The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: Welshcob on July 17, 2012, 01:59:57 pm
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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 :D
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 :fc: 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!
:wave: :horse: :cat: :chook: :dog:
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Hello and welcome from Carnoustie :wave:
Come and meet us at the Scottish Smallholder and Grower Festival! Sunday 30th September, Forfar Market.
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Sounds fun! I hope I could make it - lab work permitting :innocent:
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hi & welcome from me - as a recent newbie i should warn you how addictive the site is............. but i wont :wave:
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Hello and welcome. :wave:
Sounds fun! I hope I could make it - lab work permitting :innocent:
There's going to be a spinning wheel clinic at the Festival - http://www.scottishsmallholdershow.co.uk/news/woodland-turnery-spinning-wheel-clinic/ (http://www.scottishsmallholdershow.co.uk/news/woodland-turnery-spinning-wheel-clinic/) ;) :)
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Wow thanks! This makes it even more enticing. I MUST go!!
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Hello from down the road near Lauder, if you're passing this way drop in, I'm good at pots of tea - we're on the map - Dod Mill by Lauder (about 4 miles NE of) :wave:
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:wave:
hehe wondered how long it would take you get on here.
Dans
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:wave: Hi and welcome from Shropshire and from another TAS addict.
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Hi & welcome from West Scotland :wave:
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Hi
I'm new too & like you, always crazed the parents for animals - I once tried to hide a young chicken in my bedroom but mum found it while I was at school and I had to take it back (I was only about 8 at the time, but loved poultry ever since) Mum & Dad used to breed St. Bernards - But I never got my own horse until Ieft home & got a job!
What large breed dogs did you have?
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Hello from me in South Lanarkshire :wave:
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Hi and welcome from Sue (and Great Dane) in Worcestershire :wave:
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Hi fairhavenfarm, your story does sound familiar!!
We started off with just the one Dalmatian (on the wake of the Disney's film), she's always been my favourite - she was called Peggy and lived to the grand age of 15. We have always been asking for more puppies so we bred from her first, (she had 14 that time!!), then my mum liked the whole business of rising pups and it escalated from there.
At one point we had 20 bitches and their litters. My mum loved Great Danes (5 all at once, 3 of which lived in the house with us, + Peggy, + cats), but we also had Newfoundlands, Shar-Peis (the skin-in-folds Chinese dogs), Alsatian, Labrador, Giant Schnauzer and another Dalmatian. I think there was more, but I can't remember them all!
It was chaos ::) ;D but we loved it. Us children went quite wild at that point lol
After school I was in charge of collecting food bowls after their meals and washing them, then I had to feed/clean/water and generally look after the chickens, ducks and geese. Was so much fun! I have really fond memories of that time and that place. It was the perfect smallholding :)
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Sounds like a idyllic childhood. I could never persuade my parents to get more than a hamster and, later, a dog although my younger brother had a snake and white mice.
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Hello and welcome from Durham :wave:
Which vet school are you from? Good luck with the phd :fc:
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Hi Mammyshaz, thanks for the good luck wishes. I feel they are needed as I've just been robbed of my weekends because of lab work :( :(
How I wish I could go and feed chickens instead! Any takers? :eyelashes:
Btw, to answer your question I qualified from a vet school in Italy and then did a Masters degree at the Dick Vets in Edinburgh. Then I enrolled at Glasgow Vet school for my PhD. A good swirl and swallow, aye?!?
:wave:
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Hi Welshcob, welcome from Aberdeenshire!
Yeah, I'll take you on - you can do whatever I'm supposed to be doing at the moment, I'll do the lab work for you... :) (Will be counting sheep this coming week.)
In a way you were lucky; my parents would never allow anything bigger than a hamster or budgie! When I was 17, I smuggled in a cat. My mum loved it; my father - well, let's say, he tolerated it.
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Hi and welcome to the forum from Bathgate :wave: