When Pauline Beijen waved goodbye to her busy international life and decided to move back to the UK with her husband, Dick and their two children, she never imagined how much her new life would allow her to nurture her creativity and love of all things to do with ‘nature’.

Moving to a smallholding in the stunning Dartmoor National Park inspired her to start creating natural, handcrafted products, including soaps and lotions, buying a flock of sheep to develop wool products, growing vegetables and helping her husband to manage their bee hives.

Soon they had gained the attention of Monty Don and were filmed for the very first episode of his Channel 4 series ‘My Dream Farm’. The wool bedding products they developed during the filming went on to be the start of a highly successful business, Devon Duvets, which handcrafts 100% British wool duvets and other 100% natural bedding products for thousands of happy customers around the UK and beyond.

This blog was created by Pauline so that she could share her passion for creativity and nature with likeminded individuals and she welcomes the opportunity for feedback and sharing.

A few words from Pauline:

“I’ve planned to create this blog for a long time because I wished to share my experiences as I explore and live life in a way that I hope respects and protects nature for future generations – but I couldn’t get started as it meant sharing a part of myself when I am a private person.

As I get older, I realise that I have a deep need to share and if I look back to the filming with Monty, this need was the reason why I agreed to being filmed. Sharing our adventures in living what we felt was an authentic and sustainable life was our aim and we wished for nothing more.

However, by opening our lives in this way, we began a journey that we never expected to make.  One of our ideas was to craft duvets from British wool and this idea developed a life of its own with our company Devon Duvets being born.  It’s always been important to us that it is a very honest, sustainable and transparent business and this is the core of our business.  For many reasons, Devon Duvets has been and continues to be like having another child in both our hearts and souls and for our children, another sibling!

For me personally, now is the time to go back to those times or indeed to move forward creatively and share my dreams, ideas and the things I do that form part of my life.  

I hope you will join me as I continue to tread the path of cherishing nature. I would love to have your company as I journey and I welcome any input that you have to offer.” 

Quotes:

“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Native American proverb

“For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.” Jacques-Yves Cousteau

“Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.” Terence McKenna

“Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard.” Standing Bear