Morning all
Sorry if this post is in the wrong place, but I’m looking for some general advise on getting started on our small holding, I should point out that I have zero experience ! we fell in love with the house and the land was a bonus but the more I read this amazing forum and visit shows etc the more I want to do ?
Back in September we moved to a lovely spot in the Staffordshire moorlands with 7 acers, since then I have been trying to sort out drainage issues, we had very wet fields, fencing issues, we had none… and water supplies to the fields,
All that is now sorted and I have been topping the grass every couple of weeks to keep the weeds down and build the quality of the grass up, ( it had not been touched in 4 years+)
We have filled in all the paper work and I’m just waiting for a CPH number to arrive,
Our initial thoughts were to have some sheep to keep the grass down and in a small way make some money on meat and or wool etc
BUT……Just to add to the chaos we are foster careers as well with 3 kids in long term placement that have not had the best of starts in life and a daughter of our own and they are all under 10, so we would like to be able to give them some experience with animals and perhaps extend this to the wider foster careers community, with this in mind I started thinking of a mix of animals such as a couple sheep, cows, alpaca etc kept more as pets than as an income (we have 12 rescue chickens at the moment), and this is where I need you guys to assist
am I mad ? I realise that I have a lot to learn and need to start small and move up in the years to come, currently we have no outbuildings at all so I will need to work on that field shelters are no problem for me to build, subject to planning or making them moveable etc.
So sorry for the long post but any of you fantastic people have any ideas ?
Thanks
Matt