My daughter’s relationship to the chickens at Belle Vue Farm was distinctly Christ-like at her first visit. She wanted to climb into the pen and walk among them like Jesus among the lepers.

We unhooked the electrified fence from the battery as the owner Izzy Dyke had shown us and I lifted her inside. For their part, the fowl played along. Like souls waiting to be saved, they eagerly surged forward to greet her. Unlike Jesus, she didn’t want them to actually touch her.

“Mummy, they’re following me,” she told me urgently.

“They’re not following you,” I said. “They’re following me.”

“Pick me up, pick me up!” she squealed.

My family loves the great outdoors. But as longtime urban dwellers, we're a bit - shall we say - inexperienced at the whole rugged lifestyle thing. In a word association game, the response to "pitch" isn't "a tent" but "a marketing strategy". The last time I built a campfire I wasn't old enough to share a bottle of wine around it.

Yet staying on a farm - away from a city and cable TV and Wifi connections - is one of few ways to have a break that you don't need a vacation to recover from. Without electricity and reruns of Prison Break, you get to bed early, you rise early, you can hear yourself think. There are innumberable farms you can visit and even pitch a tent at across the UK. In my estimation, one of the best ways to camp on a farm is in a tent that somebody else sets up and which includes the modern conveniences the assure you don't arrive back home exhausted and smelly - like real beds and a loo and running water.

Which is what you find in a Feather Down Farm tent. Farms join the group, Feather Down provides and pitches its semi-permanent tents and organises the bookings. The tents have wooden floors and canvas sides and have just enough of the old-fashioned touches for fun. You light oil lamps for light but you still have a loo in your tent with a door that closes.

There is a large coolbox for storing milk and excellent ham you can pick up at the nearby Great Thornham Farm Shop, a kitchen island with cold running water, plates, cutlery, cups, pans and cooking utensils. There is some privacy, with two separate bedrooms - one with a double-sized bed (actually two twins pushed together), one with bunk beds - and a cupboard with a small bed perfect for 3 1/2-year-old with Messianic poultry inclinations.

The centrepiece of the tent is the wood burning stove for heating and cooking. Izzy showed me how to make a fire in a couple of minutes; at dinner that night I felt like a cavewoman conjuring forth fire - a cavewoman outfitted with those little chemical fire starter cubes, pre-split logs, a whole crate of kindling, and the long-barrelled lighter I bought at Sainsburys. It took me the better part of two hours to make spaghetti with a tomato and ham sauce, during which time I drank wine, my daughter played at the table with her toys and we talked and snacked on bread sticks.

Which is really the secret of a Feather Down Farm stay - life is stripped down to its pioneer basics. We’re always banging on about allowing kids to be bored. But actually we mean something like this. We didn't have time to become bored because the day was full of little quotidian routines, from lighting the fire to boil water for morning tea to visiting the animals to tidying our little tent-house.

The five tents on our farm in Wiltshire are arranged around in a horseshoe shape on a large field, fronted by picnic tables and large areas safe for young children to play. It feels a bit like camp, with families rising to the sounds of the farm. We wake and venture from our cozy beds into the crisp morning air, hurry to the communal showers next to one of farm buildings, eat breakfast then venture out to the goats and what you now know are Black Rocks, Speckled and Silver Link chickens.

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