Adrian Bebb, 33, and his partner, Veronika Reisig, 34, make their own yoghurt, grow their own vegetables and produce home-made cheese.

Supermarkets are anathema to them and their milk comes fresh out of the goats - Fosby and Sahne to be precise.

And in scenes that could have come straight out of the BBC series made famous by Felicity Kendal, Richard Briers, Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith, Veronika gathers eggs from their six hens every morning and insists on making her own bread.

The couple are animal-mad too, with two dogs, called Toffee and Crunchie, and cats Tempest and Kiesel, roaming the house.

If that is not enough, they have also taken pity on a stray dog dumped outside their house the other evening, for which they desperately want to find a good home.

German-born Veronika, 34, who is expecting their first child at the end of the month, says they are building their dream home.

"We have everything we need here and our friends who live in the city love to come here and get away from it all.

"We wanted to live in an old house and found this 226-year-old farmhouse with almost an acre of land.

"We moved in five years ago and ever since started collecting all sorts of animals.

"People say to us about the Good Life but I've never seen it! Friends keep joking about it. I would like to see it one day, but we don't have a video recorder and only a very old television.

"Adrian works for Friends of the Earth and I'm a public health doctor so we are quite environmentally-conscious.

"Adrian has made it his job but I have just made it my lifestyle. We try and avoid supermarkets, they are environmentally very unfriendly. We try and find small, local shops and support them.

"It can be very windy indeed here and can be quite grim in winter, but I really like it here.

"It's quiet and there's a nice community. It's a good life, it's what we always wanted.

"We grow artichokes, leeks, beans and cabbage - hardy things mainly.

"We did have some ducks, but the fox ate them, and we have a small herd of sheep because Adrian believes in sustainable agriculture."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.