Farewell to Farmer Liz? Well, she hasn't ever REALLY looked the part

It was an unlikely transition, from bikini-clad sex symbol to horny-handed farmer.

Now it seems actress and model Liz Hurley may be abandoning her rural role under the influence of her new fiance, Australian cricketer Shane Warne.

After moving almost full-time to her 400-acre estate at Ampney Knowle, Gloucestershire, nine years ago, she boasted of the virtues of country living, baking muffins on the Aga and owning four labradors, two cats, three geese, eight chickens, 49 cows, 63 sheep and 82 pigs.

Pastures new? Liz Hurley appears to be turning
her back on country life with the encouragement
of fiance Shane Warne

‘I wouldn’t mind betting that there’s less sex in the city than there is in the country because it’s just, well, sexier here,’ the Estee Lauder model declared.

She became friends with Jilly Cooper, strode around in wellington boots and sold produce from her organic farm to a local butcher and Harrods Food Hall in London.

Now, however, the 46-year-old appears to have lost enthusiasm for tilling fields and rearing cattle.

She has brought in contract farmers to manage Ampney Knowle, the farm she bought in 2003 for £3.3 million. She has also begun to sell off her rare- breed Gloucester Old Spot pigs and Gloucestershire cows.

Harrods stopped stocking her range of low-calorie snacks, Elizabeth Hurley Organic Fruit Bars, last month.

A local source said: ‘There is a major tidy-up of the farm going on. The contract farmer will do everything – plough, fertilise, harvest – and Liz will not be directly involved now. She is giving up the good life.’

Country girl: Marquees go up at Liz Hurley's 400-acre estate at Ampney Knowles in Gloucestershire for her 40th birthday in 2005. But she seems to have lost enthusiasm for rural life

Meanwhile, her acting career has revived with a cameo on US drama series Gossip Girl last year, and as a designer her bikini sales are buoyant.

Gossip in nearby Barnsley village even suggests she may be planning to sell up altogether, and that even if she does not, she has certainly abandoned ideas of being a farmer.

She spent Christmas in Australia, watching her future husband play cricket and getting better acquainted with his family.

Unlikely transition: Liz went from sex symbol to farmer girl when she bought her rural home nine years ago

It was rumoured that her former husband, textiles heir Arun Nayar, whom she married in 2007, never took to life on the farm.

Other friends, such as her former love, Hugh Grant, were said to be more comfortable there.

And although Warne, 42, was spotted escorting her to a local fete last year, it seems unlikely that the slow pace of life in Gloucestershire would suit him indefinitely.

A spokesman for Ms Hurley declined to comment.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2083740/Farewell-Farmer-Liz-Well-REALLY-looked-part.html