[summermeadows]

HI from Conwy, North Wales. This website looks great - very helpful. I'm a new member with a smallholding of 35 acres on a hillside. We farm sheep (currently 50) have some chickens and two ponies. We've been here for 3 years and still newish to farming, I say newish because the farm has been in the family for 20 years or so and we've helped out previously, but we're not from farming stock (at least not in the recent past!) I'm loving it though and sheep have become something of a passion.

[Rosemary]

Hello and welcome from Carnoustie 

What kind of sheep do you keep?

[FiB]

Hi from Bala - hope you find this site as useful as I have.  Fiona (also not from farming stock and about 2 and a half years behind you!)

[SallyintNorth]

Hello from north Cumbria 

I'm also from non-farming stock, I've been farming for 5 years now.  First I farmed with a (more experienced female farmer!) friend in the Northumberland National Park (530 breeding sheep, mainly Swaledales, on 1000 acres of moorland), now I farm with BH on his 430 acres low input mixed farm in north Cumbria.  We have commercial beef and sheep, and keep rare breed pigs, native ponies and a Jersey house cow 'on the side'.  Some chickens run about and make a mess and demand food; we buy lovely organic eggs from the farm next door as we can never find ours! 

Welcome to the forum - incredibly knowledgeable, helpful and friendly people here.

[BacheBrook]

Hello from cold herefordshire! I only farm 8 acres and have only just started with no farming background and they are all soo helpful

[Fleecewife]

  hello and welcome from another hillside but in Scotland.  I hardly dare admit that....I do have a farming background  (I grew up on a farm in East Anglia)  We now keep Hebridean sheep and poultry.  We used to keep other breeds of sheep too.   What are yours?  Do you do anything with the fleece such as spinning, felting etc?

[summermeadows]

Hi everyone, thanks for your welcome. It will be great to share experiences and it's interesting to see a number of fairly new farmers as well as old hands!  We farm Welsh Mountain sheep and also cross them with Texel to gain better weights and we also find the Texel temperament lovely when mixed in with the less trusting Welsh sheep. I have to say though, most of them, even the old Welsh ladies, have become much tamer with regular attention. I've just started looking into using the fleeces myself, as even though wool prices have gone up, it still isn't very cost effective selling it to the wool marketing board. I've made a rustic rug on a peg loom so far. My Welsh fleeces are incredibly thick and rather kempy but the Texel crosses have quite a nice fleece with a longer staple so I'm going to experiment with what I can do with those. I have tried spinning recently on a friend's wheel, but I need one of my own. DOES ANYONE HAVE ONE FOR SALE?!!  I'll see if I can persuade my lovely husband to fund it...

[Lesley Silvester]

  Hi and greetings from Shropshire.  I'm not from farming stock, being London born.  I have a back garden.

[white-blazes]

hello from Anglesey