millie lives on a farm in Georgia with a pack of foster dogs, a sheep called Norman, plus ponies, donkeys and goats.
Carey Mulligan & Marcus Mumford The low-key couple bought a £2m Devon farmhouse complete with land and stables back in 2013.
Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban This superstar duo escape the spotlight at Bunya Hill, a 45-hectare farm in their native Australia.
Kelvin Fletcher Emmerdale actor Kelvin swapped fictional farming for the real thing, working a plot near Wincle in Cheshire with wife Liz.
JB Gill Popstar JB has a thriving business raising Tamworth pigs and Kelly Bronze turkeys on his Kent farm, as well as growing apples and cherries.
Crackers for quackers
Former glamour model Peta Todd has gone quackers for birds and has a trio of white ducks living in the garden of her Essex home.
The 37-year-old regularly shares videos of her bespoke duck coop, and snaps of them gobbling bowls of peas and jumping into the family’s swimming pool.
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Peta, married to Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish, got the pets from a company called Incredible Eggs while homeschooling her children during Covid.
Peta, who has five children, says: “The kids were besotted from day one, Googling everything from incubation to what ducklings like to eat or how much sleep they need. I’m gobsmacked but even the poop hasn’t put them off – and there is poop galore.”
She hasn’t ruled out expanding her flock either. When she shared a throwback video of her birds hatching, she commented: “Makes me broody… for ducklings I might add. Who even am I?”
This little piggy… tried to get into the bedroom
He’s one of Hollywood’s toughest leading men but these days, Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger prefers furry friends to fight scenes.
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The former governor of California has a menagerie of farm dwellers in his garden in Los Angeles, with Twins co-star Danny DeVito revealing previously: “The animals just roam around all over the place”.
Farmer Arnie’s flock include a donkey called Lulu, a miniature horse called Whiskey and a pig called Schnelly. The animals have become celebrities in their own right, appearing on talk shows with the 76 year old and featuring on his social media.
And while Whiskey has Arnie’s permission to be at the dinner table and is allowed to watch him workout, he sulks when he’s banned from the bedroom.
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Meanwhile, Schnelly isn’t the former Mr Universe’s first porky pal. He previously bought a pig after working with George Clooney on Batman & Robin in 1997.
Talking at the time Arnie said: “I always liked that he was into pigs. He has this little pig that he takes everywhere. So I bought a pig right after that. Only thing is, I must’ve bought the wrong one because, in no time, it was 300 pounds and I could barely lift the son of a gun.”
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