Hello all, have a smidge over six acres in South Lincolnshire. The land is part of the old Medieval village with original village pond, village well and the old road running diagonally through it. It was very scrubby when we came but we've planted trees and native hedges and a willow crop on the boggiest bit (we're on heavy clay-very slippy slidey in the winter and great cracks opening up in the summer) for our wood-fired boiler.
We've got a large and currently very overgrown polytunnel
. The borage took over last year. We aren't very good on clearing it out before the winter sets in and seedling time always coincides with lambing so lots of things die. Our fantastic gardener of a neighbour always take pity on us and give us some of her glut of plants. We have a flock of some 61 pedigree British Gotland sheep
and are due 54 lambs this year. Also got five GotlandxTeeswater and three Shetland moorit. We do rent some other land in case you were wondering where we put them all
.
My other half is a retired art teacher and (when he gets time-not often nowadays!) a painter in oils and mixed media. I was and still am occasionally, a picture framer.
We've got two donkeys, Matty and Monty. Matty has a dodgy sarcoid which is untreatable (I have talked with the lovely Derek Knottenbelt and my fabulous vet about it) but he seems chipper right now so we'll count our blessings.
We have free-ranging chickens
which consist of ex-batt, white Wyandotte, Silver Grey Dorking, Welsummer, Black Copper Maran, Cream Legbar, Warrens, White Star (lovely chucks), Speckledy and Black Rock(ish). We have far to many cockerels as we haven't the gumption to knock them off. They're such sweet natured boys and they are crowing right now. Where did the fallacy originate from that they herald the dawn. They crow all the flamin' time!
Indoors we have six unruly, but loving, rescue dogs (Max, Murphy, Louis, Honey, Ella and Saffie, all allsorts apart from Louis the Labradoodle and Murphy the Westie) and four cats
one of whom is meowing at me right now at 5am for some food. "No Maddy!". She's very old (17) and very deaf with a surprisingly greedy appetite and a REALLY LOUD MEOW. She and her friend Pixie (12 years old with no teeth) came to us fairly recently as their mum died and our mutual friend knew we were suckers...They're lovely cats and we don't regret it one bit.
Dunno what else to say really. We're on a continuous learning curve and I never thought I'd be doing this smallholding thing but I love it. It's very knackering but I don't need gym membership that's for sure!
Topic: Can't sleep. May as well do something useful.. (Read 5675 times)
