My sense is that they have never, as a couple, been good at sticking to things and grafting (there’s a grafter/grifter joke in there somewhere), and there’s a pattern of dropping out, quitting jobs, doing flits etc. Of which underperforming on the cider farm and disappearing is just one more instance.
I can’t remember what the source was now, but someone quoted several threads back an account by (possibly) some former colleague of Moth’s of him suddenly quitting a job (maybe the NT head gardener job?) at no notice, and leaving the area suddenly with some story about one of his young children getting out of the garden of their home and almost being hit by a car?
The books always present Moth as incredibly hardworking, willing, skilled, and knowledgeable about the natural world (the degree he does when they were living in Polruan has just given him a formal qualification in something he’s always been expert in, and even when purportedly very ill and losing his memory to the point where he sometimes drives the wrong way to campus, he still goes to all classes and studies), plus he’s also a skilled ‘master plasterer’ and farmer, with considerable experience in restoring old properties. (TWS describes them as restoring a cottage together when very young, before they married, but it’s not clear if they ever lived in it.)
Raynor by her own account has had a spotty employment history (though she specifically says in both TSP and TWS that this is because for the 20 years before they started the SWCP walk, she’d been self-employed on their own farm, neatly deleting her job at the Hemings estate agency and the Abersoch hotel job, if it ever existed), so why would anyone employ her with no qualifications or references? Which is clearly unfair in her mind, but also a useful excuse for not working..
They’re both presented as endlessly hardworking. Moth renovates Polly’s outbuilding from a barely habitable wreck to a point where it’s lettable while very ill and barely able to use his arms, while Raynor works hard with the sheepshearers. There’s always a huge emphasis on the loss of their farm/home, because they ‘restored it with our own hands’ and brought the land back into productivity. Even just before the bailiffs arrive Raynor is still ‘like a true farmer’ concerned about moles in their field.
However, it’s not clear to me whether they were ever actually farmers in any real sense, or how much land they owned in Wales. Does the property listing when it was up for sale say? TSP only refers to buying four sheep (the last of whom is Smotyn the ancient ewe whose grave they selflessly dig jist before the bailiffs show up), all dead and their offspring sold by the time of the repossession, and to keeping chickens. Was it just a token ‘farm’ with a few sheep and hens so they could call their barn a ‘farm stay’?
Moth in TWS starts reciting vague ‘agricultural stats’ and says he doesn’t want to buy their own livestock for the cider farm, only to rewild it and run the cider operation, because he doesn’t want to be tied to it 24/7. He wants to attend R’s book events and do another walk. Again, RW paints a picture of an ill man devotedly strimming and clearing rubbish, and that his work yields miraculous results very fast. ‘Sam’ (Bill Cole) weeps with gratitude when he first sees the restored land.
But RV never mentions working on the land herself, says Moth’s working days are only four hours long because he’s so ill, and her account of the first apple harvest is very weird. They don’t seem to have a plan for how to pick the apples. A local poster on the last thread says volunteers always help out on ‘Apple Day’, but RV writes a gloomy scene about her and Moth wandering around the orchard after a storm, looking at the bruised windfalls and saying ‘We can’t pick them all’ and ‘This will all go to waste’, and never explains why volunteers show up to help, apparently without them knowing this is usual. There’s a vague reference to the barn being filled with fruit and the cider press working again, but it’s not clear who is working it.
I suppose what I’m saying is that there’s a long pattern of doing a half-assed job and then disappearing.