[gundog1]

Hi I am based in the North West, in a converted barn and around 10 acres. We are hoping to run a dog friendly B&B and do a bit of homeboarding. We also breed and train gundogs and pick up on the local shoot. I spent 25years as a butcher and would love to run butchery courses from home, teaching people about meat preparation from carcase to the table. We are going to have some lambs to bring on this summer and turkeys for xmas, have chickens for eggs and grow all our own veg. I will probably be scouring this forum for help on the latter.   If anyone is interested in the butchery course I would love to hear from you.

[faith0504]

hi and welcome from moray, this site is awesome, and the folk are really friendly and have bags of knowledge. 

[little blue]

hello and welcome 

[dyedinthewool]

Hi and Welcome from West Wales

Good luck with your butchery courses

[silver swan]

Hello (from Moray too)!

North west of where?. Yep, I'd be very interested in butchery courses but even more enthusiastic if sausage making was included?

However, the real reason I'm responding is the gundogs. What do you breed? Hope it's not Irish Water Spaniels?!!! My husband does a lot of beating up here and goes wildfowling. He occasionally takes one of our dogs but he's only half a gundog (GS x Lab). Thick sometimes and too keen on others!

I'm a newbie to this site too and think it's FAB. Very friendly and useful.  

[ballingall]

Hello and welcome

I too would be interested in where in the North West! If it was near enough my OH or I might be interested in a butchery course.


Good luck with all the plans

Beth

[Daisys Mum]

Hello and welcome from the Scottish Borders

[yankieGirl]

Welcome.  I love this site.  Wish there were butchery classes around here.  Good luck

[gundog1]

Hi everyone thanks for being so welcoming  In answer to the question about the dogs they are Labs and Springers, my friend has an Irish Water Spaniel and I definatly wont be going down that road We do a lot of training for other people and really enjoy working with all breeds, its that sponge of a coat that puts me off the Irish Spaniel. We are based just outside Skipton North Yorks so if any body needs something training (apart from their spouses) let me know.

[silver swan]

Bit far for me to go to get help with gundog training/learn how to make sausages. Hmm will have to start a new topic now for sausagemaking courses in North scotland. 

Oh, nearly forgot....in your original post you mentioned veg. A very handy thing to have access to is the Vegetable Planner found within Suttons Seeds website. First month is free, after that £15 for 1 year or £25 for 2. Check out the inroductory/instruction demo videos first. Once you've done a plan of your plot you can fill it full of veg/fruit, the plan remembers everything so that in subsequent years you repeat the plan but change location of the veg. There's lots of advice re: plant spacings, plant groups, when to sow/plant etc. Best of all, when you register and enter your postcode, the plan advises on when to sow/plant for your area. You get twice monthly emails to remind you too.

Sorry about the rambling length of the above! 

[Sandy]

Hello from Clackmannan, we have a B&B but with 4 labradors (more imminent) we cannot do accomadation as well, we did have my daughters dogs here at Christmas and that was fine but unless our place had wood floors to clean and a downstairs room straight onto the garden, I would not entertain it even with no dogs of out own as some guests can be allergic, although I would also if we had a purpose built kennels in our garden which we could but we just cannot afford. Hope things go well, sound fantastic and will certainly watch out for you!!!

[darkbrowneggs]

Hi there from Sue in Worcestershire

[Hilarysmum]

Welcome.  Have you considered adding  to your smallholding?

[morri2]

Hello!  Welcome from north Wales.  Plenty of info in the veg section.  Good luck with everything.