I have sat down to write a post many times over the past few months but as soon as I have begun to reflect on the previous months my heart fills with sadness for the loss of our oldest dogs Rosie and Toby. I want to write about both of them individually and do them both justice but the loss is still too palpable. I will [...]
When I sat down to sum up the past 2 years I found an unpublished post from exactly a year ago: "Whenever we leave the smallholding and return to what we call the old world, family and friends comment that we look well and ask if we are enjoying our new life and have any regrets. Without hesitation we both say, "No regrets". On return we [...]
As we near our second anniversary of our move to Wales I am reminded that June is an anniversary for many important events in our lives. It was around this time 18 years ago that my husband and I first flirted (online in a PC game called Everquest). We had met in person but briefly in a pub with about 30 other gamers. Our first kiss [...]
As I clean out our recently acquired stock trailer used to transport our three pigs to their final destination, I reflect on the last five months. It has been a journey of mixed emotions. We expected to feel some guilt as our relationship with these pigs came to an end. We didn't really sleep the night before, as we focused on the logistics of moving [...]
Thanks to our good friends (Russ and Kel) at the end of the valley, we are now owned by 3 little Welsh weaners. Our adventure in pigs started over a year ago, when having decided to switch from office jobs to a Smallholding life, Dave bought the Haynes Pig Manual by Liz Shankland (yes Haynes publish animal manuals too). In fact, before our relocation from Hertfordshire [...]
Part of our plan for self-sufficiency included breeding and raising a breed of dual purpose chicken the Light Sussex, favourite amongst smallholders for both meat and eggs. As with many plans on our farm, we were still thinking about setting up a chicken run for raising male meat birds separate from laying hens when one of our neighbours was looking to re-home a Light Sussex cockerel [...]
Our wish list of animals we wanted to raise on our Smallholding did not include ducks, but when a paddling of five ducks came up for sale locally they seemed to be the next step. We named our four beautiful Aylesbury ducks Francis (the drake), Mrs Yellow, Mrs Pink and Mrs Green (to match their leg rings) and the noisy Pekin, Jemima. The breeder advised us [...]
When we first moved here, a year ago, we planned on a monthly blog, then after a few months a seasonal blog or at the very least when we reached key milestones; new additions, projects completed etc., but time has just flown by and posts have been few and far between as the desire to sit indoors at a keyboard diminishes. It has been [...]
The beginning of March saw high winds (50 mph+) and dropping temperatures. Although we did not experienced temperatures as low as the cold snap of early December 2017, the freeze at the beginning of Spring coupled with high winds meant below sub zero temperatures for over a week. No running water for six days was not as detrimental to our smallholding with only two cattle [...]
The addition of two highland steers to our smallholding has been a challenge but always a pleasure. Dodger, who turned 2 on the 10th February, had settled into his routine with us and began amusing himself by testing our fencing. The cattle had access to about 6 acres of rough pastures but wanted to venture into the areas we didn’t want them; the drive in front [...]
