The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: Elissian on October 27, 2009, 11:37:59 pm
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Hi, my name is Helen and i live on the edge of the new forest near salisbury with my partner Glenn,my 3 teenage children and my mother, oh yes tollerance is the key here! We bought our 18 acre smallholding a couple of years ago and life has been on overdrive ever since. we both work, tho i have cut my hours considerably as the farm takes off. We have 2 OSB sows and 20 Wilts Horn ewes plus all their offspring and an ever growing selection of poultry. We've had birds for years but the larger animals are a whole new experience. The joy of helping out a newborn lamb or watching the piglets wriggle around the sow and latch on to her teats for me has been a truly wonderful change to my life. Last week we had our first autumn frost for this year and being out with the sheep early in the morning there's no better place to be. People ask me when i get me time, but this is me time! The down side to all this i would say is that i worry about whether our meat is good enough or if i will find homes for all the weaners and shearlings, i suppose that will improve with time and so far we have had good feedback and second orders for our meat so i guess i'm just a worrier! We had great fun with the pork from our first baconer and tried making parma style ham, salami, bacon, sausages etc, some successes others not so good.
Looking forward to exchanging views with all of you and hope to find a few people in our area.
Helen.
oh yes and my mother's name is Elissa, hence the username, which is our flock/herd name because without her none of this would have happened.
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Hi we used to live near the NF too, lovely area. Often used to take the horses out your way for long rides. There was a particularly nice pub on the Salisbury road which we would stop off at after our ride.
Anyway, welcome from Brittany. No horses now loads of pigs though and a couple of sheep.
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Hi and welcome. Sounds like lovely set up you have there.
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H, and welcome from deepest Lincolnshire
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Hello and welcome from me in South Lanarkshire ;D
Looking forward to hearing more from you
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Hello and welcome from Derbyshire, Living with the in-laws definitely requires tolerance, and plenty of outdoors to escape to, in my experience!
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Hi and welcome from the middle of Scotland. I spent a few years down your way in my teens and love it down there.
Lovely to hear about your life, looking forward to hearing more
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Thankyou for all your greetings, I've had a very exciting week, we sold our first weaners to a lovely lady who was starting out in pig keeping, as we were a year ago.we had decided to keep the only registerable pig in the litter but when she asked if she could buy it i found myself saying yes and then turning to look at glenn realised he had wanted to keep her. I'm so worried about not being any good at selling that i was happy to let her go. The lady bought 3 boys aswell so i was very happy with that. The sows have gone back to the boar so there will be more pigglets soon enough.
We've been trying our hand at more ham curing. this time we're trying the wiltshire cure which is ale, treacle, salt, peppercorns and juniper berries. It will be ready next week so lets hope it's successful as the thought of wasting a whole leg of pork is awful.
I'm hoping to have a quick browse of this site as i rarely seem to have time to look at the computer.
hope you're all well, i bet it's cold further north as it was quite nippy for the first time hear today, note to self to get the gloves out. Take care, Helen
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Well done for your first sale.
the weather has turned nippy here with a hard frost for the last couple of days. All the water was frozen solid today.
Nights like this are so beautiful. The clear night sky, being able to see the milky way clearly.\
Let us know how the ham turns out. It sounds like a winner,
:pig: :pig: :pig:
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Nights like this are so beautiful. The clear night sky, being able to see the milky way clearly.\
Its thick with fog here! In deepest Derbyshire.
Congrats on a good sale, the ham cure sounds absolutely delicious...
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hiya and welcome from central scotland.
I think little blue's is getting excited about christmas. lol
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Not just Christmas.... but the holiday off work too!
only just done one day since last hol, really missed the animals, especially my puppy(... and the husband as well) had half a day training for a brilliant computer prog, that isn't licensed for the majority of the system so how useful is that gonna be?! And the realisation that I've done no prep work at all over the holiday so goodness knows how I'm going to go on!
Oh well
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Hello and welcome, another TASER from central Scotland...bit late as I have a lot on but as they say, better late the never!!!!