Hi Everybody,
Another Newbie - this site is so awesome I don't know when to stop!
I have always had a smallholding dream since I was a child and used to pester the parents to have a cat, then a dog, then a horse, cow, sheep, you name it, I wanted it!!
Eventually we settled on poultry and dogs (far too many - my mum used to breed and sell the pups of many giant breeds), also smuggled a couple of cats in but they had a hard life! Never had a cow or a sheep but managed to get a horse in time. I used to keep him at the livery stables though and he was a show-jumper/eventer, not really working class
I qualified as a vet and although I'm nominally a large animal vet atm I am actually doing a PhD on a sheep parasite. This proved so stressful I had to start knitting again, this brought crochet on me, then Woolfest, then you know where you end up.
Hopefully
one day after I finish this project I can go off and buy a croft for my husband (he likes to grow veg) and myself (I like to breed animals. Anything). I'd love to have my own little flock of Shetland sheep for fleeces - my dream just now is to make jumpers like my mother-in-law did, from raw fleece to fair isle pattern.
Keep dreaming for the moment and thank you everybody for the very useful articles/websites and comments.
Speak soon!