Welcome and congratulations.
If it's possible, you would get fantastic experience and insight WWOOFing on a mixed farm such as you envisage yours becoming. Preferably in Wales, on similar ground. There are loads of WWOOF hosts in Wales so it should be possible. You might even find one near to your new place, which would also mean you had someone to help you make local connections essential to any smallholder (feed suppliers, agricultural contractors, which marts serve your area, and so on and so on.)
Making money out of sheep is a tall order, you need to add value and be prepared to work hard on marketing. Sheep that have nice fleeces and sheepskins might be one way to go, but many on here will tell you how much work it is and how tiny the margins are to produce your own yarn or other woolly products, meat boxes, and/or anything else you may think of! And I know 30 acres sounds a lot when you haven't anything like that at the moment, but depending on where in Wales and the type of ground, it may not sustain as much livestock as your imagination currently has running around on it!
To give you an indication, I am on a 32 acre site in North Cornwall, on clay ground in an area of relatively high rainfall. We use about half our ground for other things, and on the 15 acres (ish) available for grazing animals, we can keep my 2 Fell ponies, 2 small house cows and their this year's calves (but not any followers growing on), a flock of 14 small sheep, of whom we breed approx 6 each year, producing 9-12 lambs a year. We buy in 3 or 4 weaners each spring, which go off in October before the ground gets too wet for them. We have to send the calves off in November when the cows necessarily come in for winter, and in very wet times, the ponies have to be stabled too. (The bringing the animals in is not because they aren't hardy enough, they are all very hardy. It's to stop them wrecking the ground when it's very wet, as it usually is pretty much from mid Nov to early March. To leave them out you would need another acre or two per large animal, to allow for the delayed growth on the ground they hammer over winter.) At that level of stocking and with that management, we usually have enough grass to make our own winter forage (hay and haylage) and occasionally a small surplus.
(We do also have chickens and ducks, they are in the "non-grazing" acreage. As are our veggie plots, forest garden, polytunnel, greeenhouses etc).
We are in a very popular area for tourism, and income for us is easiest come by through holidaymakers; we have 3 (will be 4) holiday cabins and a small (12 pitch or so) campsite. Because we are a hilltop site 2 miles from the Atlantic coast, camping is only realistic here June through the first half of September, so that limits the campsite season. We occupy all our buildings, but if we have spaces vacant, holiday lettings are always a source of good money in the summer months.
Topic: Newbie with a dream (Read 3946 times)
