Even before the first goats arrived two years ago, we had got a couple of pigs for our personal freezer. We were so delighted by the taste of the pork, bacon and sausages from these that this year we have grown extra pigs, and will soon be offering the produce for sale alongside the goat meat. We hope that if you fancy trying goat, but are a bit put off by the additional delivery expense, that you could make a box up of both products and spread the cost in that way. Keep an eye on the Shop page or Social Media, as the packs will start appearing soon. We will have joints, gammon, sausages and bacon available over the next few weeks, which you can arrange to collect, have delivered (if in Pem

As a wrap up to this batch of updates, I would just like to share the following. On a Saturday evening our lovely vet called in to look at Penguin our poorly kid. She was as gutted as we were that she had gone down-hill, but we all agreed it was time. The vet had her young son with her and so I invited him to help me feed the bottle babies whilst mum was ‘busy’. Whilst preparing the bottles I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up (yeah I know - gosh how original) and he first said he wanted to be a farmer and then said no, actually he wanted to be a policeman who lived on a farm...fair enough. Off we went to feed the kids and when we had finished and put them back in the pen he said

If you haven’t heard of the Darwin Awards, do Google it (other search engines available) – the stupidity of humans never fails to amaze, and we have certainly made our own contributions since moving here. Here is our top ten (in reverse order) awarded for general ignorance, sheer stupidity or just damn bad luck. Perhaps some of these resonate with you? #10 Wonky Fencing We decided that a lovely place to set up our first chicken pen was within our little orchard. We duly purchased fencing posts, a manly post knocker and chicken wire. The fence posts aren’t straight, the wire is saggy and genius of genius, we tried to install the gate last.. which didn’t (and still doesn’t) quite fit. #9 Barn

So we knew ‘we’ were expecting 23 kids sometime between the end of January and March, but aside from Tiggy and Gloria who were attended to by our own boy Emperor, we had no dates – excellent 🙄 Many hours were spent staring at what we call ‘foofs’ (the lady parts) for signs of gloop, tails were wagged to gauge floppiness, udders were inspected to see if they had ‘bagged up’, and any slight groan had us on tenterhooks. It was our own phoney war. Luckily tech boy Dave had set up the barn with a web cam so we could watch from bed and avoid disturbing the poor girls through the night. Gemini (a first timer.. great!) was the first to show signs – udder bagging, generally pacing and a plug of muco

What were we thinking? We didn’t have a scooby do about goats. The nearest I’d ever got to a goat was mucking out a pen for pocket money at the age of 11… and I don’t think I even saw the goat that caused my resulting back ache. OK, Keep Calm and Stumble On Regardless. We bought some books, we looked on the internet – wow – goats come in three flavours – Dairy, Fibre and Meat. The most common meat goat, certainly in the UK, is a Boer. Boer goats are predominantly white with brown heads. We were experts! I went on a one day goat keeping course – it was a dairy herd but the fundamental care is the same – I’d met a goat, and got holes in my T shirt to prove it…goats like eating clothes. Then th

I’d liken this time to the ‘honeymoon period’ – endless possibilities, we had some money in the bank and, until we purchased our first livestock, no real responsibilities – it was a gentle wind down time that I think we both needed. Like many new smallholders, we scratched our heads over what we should tackle first. We decided to create two lists (I like lists) – one which required experts and one which didn’t (that would be us). When I started to document what was completed in our first six months I realised that you’d fast lose the will to live, so I’ve condensed it down together with a short montage of pics. We have got many things wrong, but we did start well by thinking about basics – t

Disclaimer – we don’t really advocate our somewhat cavalier approach, but given our particular situation it was right for us! The smallholding we bought was not in accordance with 'The Plan'. 'The Plan' was to buy somewhere with a barn ripe for a holiday let conversion (source of income) with a house for us and a bit of land. We found one property which was summarily condemned by the surveyor, viewed some holdings which required rose tinted binoculars more than just vision to see the potential, and then fell in love with this place – a 4-bedroom house, 6 acres of land, an ‘airy’ barn (but not in a good way), some outbuildings and no barn conversion opportunity 😲 “Well, we will have to ‘far

The following 6 blog posts have been taken from my contribution to a Facebook group 'Celebrating Smallholding UK'. For the benefit of those who do not follow Facebook, I hope you enjoy these short updates. Post 1: Introduction Greetings fellow Smallholders - we are Dave and Debbi Church - a quite ordinary risk averse couple, quietly working hard in the world of IT for a large corporate and paying the mortgage on an average 3 bed semi in Hertfordshire. A near tragic event occurred in 2012 which proved the catalyst for a monumental decision to laugh in the face of risk, throw caution to the wind and make the most of something you only get one go at - life! One Friday in February 2012 Dave sta