It hasn't been a terribly productive week, for all sorts of reason. The chief reasons being preparing for Fred, getting Fred, and ever since, being distracted by Fred. Fred being our 8 week old German Shepherd puppy, who grumbles a lot, and when awake takes delight in 're-locating' anything shoe-shape. Dexter (the Collie) and Fred are clearly going to be best friends, or more likely 'partners in crime'. They get on brilliantly already, and are quite clearly on a similar wav

Has it really only been a month since we arrived, praying that by some miracle that the electricity had restored itself? Time to take stock. Sayings One of the house rules is that when things go wrong we will always attempt to see the funny side - from Aga disasters (see later), wonky fence poles to munched seedlings - all of these things have 'Gone Welsh'. There are of course, degrees of 'Going Welsh' - the shabby chic poly tunnel only went a little bit Welsh during restorat

We took a trip out to see Sue and Justin at Pontgarreg Farm near Eglwyswrw yesterday, and came away with our first residents. They breed and show all sorts of Chickens, and it was lovely that they took time to show us round, and give us novices some basic do's and don'ts. After a night in their new house, I got Debbi up at 5:30 so we could let the ladies out, and introduce them to their new home. Margot and Babs (Good Life reference) were up and ready when we arrived, and we

With the poly tunnel complete (though we are not claiming a win until we have our first storm), we turned our attention to chicken housing. The previous owners kept their chickens in part of one of the barns - whilst it is well appointed and roomy, there is no enclosure for the chooks to roam outside. We didn't really want them scratching up the garden or (heaven forbid) the veg patch (have enough trouble with Dexter) so we decided to create a new chicken home. We have a smal

In the vegetable garden at Fronrhydd we have the frame of a decent sized polytunnel, which lost it's 'poly' in the last winter storm. On inspection, we concluded just about all the wooden base rails (the bits the poly attaches to) were rotten or failing, though the frame itself is in pristine condition. We spoke to the tunnel suppliers some time ago, and worked out with them that we could replace the main side rails with aluminium versions that come with a simple system for

Up early Friday morning to drive to the farmer's market at Lampeter, we had been warned by our friend Neil that 'market' was probably stretching it a bit and he was right - a total of three stalls on the high street! Fortunately we only had one interest and that was a stall run by a couple (Stuart and Angela Mason) who raise, butcher and sell meat from their herd of woolly pigs (Mangalitza's). We had been following the couple's page on Facebook for months and were tantalised