The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France

The author is probably best known for being in the first series of ‘All Creatures Great and Small' back in the late 1970s. I recently enjoyed watching her TV series ‘Secret Provence’ so got her first book about her life there. It is a delightful account of the author and her husband buying a wreck of a house without water and other services in the hills above Cannes and with acres of overgrown land. When they clear it, they find they have many olive trees, as well as fig trees, almond trees and lemon trees, and she becomes passionate about learning to be an olive farmer.The book transports you to a place of sunshine, far reaching views of sea and mountains, and the French lifestyle of good food and wine and taking time to enjoy being alive.The author has a warm and engaging style of writing and is ever curious and adventurous. Occasionally she overdoes the similes with three in a row, but it is still a great book.I’d like to read her two books about her journeys across the Mediterranean to investigate the history of olives.

after the Tv series with Carole & her husband I got this on Kindle. it is more detailed than the tv with lots of descriptive writing. it is good reading.

A wonderfully descriptive account of life in an old olive farm in the South of France entwined with the story of love and family , joy,sorrow heartache and loss. .Carol paints such vivid descriptions you can smell and taste the shimmering heat , feel the dust and the fierce winds and hear the sound of Mediterranean France . The host of colourful characters human and canine that Inhabit the olive farm and local villages really bring the book alive and add to the magic .I lost myself in this book and found myself longing for a time on the olive farm .

Carol's memoir of how she and her husband-to-be (as he was then) first found and launched into the unknown with perilously limited funds, having fallen in love with the olive tree-surrounded house in Provence. It's worth a read, if only to learn what it means to take huge risks to get what you really want. It's a lesson in commitment that sums up the determination of both parties to each other and their dream of an idyllic life to come amongst their ancient olive trees and the other fruit trees and flowering plants they discovered as they cleared the weeds and scrub from years of neglect.

I didn’t realise this was an autobiography and although interesting I floundered in the middle.

Good interesting read. Obviously written with eye to film! Well- written but find all these moving to Mediterranean stories a bit much of a muchness. Won’t read any of the other sequels or prequels.

Carol writes so beautifully, you are transported to Provence and feel totally immersed in her memories, she brings her account of transforming her olive farm to life and introduces wonderful characters along the way. Loved it.

It's a long way from the Yorkshire Dales, but I think that I have become enamoured with Miss Drinkwater all over again.Not this time for her acting ability, or for any character that She is pretending to be, but rather Her own steely determination and resolve.This is an insight to a Lady who has spent most of Her life so far avoiding deep relationships and has been self reliant in Her travels, having found Herself suddenly head over heels in love with a wonderful man and their outwardly rash and plainly stupid, decision to spend a fortune they didn't have on a ruined farmhouse and acres of scrub.Carol has a wide wonderful writing style, and I just know now that I am hooked and will be reading Her and charging my Kindle for ages yet.

A treat from cover to cover; informative about life in Provence & very much so about olive farming. Well written so in this regard alone a joy worthy of sharing! Now a fan so will be reading more by Carol Drinkwater.

Excellent book, and very readable. The author has the talent to write so that paragraphs can be read in one scan. If you have ever seen an old building in the French countryside and thought "We could fix that up and live here?", this is your book. It's a bit different to Peter Mayle's book A Year in Provence, with more focus on growing Olives and the challenges of doing it all while still doing one's day job (in other countries no less ) and with little funds to do it.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. The visual images created by the writing method were outstanding together with conveying the understanding and consequences of buying a deserted farm in France and determined to make a go of it.

This is a story about a couple that buys a mostly dilapidated house in France. It is situated in a beautiful place and surrounded by olive trees. The descriptions are lovely. I would've loved if pictures had been included!

Let's face it, I'm always ready to read about life in a new country and this memoir had me captivated from page one. Add the fact that the author had a leading role in one of my very favourite TV series, All Creatures Great and Small and writes so beautifully about her tiny corner of France and I found I had a book I couldn't put down. While many memoirs about relocation follow the gentle rhythm of life's up and downs, The Olive Farm contrasts the lows of grief, the harshness of fire and storm and the very real possibility of bankruptcy with the joys of a new and intense love, the delicate unfolding of the seasons and a deep respect for the earth and its bounties.