We moved to the country for an easier life – then I had a breakdown Rebecca Schiller had visions of a simpler rural lifestyle but the more she tried to find that peace the more she felt out of control 13 May 2021 • 3:29pm 'Despite the extra work and the challenges smallholding life poses for me I am now certain that this life offers me more than it takes away' Credit: Clara Molden for The Telegraph It was the absence of noise that I noticed first when my family and I moved from a semi-detached Victorian house in Ramsgate to a 1920s bungalow on a two-acre plot in the Weald of Kent in January 2017. Arguments in the street, horns blaring and the thumping bass of a neighbour’s party were gone, replaced by the gentle soundtrack of wind in the branches and a blackbird’s morning song.