Kathleen Fleming, a Londoner by birth, married an Irish orphan, Sean brought up by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Stillorgan, which is now a suburb of Dublin. When he was fourteen, Sean was sent to work in Offley on a farm owned by Mrs. White, who needed transporting to St Joseph's monastery in Tipperary every Sunday. The monks there realised that a lad of fourteen still needed a father figure and the monk in charge of the dairy took him under his wing. This was the leading dairy in Southern Ireland at the time and where the seeds were sown for Sean's dream to have his own farm. The book is about the Flemings as they struggle to start farming in the fifties with no capital.