New Zealand. A farm. Cows, horses, dogs, chickens  and that was just Tuesday.

Both sides of my family are farmers — sheep and dairy country, people who understood that your relationship with animals and land isn't a lifestyle choice, it's the ground you stand on. Some stayed on the land. Others of us took different paths. But the pull back to nature and animals doesn't really go away. It just waits.

As far back as I can remember, we had horses. One day my dad brought home a yearling called Little One. My brother and I could be found in the paddock with her,  all three of us fast asleep in the grass. That's probably when it started, whatever this is.

I thought I'd left. I hadn't.

What the farm teaches before you know it's teaching anything.

Animals teach you patience the real kind. The kind where you wait because the animal isn't ready yet and hurrying won't help. You learn to read a mood before it becomes a behaviour. You learn to be still without the stillness becoming uncomfortable.

They teach you that presence matters more than words. You just are there, and that's enough, and sometimes that's more than enough.

I took all of that in before I had the language for it. I've been working out what it means ever since.

The careers day.

There was a careers day at school. We visited a photography studio. Something landed very clearly: this is it. Then came the quieter thought: that's not for people like me. So I filed it away. Got on with life. Took a detour through accountancy that lasted longer than anticipated and was more useful than I'd like to admit.

The farm stayed with me though. It always does.

The farm gave me the eye before the camera gave me the means.

Why it matters for the work.

When I arrive at a session, I'm not arriving as an outsider who appreciates animals. I'm arriving as someone who grew up alongside them. Who knows what a yard smells like in the morning, what a dog's body language means when it's uncertain, what it means when a horse is genuinely relaxed versus performing relaxed.

That's the farm. Forty-odd years later, still working.

The muddy boots were always going to be part of the story.

That's where Wolfe & Fox comes from. A farming family in New Zealand, a yearling called Little One asleep in the paddock, a careers day, a long detour, and a field edge in Cumbernauld at 5am. The work makes sense when you know where it started.

With muddy boots and a full heart,

Jules x