The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: Lord Summerisle on January 13, 2013, 03:57:43 pm
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Greetings, joined ages ago but never got around to posting much.
I live in Devon, half my work is as a photographer and the other half is as a fox/rabbit/deer/rat controller both urban and rural. An odd combination I admit but it gives a bit of variety. Also have worked as a university tutor, in the pub/catering trade, as a sausage manufacturer, courier, and probably other stuff lost in the mists of time and whisky.
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Hi, and welcome!
Your name - is that wishful thinking? Could do with a bit of summerisle, lord or no lord... :D
Your varied occupations over the years should at least have given you plenty of subjects and ideas for photographing.
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Hi and welcome. I am sure those of us who send pigs off to the abattoir might be interested in any info from your sausage manufacturing days.
Sally
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Hello and welcome, your Lordship :thumbsup:
Jeez, we've made it now, TASers - the aristocracy has found us ;)
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Hello and welcome from snowy Lanarkshire :wave:
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Hello and welcome from Worcestershire :wave:
Sounds like a very varied and interesting career path. Will be keen to learn more from you about pest control - currently have a humane fox trap baited and waiting due to being over run with what we believe are relocated urban foxes. Think we have the rat problem sussed with the addition of Murphy (part terrier part collie or samoyed - either way, he loves a nice rat!)
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:wave: HI and welcome from Shropshire. Do you have a small holding as well or are you a wannabe?
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Hi there, and another welcome from Worcestershire :wave:
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:wave: HI and welcome from Shropshire. Do you have a small holding as well or are you a wannabe?
Neither... I work for a number of local landowners which fills my freezer with various goodies like roe deer, pigeon, pheasant, rabbit. I do the product photography and design for a market garden/organic farm in exchange for produce. .
Oh, and I also get to photograph beautiful women from time to time, most recently for a student actress playing Lady Macbeth:
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Will be keen to learn more from you about pest control - currently have a humane fox trap baited and waiting due to being over run with what we believe are relocated urban foxes.
Ask away.... I use fox traps, but I shoot them when caught. As you're finding, if one 'relocates' foxes you're just passing on your problem to someone else.
Thanks to all for the warm welcome by the way.
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Hi and welcome. I am sure those of us who send pigs off to the abattoir might be interested in any info from your sausage manufacturing days.
Sally
I've got a hatful of recipes and can offer any advice you may want. The sausage business turned out to be a bit of a catastrophe in the end, not due to product but due to the machinations of others.
We first rented use of a unit from some fellow in North Devon, who turned out to be a con artist and not to have planning permission to rent out his facilities. Then supposed friends in Wales actually came to us and proposed collaboration. We spent time and money helping to convert one of their outbuildings into a small unit, but it turned out that they were dilettantes playing at it, and as soon as it got to the point of selling, of getting your hands dirty and staying to finish a batch rather than hitting the TV and Chardonnay, they lost interest.
I think in the end he wandered off to London to play at journalists whilst she took up quilting, then cushion-making, and by now for all I know or care, New Age Macramé or crystal-powered clogdancing. Rather than hope 'third time lucky' we moved on to other things.
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Welcome you Lordship from sunny Aberdeenshire (ok I lied) snowy Aberdeenshire - will look out for your varied posts
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Then supposed friends in Wales actually came to us and proposed collaboration. We spent time and money helping to convert one of their outbuildings into a small unit, but it turned out that they were dilettantes playing at it, and as soon as it got to the point of selling, of getting your hands dirty and staying to finish a batch rather than hitting the TV and Chardonnay, they lost interest.
I think in the end he wandered off to London to play at journalists whilst she took up quilting, then cushion-making, and by now for all I know or care, New Age Macramé or crystal-powered clogdancing. Rather than hope 'third time lucky' we moved on to other things.
I had a 'friend'like that. She suggested we got goats between us so we could (quote) share the milk, share the expense and share the fun (unquote). My OH was ok about it as he knew I'd wanted a goat for years. The 'friend' lost interest very quickly but she did me a favour really as my OH didn't want me to be disappointed by losing my girl before I'd even had a chance to go beyond playing at goat-keeping, so he relented and she came to live in our garden. Now, nearly ten years on, I've got three of them.
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:wave: hello and welcome from Durham
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:sunshine:
A big hello from North Devon coast. Battling the elements to get a 5 acre smallholding up n running
:excited: