RODRIGO & KIRSTEN · WANDERING FEATHERS
Two Londoners.
One unlikely farm.
We grew up in London. Not in farming — restaurants, classrooms, tube lines and the concrete jungle.
This is the story of how we ended up on the chalk downland of Hampshire with hundreds of hens, and why uprooting our old lives was the best decision we ever made.
I spent a decade in the hospitality industry — high-end restaurants, busy pubs, private boarding schools. Good work, long hours, real craft. I developed a deep respect for food cooked simply and with respect but an equally deep frustration with how often it isn't.
The work stress had been building for years. By early 2023 I was running on empty — the kind of exhaustion that makes you question everything you've built.
Kirsten was a primary school teacher who cared deeply about her work. But the system was relentless, the workload crushing, and something else troubled her more quietly — children growing up with almost no connection to where their food comes from or even a sense of the outdoors.
Blank faces when she mentioned farms. No idea what a field looked like. She loved teaching, but began to feel that something fundamental was missing — both in her classroom and in her own life.
A decade in food. Growing apprehension.
Teaching what mattered. Struggling with what didn't.
ROD ————————————————
KIRSTEN ——————————————
'...if we're going to do this, one of us better know what they're doing...'
We were sitting in the car. I'd reached a point where I couldn't keep going the way things were. We talked honestly — about what we actually wanted, what a different life might look like.
Kirsten said it plainly, the way she always does. That one sentence was the decision. I handed in my notice started studying agriculture shortly after.
LIFE CHANGING MOMENTS — EARLY 2023
A few months after the car conversation, Kirsten went through her own significant burnout. The cumulative pressure of teaching — the workload, the system, the disconnect she saw every day — finally took its toll.
We had already started moving toward farming. But this made it feel less like a brave choice and more like a necessary one. Not running away from something — running toward something we both genuinely needed.
The decision was already made.
Now we needed to make it happen.
GOOD TIMING - MID 2024
Then came Kingsclere.
While studying, we built relationships with farmers across the UK — learning about organic systems, regenerative agriculture, and a different way of thinking about land.
Through the Pitch Up! campaign we found Kingsclere Estates — a thousand-hectare organic farm in the Hampshire with a vision of a circular farming community.
We pitched. They said yes. We moved out of London, set up a small mobile flock, and started following the dairy herd across the chalk downland. Wandering Feathers was born.
We've currently got 450 certified organic hens and more on the way. It has been uncertain, sometimes difficult, and completely worth it.
People who care as much about food as we do.
PROUDLY SUPPLYING TO
We don't supply supermarkets. Every business that stocks our eggs has been chosen — or has chosen us — because they share the same belief: that where food comes from matters, and that quality is worth paying for.
From CrossFit boxes to country pubs, independent butchers to village stores — these are people we're proud to call stockists, and in many cases, friends.
