You are at the mercy of Mother Nature and toil long, hard hours in the knowledge that you could earn more working in a supermarket. But you love what you do.

Frank Elson meets the people who have taken the plunge to run their own outdoor businesses.

Sitting on a tractor in the middle of winter with three inches of snow in your lap must be one of those times when you wonder if you really want to run your own business.

And yet despite the pitfalls of going it alone, many thousands of people set up their own businesses every year. "Having no boss", "choosing your own hours" and "doing something you really enjoy" are the three most popular reasons for chucking in the security of a nine-to-five job.

Surprisingly, very few people believe that working for themselves will bring them untold riches, which is just as well because it usually does not.

Mark Lord loves what he does -- managing the Arthur Lane Nurseries -- but our example above, with the tractor and the snow, came from him. "Everybody gets fed up at some time or another." he said, "Winter is my time for it."

And the advice from Nick and Fiona Gordon of Pine Supplies is: "Make sure it is a business you really want to work in. When things get strained, or go wrong, you can always fall back on the fact that it beats working in an office doing a boring job you have no interest in."

At the Bradshaw Hall Fishery you get the same story.

John Kelly, Stan Messer and Joe Green work from dawn until dusk and freely admit that they are not getting rich: "I could get the same money working in a supermarket." said John. "But we love what we do."

Sticking to what you know is another piece of advice that we found from our three case studies, even though it goes against current economic thinking of diversification.

"You really need to stick to what you know and specialise in it," said Pine Supplies' Fiona.

"Diversification may be fine for huge companies, but small firms are always striving to create and/or maintain a good reputation and specialising is the way to do this.

"We started off by adding wood to our existing stone-reclamation business but it soon became apparent that we needed to concentrate on one or the other."