Introduction to Smallholding Course notes

This page lists resources for the major subjects we covered during the day. If there's anything missing at all please contact us and we'll add it.

Smallholding

Poultry

Fencing

The fencing we use for the laying hens / orchard is based around the low visibility plastic deer mesh sold by Farm Forestry. We coupled this with 2.4m x 60mm machine rounds (posts) and two strands (top and bottom) of 2.5mm mild steel line wire, very lightly strained with small 100mm radisseurs (would now use gripples).

Gripple - makes wire fencing very straightforward

We'll be posting a series of articles about the orchard soon which will have lots more detail about the orchard/poultry setup with videos and photos.

Sheep

Pigs

  • Pig article index on TAS
  • Pig fencing
  • Pig forum
  • Preparing for slaughter (including slap-marking / tagging)

    In short, pigs going to slaughter must have either a slap-mark on both shoulders, or a single metal or flame-retardant tag. We use the latter, and tag ours on the trailer just before heading to the abattoir. If you're interested in slap-marking there's a good video on our forum.

    If you're ever unclear about the requirements just post on the forum where someone will be happy to help.

Cattle

Vegetables

We have a small number of articles of stuff on TAS about vegetables at the moment (more planned!) but you might find the fledgling Growing section useful. The Growing Books page lists our favourite fruit and veg books.

We would recommend these sites for veg growing:

Grassland management

Orchard

We'll be adding a series of articles on our orchard setup some time, in the meantime:

  • Adam's Apples - suppliers of our trees and planting sundries
  • Appletreeman - Andrew Lear, based in Perthshire, who advised us on our orchard plans
  • Scottish Orchards - really helpful voluntary group led by John Hancox

Our favourite varieties:

Bees

Other links and resources

Suppliers we use

Womble's wise words

Womble is a long-standing member of TAS forums, who had this to say:

  • It's really, really difficult to make money smallholding, but really easy to have fun. However, trying to achieve the first can kill the second very easily.
  • Because of this, think very carefully about what you're trying to achieve before you start. There's nothing wrong with growing your own food only for you.
  • When we first started, somebody on here advised having only one new species a year. I think that was very good advice.
  • Buy the best breeding stock you can, right from the outset. It's far easier to maintain quality than it is to try and breed it back in later.
  • Context is everything. What works in Somerset might well not work in Scotland, either due to climate or market conditions.
  • Look around you - what are the neighbouring farms doing and how do their business models work? If they're all doing something, that's quite a big hint that it might work for you too.

Contact us

If you need any help or we mention something on the course you can't remember, just drop us an email:

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