I can't believe its nearly a month since my last post! I must get more organised and post more often!
I ended my last post telling you that I would report on my permaculture course.............well what can I say.........a fantastic few weeks were had at Monkton Wyld Court Picture is of all of us permaculture people at Monkton Wylde............I am hiding at the back!

Thirteen of us from diverse places including France spent 2 weeks completing our permaculture design course, this enables us to have the skills to design not only our gardens, allotments and farms in a way that reflects the permaculture principles but also our lives in general. I found the whole process fascinating and the fact that we already tend to organise our holding and our lives around these principles but could still learn a whole lot more was very rewarding. I did find some of the sessions a bit difficult as occaisionally the theories being put forward didn't actually work in practise as I well knew having tried and tested them in the past at home............but that didn't detract from the rest of the course. The people attending were wonderful and one participant Phil from 'up north' is giving up some of his time off to help rebuild the wall that Mohammed took down in November.....................if anyone else wants to come and help on the wall as a wwoofer please register with WWOOF and come down too!
I am now the wwoof host organiser for the southwest so if you are reading this and want to know more about being a wwoof host let me know!
Kerry who was on the course is moving to Galicia in Spain to set up a permaculture based holding, her progress can be checked out at her blog

I have been incredibly busy catching up since the course finished. My sheep are due to lamb from the end of next week and its so wet and soggy underfoot that they are struggling sometimes despite there being 23 of them in a 12 acre field. They have a dry shed to go into if they want and two long hay feeders full of haylage, so all in all are ok............I just wish it would stop raining!
I rescued 6 sheep last week from a very nice lady who was very distressed because she had been left with 14 sheep after domestic problems. I took one ewe who had the biggest abcess on her foot I have ever seen and she is having antibiotic injections every day and dressings changed every 2 days. She is a right state but I think she will pull through as she also has a lamb which gives her the will to live...............this poor lady didn't know a thing about sheep and the foot problem was caused by untreated footrot!
My daughter Rosanna and I spent an eventful sailing from Plymouth to Roscoff to check on my little house and take delivery of a cupboard. I have never been on such a rough crossing........it was actually quite exciting, reminded me of old war films!.............on the way back we sailed late and as we were travelling overnight we started with a good nights sleep, rudely interupted by the rough sea at 2 am when I almost fell out of bed!
Still, I love going to France and the sea is usually quite calm...............now due to lambing I will not be able to return until May.
I will be converting quite a lot of our lawn to veg beds and hopefully installing an outdoor wood fired hot tub made from clay and an old bath this spring/summer and will try and post some decent photos as I go!