Smallholding in Somerset

2011-12-16T12:23:00.003Z

Loop the Loop Come on people go check out the website for wonderful gifts this Christmas.....

2011-12-16T12:21:00.002Z

Well here we are again and blogging!
Time does fly...well I think it does! All back to normal now at Ivy Cottage and I can report a fantastic year despite the cancer blip! 23 sheep are currently in residence 3 of whom are waiting to go to the freezer! 15 ewes are in lamb to 4 top class rams one of whom I trecked all the way to Margate to buy....Margate is a long way from here!
I have also built a new website and will be opening for eco b&b in the spring....lots of painting, tiling and coffee drinking going on!
My lovely daughter Laura has just opened her new business Loop the Loop which you MUST check out as its perfectly brilliant and I think loads better than the famed Cox & Cox!!!

Right back to that paintbrush!

2011-05-17T20:34:00.002Z

Crikey time is flying again! Well the sheep are getting sheared on Thursday and my daughter getting married on Saturday.....so we are incredibly busy!
I have had 2 fantastic volunteers working for me for the last 2 weeks Davy from France and Jan from Hong Kong. They have cleared lots of head high brambles from the boundary of a new 3 acre field I have so that some new fencing could be put in and chopped and stacked huge amounts of wood, pulled thistles and nettles and......been attacked countless times by our cockerel who seems to wait just for them.....he is pretty cowardly with the rest of us!
I have planted 7 types of bean with 2 types not coming up! Also taking part in a trial for the permaculture association growing veg in mixed groups...kale, beans peas and sweetcorn interspersed with onions, spinach, marigolds, beetroot and salads. Another plot is prepared with 3 straight rows of veg and careful and detailed results are being plotted....its very interesting!
The Woolly Shepherd is now under new ownership and has a new website and logo and my new website which will be www.valgrainger.co.uk will be up and running soon!
We will be putting on lots of courses from hedgelaying and peg looming to bread, jam and chutney making.
We are also going to be developing eco b&b for later in the year so watch this space.

2011-04-14T12:50:00.003Z

Just a quickie to tell you all that The Woolly Shepherd has been sold.....but will still be producing fantastic insulation from local sheep and woolly packaging just up the road from where it was before.....to the same high ethical standards! I will still be involved in a small way whilst developing lots of other woolly ideas, running courses, giving talks, growing my veg, Chairing the local Parish Plan committee and vice chairing the Blackdown Hills transition group....Oh and of course breeding pedigree sheep!
We have 13 lambs from 11 mums at the moment 9 rams and 4 ewes....typical when tryong to expand! One more left to lamb now. We have had 2 sets of twins which is very unusual as Ouessants tend to have single lambs....and one is one of my smallest ewes!
The lambs are great time wasters to watch!

2011-03-23T21:57:00.003Z

Budget day today....
Got me thinking about something I have thought for a long time....economic growth. Success in an economy is measured in terms of growth...ie how much more we spend on consumer goods, how many houses we have built, how rich we become and therefore how much more we may spend yet!
This is quite frankly barking mad....how on earth (and yes literally 'how on earth') are we to keep up this never ending expansion and growth?.....surely something is going to snap if we keep stretching for more and more yet success seems these days to be measured by growth and failure by decline and stagnation.
However perhaps if we look at the words used and looked at them in a different way and not in such negative terms and made stagnation into consolidation, made decline into good housekeeping and growth into greed we would actually be able to work out 'how on earth' we might have enough resources left in the world....!

2011-03-17T11:12:00.002Z

Well its been a long time since I blogged....why? well to be honest because I have been that busy I just have not had time!......
I am going to therefore tackle some issues head on....haha...head on is very apt!!
The past year has been a trifle traumatic but has bought more positives than negatives, yes that does sound barking mad when you have had your daughter and yourself diagnosed with agressive breast cancer, both been through surgery,chemotherapy, radiotherapy, herceptin therapy and heaven only knows what else and have anothe 5 years worth of treatment to go (hormone therapy)!!!! However lifes experiences can be looked upon as negative or positive and this has most definitely been the latter. I have met some amazing people, laughed until i was helpless with the humour I have found from people, experienced first hand what its like to be 'on the other side of the fence' i.e. the patient experience! found out exactly who my friends really are...with some surprises, and audited my life and planned an exciting future....so to be honest, although this seems a strange thing to say, I wouldn't have missed it for the world......

So I thought I would share some observations before blogging regularly about my sheepy and other activities!
Chemotherapy....nasty stuff, lots of different versions, some make you feel sick, some make you ache all over, some make you muzzy headed, most make your hair fall out...and not just the hair on your head!!!
However the most visible bit is the head hair thing!.....So you have a choice, wear a v posh bit rather hot wig....which to be honest I tried but looked too tidy, after all they just dont 'do' wigs for scruffy outside types! And so I tried a variety of hats....which being over a very cold winter were ok...until you went inside the pub/shop/train/house etc when they got really warm and you take em off and people look at you with horror....now just a comment aside here...WHY is it that the England rugby captain and half his team with shaven heads are seen as ok and quite sexy but a bald women is seen and regarded with total horror???
Scarves....I look daft in a scarf....ohh that nearly rhymes! and scarves shout CANCER and everyone averts their eyes and gives pitying looks....especially so once your eyebrows and eyelashes fall out coz, well, you must be 'near the end'!!!

So I have chosen to mostly go 'commando' and scare them half to death!.....whilst explaining that chemotherapy is not being given as 'a last resort' as one person commented.....!!!.....but as a first line of treatment to stop the bluddy cells in their tracks just in case any escaped being removed by the surgery!!!.....and make you well! The same goes for the radiotherapy....I am in the middle of that treatment at the moment and attend the clinic for a 5 minute daily microwaving for 4 weeks...very easy and not at all scary. As for the other targeted treatments....the herceptin which was fought for to be licenced for use by some very brave women about 6 years ago targets any cells that might be thinking about going mad and dividing in a specific way....20% of breast cancers have this problem which makes them more likely to recuur....this is given IV every 3 weeks for a year and has mild side effects as does the tamoxifen that I have to take for 5 years because my type of breast cancer is also driven by oestrogen and the tamoxifen interferes with that....
So to conclude I am fit, well, very healthy, not dead, not sad, very active, very short haired (and I like it!)with sheep about to start lambing, with exciting things planned and ready for the next adventure.....

2011-01-24T09:12:00.005Z

Right everybody!!

You know how sometimes you want to do something that makes a difference? Well my lovely daughter Rosanna s fiance.....is cycling from Lands end in Cornwall to Frome in Somerset in 24 hours next Saturday.....to raise £2000 for Cancer Research

For a keen cyclist that would be a doddle...well maybe not a doddle but a good leg stretch...
For Philip on his mountain bike its the equivelent of me climbing Mt Everest!
He has been training by cycling to work in Bristol every day and will make it if he has to pick up the bike and carry it!

so can you sponsor him? If so visit his just giving page http://www.justgiving.com/Phillip-Morris
None of us know when we may be very grateful for the work done by Cancer Research.....we toddle on through life putting a penny or two in collecting boxes but its only when it hits us that we are grateful...so dig deep chaps and you will be rewarded with pictures of the event!!!

2011-01-20T10:09:00.002Z

Life has a habit of making one make decisions! So what do I mean...? Well we have to decide what to wear, when to eat, where to go etc we are making decisions each and every day which makes our life path the way it is....confused?
Well each day we make decisions that may affect the rest of our lives without even realising it....for example we decide to go out and down to the supermarket at 2pm, we bump into a friend there who imparts some information that impacts on our thoughts and future decisions, its interesting is it not?
I have led a sustainable lifestyle all of my life..some have thought I was just a skinflint and my father bless him kept reminding me that rationing ended in the fifties and there was really no need to reuse and recycle old stuff...he had done that as a lad in the war and 'things were different now'....Oh but how that attitude and the desisions made by the 'modern' post war generation have affected the world and our future! When China finally gets a standard of living deemed modern for all its inhabitants we will need several worlds to supply it...yet we only have one!
Blimy...I am getting philosophical....or cynical!

When it comes to decisions I have made a big one....
I am going to downsize the 'Woolly Shepherd' no not me on a slimming fad...but me being sensible. Green business is big business and usually not at all ethical! I have built up a small, award winning, permaculture based sustainable ethical business but to compete I must forever be striving, fighting, working silly hours, stressing and so on because business is business. It has interested me a lot that often folks who consider themselves ethical in their private lives consider business to be neither ethical nor unethical and are quite happy to metaphorically speaking stamp on the head of their competitor at work whilst at home raising a pig or two for their freezer and keeping a few rescued ex battery hens because they do not want their families to eat battery produced eggs and pork....mmmm!
so I am going to take my little business back to its roots and work at the grassroots level supporting the way of life I have practised for ever and leave those who cannot equate ethics to do their thing.
I am going to stop and 'smell the roses' financially it will be ten steps back but personally I am going to be a richer person for it too!....I wonder exsctly where the head stampers riches really lie?

2011-01-10T16:46:00.002Z

Happy New Year to all!
Crikey have we had a month or two....what with no hair from chemotherapy making it extra cold around the head it then decides to be the coldest December on record brrrrrr! The sheep have looked very bemused as their world kept disappearing under tons of snow. They usually dig to find some grass but just gave up, looked depressed and ate haylage sugar beet and barley. After 10 days of it they had obviously decided they had woken up in the north pole and perked up a bit. Once it had disappeared the relief on their little faces was quite apparent! Now we have rain instead...urmm not sure which I prefer!
I am now 3/4 through the good old chemo...blasted stuff...it kills all the good cells too hence the hair loss so also kills your white blood cells and leaves you open to all sorts of bugs and I endured a short break over the new year in isolation at my local hospital with septicemia....just the start to the year I wanted. Now back in the thick of it and having taken delivery of 3 new sheep this week plus a spanking new hen house I am sure things can only get better.

Very interesting world this year and will get even more interesting as climate seems to have gone haywire all over the world this last year...global warming methinks and they now admit world food stocks are dangerously low with oil prices climbing to record highs. Cotton prices and man made fibre prices are rocketing making wool look even more attractive....things are changing folks and I cannot forsee a time when anything is going back to the so called easy life....the future? Well lets not look back and shake our heads at our age of stupid eh?

2010-11-12T20:08:00.002Z

Well...time does fly eh?
The sheep have all been wormed foot checked and sorted out. A ram lamb has departed for a new flock and the rest of the lads relocated to a clean field of 2 acres down in the village 6 Ouessants....so lots of grass! The 8 older girls and 4 ewe lambs have Merinos for company and I'm breeding him back to his daughters by design as I want to fix some of his small size in the flock. This has to be done with care as line breeding for certain charecteristics can be risky. We have a lovely 3 acre field that has not had any livestock in it in the next village on a 25 year lease from the Woodland trust and as soon as the paperwork is done they will all be moving up there. This will rest my set of small fields here at home and they will be back to lamb. We made some nice haylage and it is sitting waiting for the worst weather. A new large hen house is being constructed for my 6 hens and cockerel and my now fully grown buff orpingtons...only 2 hens and will keep best male....rest for the pot! I have a new plucker in the house, Charlie aged 8 plucked and cleaned a plump phesant a couple of weeks ago which tasted great roasted!
On the other front i am now on my chemotherapy treatment and have had 2 out of 4 and am still standing! Its not so bad and feels like the hangover from hell plus slight morning sickness nausea for a couple of days and makes you tired and unable to concentrate which is infuriating when trying to calculate wool insulation square metres! I still walk my dogs 2-5 miles a day and am fit and well. The hair thing is quite bizzare as now falling out like a moulting dog....I now have more sympathy for their plight when hoovering up mine as well as theirs!!!

2010-10-01T11:52:00.002Z

Its my birthday and I'm off on a 2 day escape in the pouring rain to Devon....yes I know I live 1 mile from the Devon border...just going to a different bit!

Got good news yesterday....clear CT scan, all rest of my lymph nodes are clear and no more boob reshaping needed either wooo hooo!!!

So I will leave you to savor some Breton dancing at our local Fest Noz when we were in Berrien in August.

2010-09-25T11:49:00.002Z

Our piggies have been relocated....to the freezers of myself, Lesley, Penny and Selena. They killed out at 7 months at 69, 70 and 73kg with 2cm max backfat which pleased me a lot as it was exactly what I was aiming at and I feed by eye and never weigh. One is still at the butchers being made into bacon...well why cure it myself when one of my amazing wool pack clients is Anna at Bringing Home the Bacon it is being cured traditionally and slowly and then being oak smoked in Annas smoker. She has made our sausages too and as a person who makes sausages myself I can report she is an amazing sausage maker and well deserves every award she has won!
We fed the pigs the usual amount but saved this time on costs by getting lots and lots of past sell by date fruit and veg from the local greengrocers....pigs just love strawberries! barley meal and......beer! We collected the slops from the local pub exery few days and boy didn't they just love it. The result was 3 very chilled pigs who would do anything to get their snouts into it when mixed with barley!
The pigs were Mangaliza x Tamworth a cross I was so delighted to get hold of as the meat is dense, tasty and very suitable for bacon in both breeds....with the addition of beer plus also copious quantities of windfall apples and about 3/4 of an acre to root, wallow and bounce around in this pork is special...cannot wait for the bacon!

2010-09-22T12:29:00.003Z

Well the results were not quite as good as I had hoped and a lymph node had some micro bits in it and they needed to do a bit more digging to get a good margin around the very small lump taken out...1.9cm which in view of where it was it was not surprising I could feel nowt!....also its agressive...marverlous....but hey its also oestrogen fed so can be switched off with drug therapy ....hooray! so I have been back to the hotel (whoops I meant hospital)for further treatment (all lymph nodes in armpit out!) and an even better looking boob (he decided to adjust it a bit more...plastic surgeons eh?)...I will be a Marilyn Monroe look alike soon!
I also have a CAT scan booked for Friday....always wanted a 3d image of myself! Next results day next Thursday...the day before my birthday so it had better be something bloody good in the way of news!....I will be having chemotherapy starting in a few weeks and already have a business idea....more in a minute!

Now breast cancer is treatable and most women live for years...and years...and years after treatment but you know so many folks are telling me to 'take it easy' and 'rest and look after yourself' or 'well you are of course going to sell the sheep'
Well politely sod off please...
Flippin heck guys....I will of course look after myself....I do already! I eat healthily, grow my own and have done for 30 years, I don't smoke, don't drink too much and get loads of exercise. I'm a fit healthy woman with a small problem which will be resolved not a person fleeing from the man with the scythe!!!
Rumours of my iminant demise have reached me on the grapevine....well anyone who hears anything like that please tell the person to contact me personally for the real lowdown.....my daughter is the same....she is beautiful, very healthy, has lovely hair now, is getting married in May and she and her new husband will be off to run a 200 acre farm on behalf of his dad....

Now as for business.....I am going to create a range of wool dreadlock wigs so that those of us who have to have a few months without hair can have a bit of fun...watch this space ;-)

2010-09-14T08:11:00.005Z

6 days after being in hospital I was getting a little bored and so Pete and I went off to judge the Melplash Agricultural Society Annual Hedgelaying competition held in conjunction with their ploughing match. We had been invited to this prestigeous task a few months ago and 30 hedgelayers were entered in a range of classes....Open, Novice, Local, Pairs and Young Farmers (thats a class for youngsters and the youngest competitor was 14)
There were several notable hedgelayers competing including the 2008 national champion!
The weather was beautiful and the location stunning, being in West Dorset near Beaminster with views across the Marshwood vale (The vale of the little daries in Thomas Hardy books) to Bridport and sparkling blue sea in the distance!
We walked miles looking and re looking, observing the cut, the style, the use of tools, the skill etc to reach our decisions and also went up for a break to watch the ploughing competition and partake of some super Dorset apple cake and a cup of tea with milk from that mornings milking! The pictures show the Open class hedge just as the competitors were starting, the ploughing competition, including the judges deliberating and two competitors deep in conversation about problems with their plough and the finished hedge in the local competition with the view behind it.

2010-09-11T17:34:00.002Z

A summer to remember.....for all the wrong (?)reasons!
Work has been manic, the sun has shone, the veg has been amazing, the sheep have lambed, the pigs grown on to slaughter and volunteers....most magnificent ones this year have come and gone....and despite a wet August the summer has been fantastic....we had a wonderful holiday in Brittany without any rain! So it should have been a wonderful summer.....however things have been happening that will ensure life will never be quite the same again and could actually be the most positive things that have ever happened....in a funny sort of way!
You may recall earlier in the year that I mentioned that my daughter aged 26 at the time had been diagnosed with breast cancer...as a result of that making me a little less upbeat and also the incredible amount of work we have had in...this blog has suffered somewhat....
So, why was I a little less up beat?....and for an enthusiastic person like me a little preoccupied?
Well since my gran had died of breast cancer, and my mother, who i had little contact with since the age of 13 had died of what was thought by her husband to be cancer, and my daughter had it I went for an appointment at the genetic dept of our local big hospital. They were able to find out that my mother had indeed died of breast cancer making 3 generations with me as the meat in the sandwich.....
We were labelled as a high risk family and 3 weeks later I was sent for an early mamogramme.....just to rule out anything as nothing could be felt....and I had always checked...
well a week later I had been referred for 'further investigation'....great!
A week and several proceedures later plus a biopsy of 'something suspicious' I went for the results....
They had discovered a 1.8mm grade 2 invasive ductal cancer in the centre of the left breast in a place where no one could have felt it!!! I swore quite loudly!
Surgery was booked for the 6th September....

Well I am happy to report I survived the surgery....they got the lump, they dug out a lymph node or 2....with the aid of blue dye, radioactive stuff and a geiger counter!!!, the anasthetic made me very groggy but nothing hurt and I have a remodelled boob (yes I know gents...too much info!)that is better than it started out (they will redo the other one to match if I want).
Results will be given to me on Thursday when I find out the rest of the info after pathology on the nodes and tumor and fingers and toes crossed it will be just radiotherapy or that and possibly chemotherapy....

So why have I shared this on a smallholding/woolly blog?
Well to tell you to tell your friends, relatives and colleagues both women and...men (yes more and more men are getting breast cancer) to go and get checked, to not 'forget' about the mammogramme they have been called for, to look for changes, however small in boobs....and not to assume that only older women get it...they don't look here and also remember Kylie Minogue!
Lets rise to the challenge people and save a life!
Me and my daughter will be ok....but those who are frightened to go and get something suspicious checked need to know to do it NOW!!!

2010-08-03T18:39:00.001Z

Well here it is
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/story?videoId=130693829&videoChannel=5

My sheep are famous!!!!

2010-06-23T18:58:00.003Z

Wool has many uses! Here we see some of the insulation offcuts used in my hanging baskets and some reprocessed waste wool used in an old wire veg rack to very pleasing effect!

Life is getting really exciting with us being featured in National Geographic Green!.....Reuters News wanting to film us for world wide distribution and a couple of other exciting things yet to be confirmed!

Budget day was yesterday and boy are people going to have to cut their spending habits! We live on a really low income.....below the 'poverty line' according to government statistics but we live really well due to being very very frugal! so when I hear people with combined incomes of over 40k moaning how they are going to be worse off by 3k I am amazed! 40k is an amount of income I can only dream of....
combined with a set of statistics received yesterday that reveals that........... Britons annually put 2 million tonnes of textiles in landfill each year
That in 2009, women bought nearly 3x the amount of garments they bought in 1999 and 20% of the clothing we buy we don’t even wear.
and a garment worker in

Bangladesh

makes as little as £1 a day making clothes for Western markets.......makes me think people need to learn a little thrift???

The Green Party MP complained there were no green issues addressed by the budget but I would say that making people reuse their clothes....and actually wear them out, reduce their spending and buy ethically....good well made clothes that will last and give the makers a fair price rather than throwaway teeshirts that cause environmental catastrophes due to cotton production methods and recycle the old clothes and textiles rather than land filling with them is a HUGE issue well addressed......

The wool you see in the veg basket would have been destined for landfill......I have stopped approx 6 tonnes of waste wool going there in the last 12 months......fibre for thought eh!

2010-06-01T09:08:00.003Z

Yurt liners any length can now be made on our fantastic new machine....and fabric for clothing, and rugs, and wall hangings, and......loads and loads of stuff!!!.......including mulch mats, hanging basket liners, and lots of horticultural items!!!

2010-05-27T19:54:00.000Z

Taken from Father Peters excellent blog....look at my links.....

The following is inscribed on the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in Westminster Abbey

"When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country, but it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realise: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world".

In the words of Ghandi 'Be the change you want to see'.

2010-05-24T21:22:00.002Z

Earlier in the year I was asked by an artist if I would take part in a project called 'Soft bench in a hard landscape' which is all about knitting jumpers for park benches!!! The idea is that lots of people in a comminity knit a bit of the jumper and its then placed on a bench where people can sit, bringing the community together....
So of course I glibly said yes and found that within 10 days I had to take some Jacob wool (a black and white spotted sheep breed) and turn it into knitting wool....yikes!
So I set about the task of washing, drying, picking and carding the wool, trying hard to retain some of its charecter of being multi coloured. I then had to find a very fast hand spinner who could produce enough wool to knit into a bench jumper and felt some of the wool to cover the legs!!!.......and the result?
Well its pictured on the left...Salon Bench Knowle West.
Rather good eh?

2010-04-21T22:26:00.005Z

Well lots of exciting things are happening so I have got to keep blogging or I will have to write sooooo much to catch up!
The sun has decided to shine so at last everything is growing with a vengence! All 8 ewes have lambed....4 ewe lambs and 4 ram lambs including a grey one!
Our new pigs have settled in.....3 mangalitza cross Tamworth gilts who will be going to the great freezer in the sky in September! I am running a pig co-op this time teaching 2 friends how to raise weaners ready for pork and bacon so we have 1 pig each and do a week on week off rota of feeding etc....really good way of doing it! They are very long in the body, very well grown and lovely pigs.
We have been working our socks off and have just completed over 100 sheets of felt for a customer, had a project to felt a peat bog in Wales come in and borrow our felting machines, had an open day with over 80 visitors....and escaping alpacas!!!
We have also been involved in a project to knit a woolly park bench and have branched out into designer dog beds and......futons....The futons will have their first outing at Wonderwool Wales this weekend along with some amazing clothing designed and made by a fashion designer out of waste wool felt!!!
I have not seen the jackets etc made as they are top secret but I will take some pics for the blog on Saturday when they are featuring on the 'Sheep Walk'

2010-04-01T22:36:00.002Z

Normal service will shortly be resumed!
I have not really felt like posting of late as I try to keep this blog very upbeat and full of challenge.
However late last year my daughter aged 26 was diagnosed with breast cancer which was a terrible shock to everyone concerned....this is a very young age to find out such a diagnosis. I have a tendency to be a cool level headed person who copes well in a crisis....and on the outside I do....very well. There is a part of a poem by Rudyard Kipling that talks about " if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, ..." and that sums me up well....although a good friend of mine often says if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs - you really don't understand the seriousness of the situation!.....well may be! however it is very hard when a child of yours is diagnosed with something like this....and you have other kids....another daughter aged 28, a son aged 24 and sons at school aged 17 and 7.......what do you say, and how? Especially when all your older female relatives have died directly or indirectly from it albeit at a much older age!
It is also hard as if you have a young child diagnosed with a serious illness there is a lot of help and support for the family for example CLIC have a home from home where families can stay together whilst having treatment.....but when your child is an adult, even though they are still your child and even though you have other children....and I have a 7 year old who adores his sisters and brothers....there is nothing! you don't count, there is no support, no information....of course this is because your ill child is an adult......in the eyes of a parent age means nothing, they are your child, but you are not involved anymore, you do not count, you are anonymous, you don't exist......
And it is very very hard!
Friends ask if everything is going ok....and you give as much news as you can. My daughter lives with her partner over an hour away so poping in is very difficult....and he is very protective of her so it feels like interfering to intrude on them uninvited.....and that is seen as being uncaring....so hard to get things right......
I have no family left alive other than my kids so no supportive sister or brother for me.....and her dad who is not my husband, we split 13 years ago, has never asked how the rest of the family are or how the other kids are feeling......and his family, all evangelical christians, have never contacted me about it either.....so its actually rather difficult to keep cheerful at times!

She is half way through very strong chemotherapy at the moment and its hard, almost impossible to know what to do and how to give support when running a business (I'm main breadwinner so cannot put on hold!) sorting out a difficult teenager, occupying a lively inquisitive small boy and supporting a husband who has recently broken a bone in his leg falling off a ladder! not to mention trying to be a friend to my other daughter who can be a little distant and difficult at times and my other son!

So please forgive me for being open and honest and please people check your 'bits' boobs for the ladies and balls for the blokes.....it might save your life!

2010-02-27T15:01:00.002Z

......There have been a number of disasters recently, earthquakes, mudslides and floods.......We got our insurance renewal and the letter in formed us that we didnt have to do anything as it would be automatically renewed and the new monthly premium would be .....nearly £200.....
Pardon! I re-read this several times and sat down quickly....that was over £2000 per year! Before this arrived our monthly premium was about £40 for buildings and contents......
So I phoned the insurance company to question the huge increase....the man on the phone said he thought there was something wrong and would phone back when he had investigated.

Well 10 minutes later he phoned back......'yes madam that is correct as you are now in a flood risk area'.....Urm but our house is nearly a thousand feet up on a hill (294m) and are you sure I asked....Oh yes he replied.....
Well I know there have been a lot of floods in Britain but it would take floods of biblical proportions to reach our house!! Therefore I had to cancel the insurance and go in search of a new deal on compare the meerkat.com (those of you who watch british tv will understand!!)

So now I have new insurance from a company who is not preparing an ark.....

2010-02-26T08:54:00.002Z

Gosh.....I have not posted anything here for a month......which reflects just how manic it has been!
We are able to cut the price of our sheeps wool insulation for roof and walls! Fantastic news this as we really want to get wool into peoples homes and make it affordable!
Good old B&Q....a British diy chain for those of you who don't know....are now selling sheeps wool insulation....of a sort....its 35% and mixed with.....wait for it.....fibre glass! which makes a nonsense of it being environmentally friendly in my opinion!

I was featured in a double page centre spread in a local newspaper recently.....the Western Morning News! They really did a good job explaining to people what I did and how....and why! Several people contacted me but thought wool insulation was too expensive....and I explained how and why it was a bit more expensive.....but didn't literally cost 'the earth' and as I have said here we are trying to make it affordable for all which we can with our recycled knitting wool insulation...which is lower in price than rockwool.....so tell you friends!

2010-01-22T19:55:00.004Z

Wool Duvets from Devon! There was a fascinating programme last night on the tv.... called 'my dream farm' it followed a family who moved to Devon and took on a small farm, some sheep and some pigs! They wanted to make some money from their produce so decided to make wool duvets. Well it DOES help if Monty Don give a bit of help and advice and brings in the buyers from London! Good luck and go for it is my advice to them!
Meanwhile we are to be featured in a double page spread in the Western Morning News next week! They are really interested in our business of keeping people warm with sheeps wool insulation! Above are pictures of a recent installation in a grade 2* listed house!!
We have expansion plans in the pipeline having been awarded a loan from The Fredericks Foundation to purchase a needlefelting machine......more news on that front soon!

2010-01-13T23:01:00.003Z

Its been so cold and frozen that I just have not got to blogging.....We had permafrost for 2 weeks, frozen everything plus lots of woolly packs to get out so everyone could have their turkey delivered! I took a week off between Christmas and the New Year to paint the kitchen and then BANG snow....and lots of it!!!
4ft drifts up by the unit....we slithered in and out with children being looked after by all and sundry as schools were closed too....my 4x4....kept for such occaisions became a snowmobile and we crossed all sorts of terrain covered in ice and snow! The picture is sunset over a snowy airfield at Dunkeswell near my Woolly Waste Unit! The video is of our house in its snowy setting! And today after a week of 6 inches of unyeilding white stuff we woke to 4 inches more on top!! I am getting seriously fed up with it now as the schools are shut and the sheep confused as to exactly where the grass has gone!

2009-12-13T15:25:00.003Z

Cows.....methane....vegetarianism.....cows......climatechange......milk.....cows.....cheese.......grass.......conservation.....cows.... ......ooooo and a few million sheep, deer, antelope, bison, buffalo......cows......methane....global warming....

This has been a reccuring theme on tv over the last few weeks......
I have a veggie husband.....yep Pete is a veggie.....he always has been....for over 30 years....and yes I grow meat.....
I have had some interesting anonymous comments posted on the blog from those who want to bash me for murdering my animals, causing climate chaos or a combination of the 2!.....I usually delete them as they cannot be bothered to leave their name or because they are rude!
So I got to thinking and doing some asking around.....what do people really know about ruminants....the vegetarian grazing animals with 4 stomachs that include cattle, sheep, goats, deer, buffalo and antelope to name a few!
They are animals designed to graze and browse large quantities of plant matter, then sit down and regurgitate it, re chew it (chewing the cud) and then swallow it again.
They all belch methane as part of their digestive system....
So why are cattle suddenly so bad, why are we all supposed to go veggie and is it as simple as all that to stop greenhouse gas?

Wellllll.....noooo!
Lets look at it bit by bit...
Cattle (and other ruminants) are designed to eat herbage....grass etc....and if that was all they ate plus hay in winter when the feed value of grass was low, they would be ok, if given a huge area to roam.....about 4 acres per cow...They would be able to produce and feed a calf, but that would be it....just like a bison or buffalo.
However man has developed 'breeds' of cattle accentuating their atributes for rapid growth, big muscules and milk and as a result we have beef cattle such as the Hereford that produces only enough milk for its calf but puts on loads of meat!.....it has a good frame designed to carry beef!
On the other hand there is the Fresian that is a large bony cow that produces lots of milk ....more than a calf can manage and often if not milked for humans can suckle 2 or 3 calves!(not its own as cows generally have one - foster calves!)
So we have beef and dairy cattle.
All cattle breed annually with a gestation of 9 months...so eah year a cow will calve and if a beef breed she will raise her calf and if a dairy breed she will not as the milk is needed for the milk and dairy products industry....
Now the beef cow and calf will be kept extensively on lots of grass, and little corn/grain feed will be given....therefore less methane will be produced as more grain fed to cattle = more methane produced by the digestive system!......The calf will grow on and eventually become prime steak etc!
The dairy cow will also eat grass and hay BUT will be fed huge quantities of grain to keep milk production going as she must produce well..... more milk from less cows is more efficient! She needs a high protein diet containing a lot of protein, usually soya based.
The dairy cows annual calf will be either a beef cross bred (its father being a beefy bull) or a dairy calf (its father being a dairy breed like mum) The beef calves will be reared for meat, the female dairy calves for herd replacements and.....the dairy bull calves.....which are skinny and not at all beefy....are often shot at birth now the veal trade to which they used to go to is not popular....(some are raised as rose veal)

So......the beef animal is extensive, lower in methane, is a good conservation tool as it grazes areas that need cattle to maintain biodiversity, may consume some grain, but not high protein....and provides beef for meat eaters.....however....
The dairy cow needs lush grazing, often rye grass which is poor for biodiversity, needs huge quantities of maize and grass silage, needs large ammounts of concentrate grain feed containing a lot of soya, produces huge quantities of poo.....which is collected in big slurry tanks...and produces huge quantities of......methane!
And the produce.....all vegetarian....plus an annual calf.....

So what can we conclude from this.....?
Well its complex....if we want to eat meat we have to demand local extensively farmed grass fed meat (if its beef or lamb) free range pork and poultry and that is going to be expensive as its been produced slowly and conservatively without a lot of cheap grain feed with a lot less animals to the acre. Therefore the decision must be to eat a lot less meat but make it much better quality meat that has done a good job for biodiversity and has not 'cost the earth'.....
If we want to eat meat every day we must face up to either spending huge amounts of money to feed our meat habit or buy cheap mass produced meat that has been pushed to weight by feeding lots of grains (as in the picture in the cattle parks of the USA and S America)
The dairy cow which produces the milk and therefore the butter and cheese is a bigger producer of greenhouse gas....because of course everyone wants to eat tons of cheese, butter, yoghurt etc and drink gallons of milk and there is the sticky question of the fate of the calf it must produce each year to keep it milking! Therefore there is just as much of a dilemma with dairy products as there is with meat eating!!!
So veggies next time you yell from the rooftops that meat eaters are causing global warming take a hard look as how much you consume in the way of dairy produce!

Personally I don't have any problem with anyone eating anything......so long as they have thought long and hard about the consequences.......food for thought eh?

2009-12-09T19:26:00.002Z

Climate change is being discussed...on every programme on tv and the radio it seems...why? Well of course all the great and the good are currently discussing whether we are going to save the world or not in Copenhagen at the Climate change summit....
Save the world...oh come on...really? YES REALLY!!!
We just cannot carry on behaving like idiots and I mean really dumb stupid idiots! We have finite resources of many of the things we take for granted like oil! Trouble is so many people expect to carry on regardless of the consequences......a lot of people say to me how lovely it is to see a green business thriving and thats great, until they then buy the cheapest option....

For example say they need some roof insulation....they consider wool,....( "but well really, it IS expensive isn't it?").....so they pop down to the local DIY store where there is a BOGOF (buy one get one free) on rockwool, polystyrene board or fibre glass insulation (" Oh it was soooo much cheaper we bought enough for the garage too")

But what is wrong with that approach I hear you say? There house will be warmer and emit a lot less in carbon and they will save money on the heating bills, surely there is not a problem?

Well....sheeps wool insulation may be a bit more expensive to buy but it does the same job in lessening carbon emmissions and lowering bills BUT it does a whole lot more besides.
Firstly the energy required to make the same amount of rockwool is.....approx 85% more!!!
add to that transport costs = lots of oil AND then once installed if it is to be disposed of years later is not recyclable nor compostable and has to go into landfill!
Fibre glass....often marketed as recycled glass bottles....has a similar problem....the cost of transporting, recycling and reprocessing is enormous, and again is not re recyclable nor compostable.....and must go to ......landfill!
Polystyrene and foam board.....well what can I say.....made of oil, and very difficult to dispose of...I saw lots of both in a load of builders waste at the local tip!!
Wool..... is readily available within possibly a max of 20 miles of your front door presently keeping a sheep warm, renewable, recyclable, compostable, and its NOT going to cost the earth.....

So to those who think they can do their bit by going down to the DIY store, buying some cheap insulation, changing the odd lightbulb and possibly scrapping their gas guzzling car to take advantage of the government scheme to reduce older cars on the road to by a smaller one....
who then pat themselves on the back for being so 'green' and then go and book a 5p flight to Barcelona .......well done.....but its not quite this simple.....

2009-11-27T22:29:00.002Z

Devon Environmental Business Initiative......

I entered the awards after lots of arm twisting.....

I knew that lots of huge and top businesses entered......like the National Trust and Paignton Zoo (who won last year)......

So when we were shortlisted in the Environmental Goods and Services category I was amazed....

Off we went last night to the awards ceremony to collect our certificate for being a finalist....

But to my total shock we won the category....

We then watched the other categories being presented with their awards and thought wow!

And then the announced the overall winner for 2009.......

And it was 'The Woolly Shepherd'........and there was a picture of me and my logo up on the big screen......gobsmacked!

Thanks to everyone who reads the blog and supports us by buying our products......this is just amazing!

2009-11-16T20:05:00.002Z

Sheeps wool insulation was discussed on a programme called Countryfile on the BBC last night! At last people are realising that sheeps wool is as good if not better than man made materials and other more damaging to the environment materials!!!The U value is very comparable with rockwool yet the energy used to make it is 85% less....!!!
I make this from 100% British sheeps wool.....better than that even is that a fair price is paid to a lot of the farmers from whom I buy direct!......and ALL the wool in our insulation is from West Country farms!! - cuts the fibre miles down to a minimum!
So if you need some....let me know!

2009-11-09T22:09:00.003Z

More good news! I have been awarded a loan by the Fredericks Foundation
to buy a needle felting machine!!! We will now be able to process all the waste cut offs from our insulation and make more!!! Of course this is a small machine, a mere 60 inches wide, but it will be brilliant! We can also make prefelts and very detailed fashion felt on this machine as it can process metre after metre in a continuous roll!....Wicked!

I also want to have a bit of a rant about homelessness......
Inspired by something that has happened locally......

There is a lovely family that are homeless....yes really....in 2009.....without water and sanitation....and with only basic cooking facilities....
A situation originally caused by circumstances involving domestic abuse, violence and debt...
A family who have picked themselves up, do not 'live off the state' but work hard in the casual work found across the west country, mostly horticultural seasonal work.
They are seen as theives, scroungers, mingers, which they most certainly not....by some and genuinely in need by others....yet no one will let them rent their available houses......in an area full of second homes and holiday lets....all standing empty whilst a small boy smiles and says....'I'm just a bit hungry'.......

2009-10-31T11:37:00.003Z

Somerset is famous for its amazing night time carnivals......if you are ever in this part of Britain at this time of the year you really must not miss the chance to see one!
There are several 'circuits' some being dictated by float size and road bends!!! The Wessex circuit includes Taunton and you can see below my attempts to photograph and record some of it last weekend. However the biggest circuit is the Guy Fawkes circuit and the 2 unmissable carnivals on that one are Bridgwater and Glastonbury. We are off to the Bridgwater carnival next Friday night. It starts at 7pm and finishes at about 10.30 after which squibbing takes place.....over a hundred people line the high street with amazing squibs....fireworks that shoot silver rain.....on poles....take a look at this link here to find out all about the carnival and how to get there!

2009-10-29T20:35:00.002Z

Time! Where does it go? How can anyone ever be bored!
Well lots has happened here....the judges came and went for the awards, and now I must sit and bite my nails! We will know the outcome at the awards ceremony on the 26th November and it seems our category had the most entries and some are HUGE companies.....I am now getting a bit scared.....especially as Taffy my assistant says I MUST wear a frock for the do, which is like the oscars with the envelope opening etc.....I don't actually posess a 'frock' and having lost 2 stone in weight the 2 skirts I do posess look somewhat tent like!! We shall see!
We are now processing wool for an arts project....where they knit a sweater for a bench.....interesting! Some felt shrouds.....!! A load of felt for individual commissions, lots of wool to be sent for spinning....and loads of insulation....its great to be soooooo busy!
At home all sorts going on too. The last of the veg, chillies, peppers, spinach, spuds and stripy aubergines have been cleared from the veg plot by the fab helper Carolyn, who has also painted one of my sheds a lovely greeny bluey colour and my shepherds hut green!
We had a young couple from the USA here for 10 days too and whilst here they did some incredible stuff....took the hedge out at the front of the house to let more light in, redirected the stream back to where it was supposed to go with the aid of a ditch and were stars in the wool cutting dept!
Another friend has been in and built a smashing compost loo for us in return for pulling a caravan back for him......pics to follow when i have time to take some.......phew....see its all go here!
Add to that tons of jam made, elderflower and grapefruit, and rhubarb wine racked off to clear before bottling and 40 pints of home brewed beer about to be bottled as I type....well its no wonder I am tired....but happy.....hic!

2009-10-09T17:55:00.003Z

Celebration time at Woolly Waste! We have been shortlisted for the Devon Environmental Business Awards!!!
We are now up against 3 other businesses for the Environmental Goods and Services Award!!! I am so chuffed as we have worked really hard to get this far. The next round is on the 20th of October when we get a visit from 4 judges for an hour and then we have to wait until the awards ceremony at the end of November to find out!

What else have we been up to? The Ouessant sheep are happily chomping their way through lots of lush autumn grass and Merinos is enjoying being top ram!
We have some volunteers arriving to do some mass vegetation clearance in the front garden.....and we have just turned half a tonne of waste wool and rugs, some pictured below, into fluff by putting it through our garnet machine. The 'fluff' in the bag is being used to insulate an eco house!!!
The pictures show the before, during and after!

2009-09-19T15:21:00.003Z

Did you buy french beans beans or flowers this weekend?.....Did you see where they came from.....Did you care? Just look at the result! Just imagine if it was Britain, with water tankers being mobbed by folks desperate for water! Imagine if you will our countryside strewn with starving people and dying cows.....Of course it won't happen here will it?......most likely not to be honest, but neither should it be happening in Kenya. I went shopping in Sainsburys this morning and the African grown flowers and green beans are still there for us to buy and having seen the huge version of the above picture of dead and dying cows in the front of the Guardian yesterday I felt a huge rush of revulsion for a global market that insists that its ethical and fair to import green beans from a drought ridden country......Of course many argue that the bean(and other veg) growing improves lives, brings in foreign capital, uses less energy than freezing beans grown in Britain etc etc..........but at what cost to the lives of those cattle herders, and the Masai people, whose culture and nomadic life are almost at an end.....what of them? What of the cattle and goats that are dying....about 50% of Kenyas livestck are dead....the cost of a green bean or a red rose....thats what. We in the west, who cannot be bothered to salt our beans or preserve them by bottling, we who protest loudly about animal welfare ....... are stealing the lives of people..... mums, dads, grannies and grandads...... and little children by stealing their precious water to grow.......beans!
Progress, international trade, globalisation.....call it what you will its immoral!

2009-09-01T10:39:00.003Z

Its tough sometimes being a person with a sustainable environmental business because a lot of those who love to use the words and phrases environment, conservation, sustainable, green, save the world, get in touch with the earth, make a difference, transition to a new future etc find the word 'business' sits very uneasily with them.....now before you all bash me I know what the problem is or seems to be....businesses are seen as efficient, occasionally dishonest, pushy, low levels of morality, brash and just a bit to normal....
Maybe I have got it wrong? But its very interesting as I have come to these conclusions reluctantly through reactions to what I do by the folks who need to be the most supportive!
Lots of people want to 'come and pick my brains' about what I do, they come and visit the unit, often because they would like to be involved in a similar project....great! I don't mind chatting and telling it as it is!
Others have wanted to work with me, and a couple have for a bit but have found out that running an environmental business is not 'fluffy' .....that its hard work!

I often muse on why businesses that are very successful with terrifically high morals and ethics like Riverford and Cafe Direct are often criticized to death by the 'environmental types' and to be honest I just cannot understand it........they are very successful businesses.....is that the root of the problem? Do we all like an under dog, someone who tries but fails, a reason not to be successful, a reason to moan?........... I just don't know!
But its got me thinking a lot! .........and I think somehow its a British thing! We are not radical in an ordinary way......we like to look the part for the lifestyle we choose so an environmentalist is often seen as a person with hippy clothes and hair, several piercings, maybe a tattoo of something celtic..........but never as a bloke in a smart suit with a crisp shirt!!!

At home here we are possibly at our most sustainable but we look very ordinary.....too ordinary at times! I wear very boring normal clothes...most second hand. We shop very ordinarily in supermarkets and local shops but make a point of demanding local produce and buying nothing that is out of season or from the other side of the world. We drive.....and yes we have 3 cars....horror of horrors.....but we use them responsibly and for the purpose intended eg we do not use the 4x4 except for towing logs or livestock or wool!
We do not fly.....at all, and never will.....! We have a tv, the kids have an X box and a DS (those who are in the know will know what they are!) and we have computers.
We grow wood, veg, meat and reuse every last thing we can eg the cereal box insides are used to wrap the packed lunches.
I am not claiming sainthood but just pointing out we do not live in a yurt, a green wood building, nor an eco home, just a house.....we don't wear the 'right' clothes, we don't cycle everywhere because we cannot...BUT we want sustainable and ethical to be normal!
And when it comes to my business we want people to get involved.....come along and help for a day!

2009-08-30T15:29:00.004Z

Just take a look at this article and picture sent to me by a fellow blogger and friend!

Sheep are the most perfect animal for so many things and this really is brilliant!

Grazing sheep are a practical means of controlling weeds and grasses that otherwise would block the sun from ground-level solar arrays. The practice, begun in Europe, may well become a world standard, and has already spread to America (see below for example).

The requisite fence around the solar farm perimeter not only 'keeps the sheeps,' it fences out peeps who might otherwise steal the sheeps...and panels. So, it's something insurance companies have come to insist upon.

How to keep the wolves at bay, though?

Sheep dogs may definitely have a renewable energy future.

And, by sheer coincidence, wool may become a co-product of solar power generation. Marketer types will have fun branding it.

Why not goats? Because they would eat the equipment.

Solar panels are pricey, and putting them on public display is not without risk. BB&T, the bank that financed the project, required that the $4 million solar farm be surrounded by barbed wire.
To further promote the green theme, Carolina Solar Energy will arrange to have sheep brought in to trim the grass. Jim Stovall, chairman of the Person County Economic Development Commission, said sheep are a natural fit.

2009-08-08T21:08:00.002Z

A month since I posted....!! I have been sooo busy! We have been to France for a well earned break...however it was not much of a break to start with as there has been an ongoing problem with water getting into the house we own there under the roof....the brand spanking new roof put on by the builder from whom I bought it.....who made it about 6 inches too short at each end! Me not being a roofer meant I didn't notice and thought the water dripping into the fireplace was coming through the wall which was in need of new pointing....but after having it re pointed at great cost to no avail I realised it was the roof! So this time when we arrived we found lots of water everywhere and mould growing on the walls and wet rot!.....which is just not on in a newly renovated house!
Pete spent 3 days in howling gales and horizontal rain (yes it was July!) up a ladder clinging to the roof installing some zinc flashing which now renders the roof watertight....great way to spend ones relaxing break!
The builder has thank goodness admitted liability......
So other than the roof what did we do? Well we went to Vieilles Charrues music festival and saw Moby, The Killers, The Ting Tings, Francis Cabrel, Tambours de Bronx, Bruce Springsteen and lots more!.....and was so tired I slept most of one day after getting home at 3am....we were not camping as Carhaix the town where it is located is about 20 mins down the road!
Later in the week we drove accross Brittany to the Normandy border where we left the boys with the amazing Celia and went off to Mont st Michel for 24 hours by ourselves to celebrate 10 happy years!

Well the holiday was soon over and back to work and we are flat out with lots of woolly work....all machines are working to their full capacity which is nice! and we have produced some lovely things.....mostly beautiful felt!

We are looking for an amazing person to come and work with us, as a volunteer/work experience person to start with and all training etc will be given.....paid work will be available when we have a big rush on too and eventually a possible paid position ! We are looking for someone who is very keen on wool, sheep, using old machinery, who loves getting grubby, working funny hours at times, is any age over 16, who may want to start a woolly based business using our units facilities......in fact we want people passionate about wool, sustainability and more wool! If you think you may be that person or knows someone let me know......and just to warn you its hardand heavy work....!

2009-07-10T22:22:00.005Z

Well here at last are some pics! We have just finished production of a huge batch of woolly insulation for RiverfordOrganics and while I hop over to France for a bit my wonderful team will make a start on the house insulation we have to start installing in September! We have a great wool cutting machine.....pictured here.....now if you want one please don't try and copy it as we are copyrighting the design, ask and we will gladly give you a quote to make one for you!

Also here are the wonderful Ewe Boots.....which will go into production soon....designed and made by a team of students headed by a lovely young lady called Holly!

And as if thats not enough here are our sustainable recycled wood
farmers market boxes!

It is very exciting times at Woolly Waste!

We have been able to put a lot of local wool into the current mix of wool going into insulation and we have also now got the washing machine going flat out along with the drying racks.....the first processing customers will get their finished products as soon as I get back ......

2009-07-02T18:22:00.002Z

Just a quickie....

LOOK!!!! we are on the front page of Riverford Organic meat boxes!!!!!!

I am so thrilled to be able to supply Riverford who incidentally have just won the Observer ethical business award!!!

2009-06-30T16:06:00.002Z

Sheeps wool packaging.....we are about to start production of a cool bag....watch this space as its coming soon!

And what else have I been doing? Well the 6 remaining sheep have had a haircut and are looking trim, as is the orchard which had to be strimmed to find said sheep it had grown so long! the veg garden is a bit neglected but still full of potatoes, beans and other yummy stuff and the polytunnel full of peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers!
Super helper Molly has decorated the caravan and we have become regulars at the local recycling centre....10 demi-johns for £1.15 being the best buy so far. Gallons of elderflower wine are bubbling away and even more gallons of elderflower champagne are maturing in bottles scrounged from the local farmshop restaurant. Rhubarb wine is next to be brewed and as for jam....a veritable tonnage has been made with bartered fruit.....we are not going to go short in the wine and jam departments!
I recently bought 6 ex free range unit hens for £3 the lot, they look pretty bald and ugly but we get at least 3 eggs a day so they are already paying their way, and having a better life!

Do I get time to sleep?......occaisionally! Wool is the main preoccupation with it being shearing time and lots and lots of wool enquiries! We are producing lots of fabulous wool insulation and incorporating a lot from local farms! We can safely say we are the only producer of woolly packaging that is fairly traded AND locally and ethically sourced....! Whats more it will contain more and more local wool.....today I took half a tonne from a local farm to add to the mix and some of it will feature in their farmers market boxes.....picture tomorrow!

I will post a lot over the next few days about our growing range of woolly products......keep watching....you will be inspired by 'Ewe boots'!!!

2009-06-26T22:10:00.003Z

I have lots to comment on about the woolly waste open day, the wool washing machine and so on but today I want to admit to being a michael Jackson fan.....if you actually care to look on wikipedia and find out a bit more about him you may find therewas more to the man than his eccentricities....one of his less well known songs can be heard here
Sums up the compassion and thoughtfullness of a sad misunderstood man...RIP

2009-06-22T17:02:00.001Z

And finally......

Who makes money from a pint of milk?

WHO, WHAT, WHY?

Dairy farmers warn they are struggling to survive on what they are paid for milk. So who gets the money when you buy a pint?

HOW FARMERS LOSE MONEY

61p - cost to farmer to produce four pints

58p - paid to farmer by processor

3p - farmer's loss

£1.07 - paid to processor by supermarket

£1.45 - cost to customer to buy four pints from supermarket Source: DairyCo

Times are not good for many dairy farmers. The gap between how much it costs to produce milk, and how much they are paid for it, is being squeezed ever tighter. And one of the industry's biggest cooperatives has gone into receivership, leaving hundreds unable to sell what they are producing.

Milk is a staple of the average Briton's daily diet. According to industry figures, 98% of households in the UK buy the white stuff, and on average we each consume over two-and-a-half pints a week.

We pay on average 39p for a pint, according to the milk trade body, DairyCo. It comes to this figure by dividing the average cost of a four-pint carton in the supermarkets. So where does that money go?

Getting milk from a cow to the chiller cabinet involves the farmer, the processor and the supermarket. The first produces the milk, the second collects, pasteurises, bottles and distributes it, and the third sells it.

Each has costs and overheads to cover, from feed and vet bills for a farmer, to staffing and electricity bills for the supermarkets. When all these costs are taken into account, it's the farmers who are missing out.

Farmers made a loss of 1p for every pint they sold last year, according to DairyCo figures for 2007/2008. Obviously, this is an average across the industry. Some farmers, with more cost-effective operations, will be making money.

But no one disputes that times are hard, with the farm-gate price of milk - what the processor pays the producer - falling month on month. In May, it was down to just 23p a litre, on average.

"Prices are simply unsustainable. The average farmer is losing money on each litre of milk produced, leaving no room for reinvestment on the farm," says a spokesman for the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF).

Processors on average make money from each pint they sell, but the story isn't straightforward here either. The Dairy Farmers of Britain cooperative (DFOB), responsible for 10% of UK milk production, went into receivership earlier this month.

The co-op had been struggling to pay its 1,800 member farmers a competitive price for their milk, and large numbers were leaving. It also lost the milk contract for Co-operative supermarkets.

The supermarkets' margin on fresh milk has increased steadily over the years, according to DairyCo figures. The big few enjoy considerable bargaining power with many of their suppliers, so can keep prices competitive for customers.

"Farmers have been placed under extreme pressure by retailers and the service sector for far too long to produce milk at the lowest price possible, and they continue to make a loss," says the RABDF's spokesman.

But retailers say paying farmers a fair price is important. While Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket group, will not discuss margins - "it's commercially sensitive," says a spokeswoman - in 2007 it signed up its own group of dairy farmers, paying above the market rate for their milk.

"We were credited with bringing up farm-gate prices," she says.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/8103119.stm

2009-06-21T19:01:00.003Z

More News on the milk front......
Taken from an article in the Western Morning News....

Read it carefully.....Lubborn Cheese...makers of Somerset Brie and Capricorn Goats Cheese has been sold......TO THE FRENCH!!!!
Now don't get me wrong I love France and as many will know spend a lot of time there and have a tiny house there but .......sell out to the French!
There were apparently several British bidders but the recievers of course sell to the highest bidder....
Could it be that now we will see Lubborn Cheese close as uneconomic and further imports of 'President' brie take over? Or will Somerset Brie just be anonymous with President brand on it?
Will milk be imported from France.....who knows....
All this has been so under reported its not true......
The writer used to be the SW rep for the NFU.....unless there are 2 of them?
His assertion that

"In an ideal world, there would be only one dairy co-operative in Britain, big enough and strong enough to do business with the supermarkets and other major buyers on its own terms.The collapse of DFoB takes us halfway there."

just smacks of going back to the old Milk Marketing Board and its centrally fixed prices.....just like the Wool Marketing Board and you know how that monopolises prices and stops enterprise.....Yes the bigger farms will be ok but the small family farms will disappear and not a sound will be heard at their death....because most people will not know nor care, I could just sit and cry!
Come on all the folks out there.....those involved in transition towns, in permaculture, in going green, in becoming 'eco'........shout loudly about where your food comes from!

WHISPER it not in Haverfordwest, but the demise of the milk co-operative, Dairy Farmers of Britain, could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the sector as a whole.

That is not, for a moment, to deny the very real human and financial cost of the co-operative's collapse. Scores, possibly even hundreds, of workers in its liquid milk business, face losing their jobs.

The average DFoB farmer member stands to lose £14,000 for milk delivered in May and the first few days of June, for which he will not now be paid, as well as investment capital of £25,000.

For some of DFoB's smaller members in the more remote areas of Wales, who may find it difficult to identify an alternative buyer, it could even spell an end to milk production. In total, DFoB's 1,800 farmer members will be around £66 million worse off.

That is money that the producer side of the dairy industry can ill afford to lose.

But there is, most definitely, another way of looking at it, and it is a perspective that is much more comfortably adopted from a South West standpoint – given DFoB's relatively small presence in the region – than it would be in the co-operative's heartlands of Wales, the Midlands and the North. At a strategic level, a rationalisation of processing capacity and a further concentration among the producer co-operatives was exactly what was required.

The disappearance of DFoB provides both, albeit in singularly brutal fashion.

The South West dairy co-operative, Milk Link, has already snapped up one of DFoB's most prized assets – a state-of-the-art cheese plant at Llandyrnog in North Wales – for what one must presume was a knock-down price. That will reinforce Milk Link's position as the number one player in the cheese market and, in time, give a boost to its membership as well.

The other remaining co-operative, First Milk, which operates in Scotland and the North, will also be seeking to cherry-pick the best bits from the wreckage of DFoB, to its own and its members' advantage. And OMSCo, the organic milk co-operative, stands to pick up most, if not all, of DFoB's organic suppliers, which will leave it that much stronger, as well.

There will, of course, be casualties. DFoB's ageing liquid milk dairies are unlikely to find buyers. But for all but the people who work in those plants, that too has to be a good thing, given that there is surplus capacity in the liquid sector, and that it was paying too much for these factories that got DFoB into trouble in the first place.

DFoB's only processing plant in the South West is Lubborn Cheese, at Cricket St Thomas, near Chard. It is a small, modern factory, making first-class products, including the award-winning Somerset Brie. Talks have been going on for some time on a possible purchase by the French dairy giant Lactalis, and even as I was writing this, word came through that the sale (which is actually outside the receivership) had been completed.

That must be good for the South Somerset dairy farmers who supply the plant and who I know take a fierce pride in its products, although whether Somerset Camembert survives in the hands of a company famous for its Le President brand of that cheese remains to be seen.

Of course, those dairy farmers still stand to lose tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid milk and now worthless capital contributions.

But there is another side, even to that unpromising coin. DFoB members were being paid what was comfortably the lowest price in the industry. Since the emergency price cut imposed last November, it has been running at between 2p and 4p below the level offered by other comparable buyers. At a differential of 3p, a million-litre DFoB producer will have been £15,000 worse-off than a Milk Link member of the same size over the past six months.

That will now change. Milk is in short supply, and the larger DFoB members in the more accessible areas are being offered good money to sign up with alternative buyers. There is talk of Dairy Crest offering 24ppl in Somerset, and of Milk Link being prepared to pay Llandyrnog suppliers 23.5ppl.

Writing on one of the online farming forums, one DFoB member has worked out that he will have recouped his milk losses from the receivership by Christmas, thanks to the higher price being paid by his new buyer.

It is important to recognise that the demise of DFoB is not symptomatic of wider problems, either in the dairy industry in general, or the co-operative sector in particular. What started the rot was when the co-operative bought the ACC liquid milk business for almost twice what it was really worth. What finished it was the loss of what had been the ACC contract to supply milk into the Co-op.

The moral of the DFoB story is not that farmer co-operatives don't work, it is that badly run farmer co-operatives don't work.

During the same period that DFoB has been on the slippery slope to receivership, Milk Link has been going from strength to strength, thanks to good management, excellent products, a sound strategy and a loyal membership who are, at last, beginning to reap a return on all of the money and faith that they have invested in the co-operative during some distinctly bleak years.

In an ideal world, there would be only one dairy co-operative in Britain, big enough and strong enough to do business with the supermarkets and other major buyers on its own terms.

The collapse of DFoB takes us halfway there.

One can but hope that the next major step towards consolidation is taken on the basis of carefully considered choice, rather than of harsh necessity. Because while the sacrifice of DFoB's suppliers and staff may prove not to have been in vain, it remains a very real sacrifice, nonetheless.

Anthony Gibson is a freelance writer and may be contacted at anthony.gbsn@googlemail.com

2009-06-16T21:27:00.002Z

Where do you think your milk comes from if you live in Britain? (and your butter and cheese).....its those lovely cows milked by those rustic fellows called farmers......? Or is it?? Do you care??
Well you should! Click on the link above to catch up on a scandal hitting the dairy industry.....and get up and do something.....email your MP, write to the PM, boycott the imports.....Um what imports?

Well.....let me explain!
Most of us drink or use milk, eat cheese, enjoy yoghurt and fromage frais etc....but do you know where it comes from, do you know what is happening to our dairy farms? This week 10% of the milk still produced in Britain was under threat with the receivers being called in to the group known as 'Dairy Farmers of Great Britain' (DFoGB) a co op dedicated to fair returns for its members. The reason was because they lost the contract with the Co-operative supermarket chain....a supermarket group that prides itself on its fair trade principles and ethics..........well I will not be going there anymore!

We are losing 2 dairy farmers a day, 10% have quit in the last 10 years, we have 200,000 less dairy cattle this year than last year. Many have been culled due to TB known often as the silent killer as its not reported the same way foot and mouth was, The average age of a British farmer is 58 years old.....so give it a few years and there will be very few family dairy farms left......

We eat a lot of Somerset Brie.....as do I suspect some of my blog readers....have you noticed its abscence in the last few weeks.....or Capricorn goats cheese...notably absent too....both made by the DFoGB group. It costs 27p per litre to produce milk, the farmers belonging to the group who were producing 10% of Britains milk are currently being paid 10p per litre......and have a look in the shop next time you buy milk......how much are you paying for it? Just think how much is going to the producer?

But of course we must not worry, because the milk bottles of Britain will not run dry.....they are importing record amounts of milk from Holland, Belgium and Ireland.........have we totally lost the plot?

2009-06-05T20:08:00.002Z

What lovely weather we have been having......makes a change from all that rain! My solar panels were producing almost boiling water!!!!

I had a great couple of weekends recently. On Saturday 23rd May I was working all day on the Big Green Idea bus talking to folks about fibres and wool as well as anything related to eco textiles. It was a tiring but worthwhile day and lots of discussion was generated.
On Saturday 30th I was on a course in Cornwall learning to make biodeisel....well my van is a deisel van and I have wanted to do this for ages so bit the bullet and went. It was really good and I understood everything and made my own litre of the golden liqued!.........fantastic. I am now in search of 2 small bulk dairy tanks....one for me and one for Dick and Jim who were running the course. I am so chuffed as I had kept putting off the day when I did this course and I thought it would be too technical.....but its not and its amazing what you can do with an old hot water tank, an immersion heater, some pipe and a fish tank aerator! (among other things!)
I know I should have taken my camera.....but I was so engrossed in my task that I would have forgotten to take any pics!!

2009-05-27T15:42:00.003Z

At last here are the solar panels that power the wool washing water! They keep the water at 60 degrees on a sunny day and even on a dark stormy day they are at about 40 degrees! The immersion then only has to heat it a bit thus saving an awful lot of electricity! They are Navitron units as Navitron are a really environmentally responsible firm!.....Our installer Solar Sam has been a hero and done amazing things with electrical and water pipes!

The wool washer is fantastic, after a few hiccups its going quite nicely!
The last bits of the machines are being put together....things like safety plugs and shut offs, a batting roller has been constructed by the wonderfully resourceful Pete out of a scaffhold pole, some land drain, beautifully turned wooden cogs and a proper drive belt. He has also invented a wool felt cutting table which will speed up proceedings considerably!
We will be having an open day between 10am and 8pm on Thursday 25th June so come along to Woolly Waste and see what we are up to......there will also be biscuits and cakes!

If you have wool to be washed, wool to be carded or wool to be felted......or need all three get in touch as we are booking up fast!
We also sell fleeces to those who havent got their own sheep but would like some fleece!

2009-05-21T17:12:00.004Z

Greenwash......its everywhere and driving me nuts! So many people are jumping on the bandwagon of 'eco' and 'green' and 'environmentally friendly' and 'organic' that it makes me mad!

Why am I having this rant? Well today a friend emailed me regarding our recycled wool.....she had seen the ideal website with seemingly ideal values that would be perfect as an outlet for our recycled wool.

Now when I say recycled....it really is! We have access to lots and lots of waste British wool....actually its better than that..... it has been processed in Devon, dyed lovely colours in Devon, then used for making designer carpets by hand weavers (our waste is the ends and bits from looms) 400 yards from out unit!!! so talk about keeping fibre miles down!
We sort it into colours and then chop it up and put it through the Garnett machine which makes it into fluff again for felt, stuffing, hanging basket linings, re spinning etc etc. It looks like the stuff in the picture here and is lovely!

Well the problem it seems is it may be local, it may be recycled, it may have amazingly low fibre miles, it may be 100% British wool......BUT
.......its not organic!
Flippin heck.....nobody is going to eat it ....are they?
Well apparently nice eco folks don't want stuff like this, they would prefer to buy organic wool......but why?

So I looked into the issues.....most people it seems trust the word 'organic'...dosent seem to matter where it comes from so long as its organic....because organic is 'safe'
Mmmmmm I agree to a point and when buying food I buy 1. local, 2.local organic, 3.organic 4.Other, in that order and if the organic is from the otherside of the world often 'other' will get my vote!
Why? Because I know there is nothing magic about words! Because I know most food produced on the small farms of the West Country is not full of pesticides and herbicides nor boosted by tons of artificial fertilisers.....farmers cannot afford them, must comply with cross compliance or lose their Single Farm Payment (lots of environmental conditions) and if in a scheme Higher or Entry level Stewardship.....lots more conditions.
Livestock farmers are very careful with medicines which are strictly regulated and very expensive. (Intensive chickens and pigs are slightly different but thats another can of worms)

So what makes wool organic? We looked into this when we looked at and decided not to go down the organic route with our sheep. Sheep have to 'go into conversion' when born non organic....they are never organic but their lambs are. However the wool is considered organic....confused.....I was!
It seems that the theory is that whilst a sheep farmer can worm and use pour ons propylactically if an 'ordinary' farmer if organic he, or she can use the same products but to treat a problem rather than prevent it......However this is what most sheep farmers do!.......as treating 'just in case' causes resistance to medicines, problems with meat withdrawl and is incredibly expensive....which with the prices of lambs and sheep being until recently rock bottom made no economic sense at all.
But we don't eat wool......no but we wear it and what about all those terrible toxic dips farmers put their sheep through?................Well dipping is practically unheard of except in huge hill flocks and even then the regulations are very tight and organo phosphate dips are virtually a thing of the past!..........their danger to human health is well known.
So just about all British wool is incredibly safe.....
The sting in the tail is that we export 70% of British wool and import 70% from abroad .......Heaven knows what some non European nations use on their sheep!!!

2009-05-20T13:58:00.002Z

Manic wool cutting describes the last few weeks! We cut 1400 packs for Riverford Organics
for their meat boxes that go from Devon all over the UK. The boxes and wool packs are then collected and reused umpteen times.....good is reuse....goes with reduce and recycle and the boxes and plastic are recycled consumer waste and the wool is local thereby reducing fibre miles!

We are now well on the way to the start of machine cutting of wool....watch this space!
We are also working on......yoga mats, felt boots and wormery mats!!! More ideas please, we have loads of wool.
The washer is up and going after a hitch caused by me and an allen key.....doh! Resulted in a very costly spare part coming from Canada..........however it arrived in less than 48 hours....why oh why can I not get post to shift so quickly within Britain??

At the weekend we went to the Smallholders Show at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells. We met loads of amazing people, sold lots of wool and lambskins, took lots of orders and came home very tired but happy!
This pic is of my stand!

2009-05-02T21:09:00.003Z

Right....I promised to tell you why sheeps wool insulation, knitting wool, woollen jumpers etc are SO expensive....here goes!

There are about 24 million sheep in this country (UK) and they all produce wool....even the very primitive native breeds of unimproved sheep such as Soays produce wool!

Many breeds of sheep esp the primitive types (that means unimproved) will actually shed their wool if not sheared....it will fall out in clumps leading to a very motheaten appearance!
Man caused sheep to produce lots of wool by selective breeding for all sorts of types....eg Herdwicks and Dartmoors for carpets, Devon Closewool and Southdown for hosierey (knickers and socks etc!!) and Wensleydales for worsted cloth (from which mens suits were made).........in Britain we have the most diverse breeds.
Meat was a by product of the woollen industry and only latterly wool became the by product of meat as man made fibres took its place!
In 1947 the Agriculture Act came into being setting up 'boards' to guarentee prices for producers and make sure Britain never went short again if we had a war....there was a Milk marketing board, a potato board .....and the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB) among others.
Wool was very very important as nylon was in its infancy and acrylic had not yet appeared.
Every sheep keeper with more than 4 sheep had to register with the 'board' and good money was paid for wool.....approx average 54p per kg in 1954.....and that was a lot, the wool cheque often paid the rent on a farm!
Today in 2009 wool prices have just gone up.....to an average of 54p per kg ....but somehow I don't think 54p is worth the same....do you!
Now to get this average there is a lot that is cheaper than that.....some poor quality coloured wool will fetch 5p or less per kg.....
..........Now shearing costs about £1 per sheep and the average sheep has approx 3 kgs.....do your own maths!.............the amount paid for the wool hardly covers the cost of shearing and often dosent get anywhere near covering it!

So we know the wool is pretty worthless and a lot is poor quality....so why are jumpers and insulation SO expensive?
Well.....once the wool has been delivered by the farmer to the depot (more costs as there are only 2 for the whole of the SW of England!) it it graded and baled (compressed into big rectangles)......
And then it is sold on the wool stockmarket!!! This electronic trading is where registered wool buyers buy on the basis of the report on the wool supplied by the wood graders....The wool has not moved from the depot but its been sold! The wool buyer will then sell to the wool processor, someone like me....
So The farmer may get 5p per kg for the wool he sent to the depot, where it was sold to a wool buyer for maybe 30p per kg who in turn sells it to me for 45p per kg.....the wool has still not moved but everyone takes their cut.....and I in turn have to pay for scouring, carding and felting.
Now sall scale scouring, carding and felting....no problem...I have all the kit....but for the meat box and house insulation I must have 2-3 tonnes scoured at a time so I have it scoured commercially......You can notice the pennies adding up here if you are mathematically inclined!....Scouring costs are around 50p per kg.....and about 40% of the original weight of the wool is lost down the drain in dirt and grease.....feels expensive!
So you can see that whilst the farmer may have got 5p per kg by the time I have the washed dried wool in my hands its cost me about £1.60 per kg!!!!
You have to sit down to actually digest how something that was worthless suddenly gets so expensive, but this is how ALL wool is processed whether its for spinning, felting or whatever....and this is just to get it to the point where it can be processed further.

Many people say th me they cannot understand why woolly goods ranging from jumpers to insulation are SOOOOO expensive, well here lies the answer!

People really do not like having to pay the real true prices for their goods and baulk at the price of meat box insulation such as the product that we make as it is more expensive than polystyrene! For example a large recycled cardboard box and 2 liners will cost the person who sells them a bit more than a polystyrene box.....so they may decide not to buy....
Sheeps wool insulation costs more than rockwool or recycled plastic insulation....so they choose rockwool!
I would however like to cut my processing costs a little, buy my wool direct from the farmer, via the baling facility at the BWMB depot, giving the farmer say 15p per kg.....cutting out the wool buyer, more than doubling the price the farmer is getting for his poor quality wool, nearly halving the price I am paying for it AND paying the BWMB for storing at the depot and baling it.....so I pay the farmer 15p per kg, pay the BWMB 5p per kg to bale it and then 5p per kg transport it in bulk to the processing facility....In effect cut the middle men who never see the wool yet trade it!
15p to the farmer still sounds terrible andit is.....I would prefer to pay the real worth....BUT
Whilst the consumer is unaware of this chain and how much it costs to process the wool in to a useable product they will not pay for it....catch 22!

So I appeal to readers of this blog.....find out about wool and if necessary pay the proper price!

2009-04-30T15:25:00.004Z

Post deleted as apology received

2009-04-29T17:31:00.006Z

Now here are those lovely lamb pics I promised all taken before the lambs were 2 weeks old....in fact the white one and her black brother pictured here with their wensleydale mum were only a week old!
All the lambs were huge and all born very easily and quickly....I have concluded a Gotland x Wensleydale is a good idea!
I also want to show you some machinery.......that is very exciting!!
First take some weaving waste wool ends or old knitting wool, felt waste, insulation waste etc.....second take a chopper...thats the green machine dating from 1960 and feed in the wool and watch it shoot out of the end all chopped!
Next picture shows the chopped wool....different colour to the stuff I photographed going through the chopper....goes onto the wooden conveyor belt and is taken in through the rollers.....very well protected by a mesh guard as if you got caught in it ....you would come out in bits too....!!!
Third picture shows the other end and the beautiful web of blue it has turned into which can be made into batts for felt and insulation or tops for spinning or just fluff for blending with other wools and colours.
Final picture is a close up of the result.....amazing eh? We are the only people doing this as far as we can tell!

Get in touch quickly if you want a product made, want to make felt, want to recycle your wool, want to wash the wool from your sheep.....pics of the new solar panels powering the water for the washer next time.....

2009-04-22T11:15:00.002Z

Gosh its nearly a month since I last posted.....where does time go?
I have finally decided to give up livestock, so have sold all.....yes all my sheep. Some have gone to a nice home in Gloucestershire, some are going to Hereforedshire (The whole Ouessant flock, as soon as they finish lambing) some are going to Yeovil to a big flock and some have already gone to Yeovil....more in a minute and one ewe and her lamb to Devon. The pigs have gone too.....to Wales and Somerset and the 2 remaining porkers depart for piggy heaven (and my freezer) next Thursday........why?

Well after 28 years I decided that it had to be my family and sanity first, business second and sheep...a very consuming hobby....had to go.
Some people have asked if I couldn't have kept a few about the place, but when its in your blood a few tend to become a few more and.....

I sold some in the market, where they were bought by a farmer I know well from Yeovil who has since bought the rest privately.....It was hard taking the ewes and lambs to market, harder than I thought it would be as I often buy and sell there. But this was the last time.....the last dance....the end of an era.....and I sobbed my way through talking to friends, eating my bacon buttie in the market cafe and washing out my trailer in the washout queue.

Some people dabble with smallholding for a while, its an experience they say, one we wouldn't have missed. But other of us live and breathe it.....very hard to put into words how it is....which is probably why many cannot put it into words and probably why the market is full of old ex farmers who just cannot keep away....who need their 'fix' who need to watch the cattle, prod a few sheep, talk of the old days, rue progress and the dawn of the new age of electronic ear tags and multiple choice trailer tests. At nearly 49 I am a young wipper snapper in the market and a woman to boot.....yet I am retiring from livestock......never again will I call my sheep in and watch them all run and jump across the fields in their race for the troughs and never again will I sit in the midst of them enjoying their appreciative company. But life must go on.....new beginnings and all that.....
All my equipment, collected over the years is being sold, some has gone, some is even going to France!......keeping it just in case would be like placing a glass of beer in front of an alchoholic...
So sad days......
But I will still be involved indirectly.....just think of the 30 tonnes of wool I will be processing this year.
I took some pictures of this years lambs before they went....I will post them soon as a final reminder and then the blog will update and move on.

2009-03-25T11:03:00.003Z

Woolly Waste packaging is now in production and the business has moved to a new unit!! Here are some photos of the packaging and the move..........Also some students using our facilities to create recycled felt boots have won a local 'mock' Dragons Den.........yay!!! Their product is amazing and more details will follow of 'EWE BOOTS' as soon as i have a minute!

The green macjine is our new chopper....a 1960s machine that will chop up old wool such as knitting wool, jumpers etc into bits to be recycled beck into knitting wool or felt, the other 2 pics show the new unit and things being assembled..........we have an upstairs too!

Now awaiting the solar panels that will heat all our water for scouring the wool.........and all fixtures and fittings such as sink, loo and kitchen have been bought from the local recycling centre....we are committed to this being the most ethical business possible!

Anyone wanting to buy woolly packaging please get in touch....new page on website soon........we are proud to say our packaging is made in Devon, processed in Devon, grown in The West Country (from sheep!!) and has the lowest carbon footprint possible.

2009-03-02T22:51:00.004Z

My goodness its been ages since I posted! last time we were under nearly a foot of snow and now its March!
The sheep are about to lamb and are waddling about and the weather which has been rather mild since the big freeze is set to turn cold again! I have been busy so time for an update!
We managed to raise the needed finances to take on the new unit and we (Me and Taffy my lovely assistant) hopefully get the keys at the end of the week and then it all goes mad!
Machinery arrives from 'up north' for processing waste weaving wool, we have installations of a huge woodburning stove, water tanks and solar panels to organise to provide hot water for the scourer.........not to mention all the associated plumbing!
We then have to move the current machinery, build a drying room full of racks for drying wool and get up and running again.........
AND even more excitingly I have been developing wool packaging along with a local packaging company and we are about to start supplying a very well known organic box scheme! This is really cutting edge as it will be made from virgin wool and waste recycled wool all produced and processed in the West Country and will be squeekily eco as there will be no empty lorries or vans travelling around and fibre miles will be kept to the very minimum!
We are looking for a small needlefelting loom and hope to have one in situ soon meanwhile we will be working with another processor to fulfil our commitments.......This is all very very exciting!
On another topic I watched a tv programme last week about the future of farming and was struck by the inclusion of permaculture as a mainstream solution..........brilliant! I was a little troubled over the assertion that forest gardening could feed us all.....everytime I hear this in temperate climates where a holding of several acres is seen supporting a few people I feel like yelling 'how are we going to feed Birmingham?'.........people are not going to change habits and lifestyles that quickly..............more importantly we should, I feel, be addressing more pressing issues............the food programme on BBC radio 4 was hilighting that of the 130,000 deer in Britain currently culled each year to keep their very high numbers under control most of the meat (venison) is exported!!! At the same time the majority of the venison we eat in the UK is imported from New Zealand....but because it is packed here it can have the lable 'produced in the UK' stuck on it!!!! Are we missing something here?

2009-02-10T14:27:00.004Z

Snow!!!...........lots of snow.....We rarely see snow in the south west and if we do its up here on the hills and usually lasts a day and then departs. The last substantial fall we had was in 2003.....well enough to make a snowman with anyway! So when we heard all this snow had fallen on Monday we were not too worried as we didn't have any whilst London was bought to a standstill!
Monday evening and it started.....Tuesday the school was closed so after feeding and checking animals we went sledging over on the hill......the sheep looking on from the nice barn where the ewes are overwintering thought we were mad by the looks on their faces as they stood in a long line observing us!
Wednesday it was still not good up here but ok and getoutable....!
Thursday they said it was going to rain in the evening and into Friday but on looking out at about 10pm it was clear the weather people had got it a bit wrong as it was snowing heavily..........and the following morning it was STILL snowing and it went right over my youngest sons wellie boot tops!!! The cars had become blobs and the 3 Ouessant rams in the field were up to their stomachs in it and were not amused at having to bound around like rabbits. The pigs had retreated indoors and refused to come out and the ducks had to be dug out to get their door open!!
An erie silence had descended as not a sigh of a snow plough had been seen and the road was blocked.
We struggled over to feed the sheep and 15 year old son walked to village to feed sheep there.
...........we then joined the crowds for snowman building, igloo making and sledging as we could not do much else as we were stuck!............and this went on until yesterday when we finally broke out .......!
Overnight it has rained and snowed again but now on Tuesday we only have 6 inches left......and hope it will go away fast as we need to work and resume normal life.....whatever that is!

All in all I can report that snow is great to look at, brilliant fun to play in but really hard work if you are trying to keep livestock fed, watered and dry!!!

The dogs loved it.....Humphrey spent ages being a doggy snowplough

2009-02-04T13:51:00.002Z

Its freezing cold here....except indoors! Very slippy due to our being on a hill and I hate it!!! Its lovely looking at snow, and I even went sledging up on the hill across the road with my youngest son.........my sheep who are in the barn up there looked on with incredulity........I think it confirmed their worst fears about the human who cares for them!
On the whole though its miserable when you have to go out in it to do animals rather than have fun!
I was supposed to have a meeting this morning and backed the van off the tarmaced slush of the vertical drive/lane at the side of the house and got stuck.....missed the meeting and had irritated man on phone who was waiting for me at the unit!......Apologies said I managed to remove van from lane but parked up and retreated indoors as he couldn't wait!.............

I was musing recently on how our children always know best and it got me thinking! My older children have a slightly patronising attitude towards parents....poor old things! They always know best! We middle aged folks tand to do the same to our elders too.....it must be a parent child thing! But I was also thinking how it has affected history easpecially farming and food production.......
In the 50s it was the bright young things that laughed at the older generation and bought in machine milking, higher yeilding varieties from cattle to wheat, pulled out the hedgerows to fit in modern machinery and bought in the chemicals to make sure we grew more efficiently!
Old methods were laughed at, everyone wanted the latest, the shiniest, the quickest etc......and so it goes on.........no wonder we now have the global economy on its knees and an average of 3.5 worlds needed to support western lifestyles!
I heard yesterday that China was running out of water to irrigate its crops so was starting to rent land in South Africa to grow cereals, South Korea too and Saudi Arabia also are doing this as they havent got enogh water.....and as if Africa has?????
Perhaps it will be our children who take the lead in teaching us parents to save water, to be more sustainable, to use small and slow solutions, to save humanity from the crisis which inevitably has started?

2009-01-18T18:30:00.002Z

Busy weekend with a hedgelaying course at Ourganics in Dorset and a lambing course at Beech Hayes Farm just down the road!
Pete set off with 2 of the hedgelaying contingent who had arrived on Friday night to lay a very prickly hedge with 5 others who met him there whilst I met the lambers, and introduced them to Ruth and each other before rushing home to prepare a lunch of vegetable and lentil soup, home made bread rolls and home produced sausages to which they were all invited. Then rushed down to the hedgelaying to grab a portion of Pat Bowcocks fantastic stew followed by crumble and local cream.......diet forgotten today!
Did some hedgelaying and arranged 2 more courses for the 1st and 15th Feb.....do come if you can £50 for a day of fantastic training by Pete complete with fantastic hot meal and cake!! (and a chance to see Ourganics which was featured on the BBC programme 'The One Show' on Friday!)
Absolutely shattered by the evening and couldn't keep my eyes open!
Back to the money fight tomorrow.........the little cartoon is rather topical!
The lovely friend who came down for a stay this week is one of the only people I know who understands the stress of being dedicated to something huge that is really 'ethical' and her stresses are so much more than mine at the end of the day because the end result affects so many people.........she is a real tough cookie with a soft centre who is the genuine article and really cares....she has a charity called The Big Green Idea....visit the site, its going to become something amazing!

2009-01-16T20:13:00.003Z

Frustration is the only way to sum up my week....interspersed with a visit from a lovely friend!
I am trying to raise the finance to go ahead with my expansion plans.....
The good old British Gov have bailed and bailed out the banks and this week announced help for small businesses by underwriting the risks of banks lending them money..........sounded great, looks great.....in theory!
However they would not play ball as they would only lend 30% of the finance needed and then only if I put in 70%.....but the whole point of borrowing is because you do not have the reddies.....is it not?!
So we have decided to do a remortgage on our house to raise the bit needed to invest and take the business forward.....not a huge risk to us as we only wanted a small amount.....
Fine said the morgage lender to our shock.....but urmm well oh.....oh well actually eventually NO!
Back to the drawing board.....
Mortgage brokers say......don't worry we will find you a mortgage!......and they did.....and I found a great unit and said yes to it.....and the paperwork for the mortgage arrived and I thought yipee.....
And then the phone went and the mortgage company said.....no....apparently there was a problem....I keep sheep!!!!! 8-o
WHAT the bleep bleep bleep has that got to do with it I ask dumbfounded?
Ah umm well that means you are a farm and we don't do agricultural mortgages!
No.....we are residential, we are and all ways have been residential......we just have 9 acres.
But you keep sheep AND pigs......so you ARE a farm........
NO we are residential......this property is NOT a registered farm business!
Oh yes you are oh no we are not.......it was sounding like a pantomime!
But urmm you have a countryside management business there too.....perhaps you are commercial premesis......where do you keep your heavy plant?

At this point i was beginning to think it was surreal......how did they know I had sheep.....and how many AND the fact that I'd just imported one from France AND that Pete has a tree surgery arm to his countryside management business???? And more worrying were mentioning pictures of me dyeing wool in horror of horrors my kitchen!
FROM THIS BLOG!!!! and my and Petes websites!!!

Big brother is certainly watching! I had no idea that underwriters spent hours investigating their mortgage application clients websites to try and 'catch' them lying!!!
I am horrified!

So eventually it was decided we apparently were not residential because our garden was more than 60% of our total plot, we were not agricultural because we just kept sheep for pleasure and were not commercial as we did not have either heavy plant on the premesis not was my kitchen a dye factory.....that point we ran out of options and became unique!
So we are still trying.....
AND for the benefit of any underwriters reading this I have contacted the BBC and they are very interested in your activities!

2009-01-10T18:10:00.003Z

I have a very interesting dilemma at the moment! We are expanding the felt business! We are going to start processing waste wool into recycled felt and knitting wool and start making house insulation from the early summer when we have a needle felter.........if all goes according to plan! We are also going to be moving to a bigger building where we hope to put in wood and solar powered water heating for the wool washer and other environmentally friendly options! Wool is at last being taken seriously!
The dilemma.......the variety of buildings we are being offered and that are becoming available! I am seeing 2 on Monday and one is within cycling distance of home!!! (less than 2 miles...... my cycling distance that is!!!)...all very exciting and amazing! I am also dyeing fabric for a top London designer which is also very exciting!
It is still freezing here but that is preferable to pouring rain even if it means lots of hot water shifting to thaw out the pigs water trough twice a day! All the sheep are fat and happy munching on racks of haylage in their fields and now we just await Merinos blood test results (for blue tongue) though with current temps the chances of him having been bitten anytime recently by a midge should be zero!
We also have bookings for the next litters of piglets due areound the end of April which is very encouraging! Here is a picture of one of the last litter....we are rearing 3 for pork and sausages!

2009-01-10T00:02:00.004Z

Please watch this video if you care about what is happening in Gaza.............Also this blog written by a medic in Gaza.
I cannot add anything.....let it speak for itself

2009-01-02T11:43:00.008Z

Happy new year everyone!.........good grief, where did the last one go!
2009 is exciting and terrifying at the same time, huge opportunities if we take them and make the most of them .........and lots of unknowns that make it similar to being in a minefield!.......but hey life is like that and thats what makes it exciting!

Woolly Waste is just about to expand into another business unit.....with more machinery as it becomes clear that our existing unit is just too small to operate in.........and we have some wicked ideas for using waste wool.....just watch as the year unfolds!

On the home front its been a cold winter holidays with Hoar frost for days on end with crunch frozen ground and frosted sheep.............shows just how well insulated they are when black sheep walk around all day with a covering of frost, yet if caught and felt, feel as warm as toast next to the skin! Just look at this frosty picture taken from the bathroom window at 2pm on New years day!
Merinos is very settled and here is a pic of him too, with a frosty beard enjoying life in southern England!

I have had the kids home at various times over the holidays.........my daughters....pictured here at Glastonbury festival in the summer came laden with goodies and returned home laden with different ones! It was nice to see them and their partners.....and dog!!....a lovely pointer called Ottie who belongs to my eldest daughter and gets on very well with our dogs!
My eldest son also returned for Christmas, he now works for the National Trust and resides in N Devon.
He does estate work and is a careership warden and spends most of his time chopping trees up, enjoying the countryside whilst doing various jobs and helping with the estates flock of Jacob sheep and Ruby red Devon cattle.
One thing struck me over the holidays and that was the optimistic arrogance of the young.........as my son who works with a young woman on the estate keeps telling me when I question him about what they are doing with their livestock.......' you might have an opinion mum but she knows you know....she was born on a farm.....!' mmm one wonders how being born on a farm can give authority.......obviously a lifetime of experience farming counts for nought in the eyes of ones children!!!.....more of that next time......He is however a great kid and I'm very proud of his achievements and the fact he is doing exactly what he has always wanted to do!

2008-12-27T18:23:00.003Z

Happy Christmas and a Fantastic 2009 to all!!!
I have been channel hopping recently.........no not the TV sort but across the English Channel to France!
I went over 2 weeks before Christmas to see some friends and check out the work I have had done on my little French house........which incidently you can hire out for a very reasonable fee!
I have had the pointing redone at the side and back and a bit of work done inside...it looks great! I am borrowing a small field down the road of about an acre from a friend so we have somewhere to store our logs, have a bbq and relax!
After arriving at Berrien where my house is I left early the next day, in the dark and frost, to drive to my friend Celias house on the Normandy border.......Now I am getting a bit long sighted and when driving alone have to keep stopping, find my glasses, take a look at the map, drive a few miles and then do it all over again! SOOOOO.....I have bought a sat nav.....or sat nag depending on how its behaving!
Its wonderful.....I eventually get to my destination often with quite a tour of very small (it really CANNOT be that way, can it?) roads and lanes, and the odd farmyard where it tells me to carry on for 3 miles blissfully unaware that carrying on will take me through a barn full of cows!!!
Occaisionally I will follow a signpost down a new bypass and it gets all confused and appears to be travelling off road!......saying to itself recalculating, recalculating!!!
However I have managed to get to my destinations!
Having had a great time in nearly Normandy including a lovely Christmas concert attended in company with Blu of blucamels blog I returned to Berrien to put up a door curtain and chill.
Returning home a few days later with some wool to felt for a friend and a woodburner that was for sale and I couldn't resist a bargain......I had a few days and got back on the ferry!

Why.....???

Well the reason was the fantastic Ouessant ram Merinos des Lutins de Montana who won the Champion white ram 2008 at the Ouessant breed show in Argol in September!
He travelled home in a large crate and is now enjoying being a celebrity and learning to baa in English!

2008-12-18T22:37:00.002Z

I have been tagged for this green meme by Willow

These are the rules:

1. Link to Green Meme Bloggers

2. Link to whoever tagged you

3. Include meme number

4. Include these guidelines in your post

5. Answer questions

6. Tag 3 other green bloggers.

I have to answer ten questions.

1. Name two motivations for being green

I always have been!.......I was 'green' before I knew that was the term for being a person who lives lightly!
I have a highly developed moral conscience .........probably due to being bought up by god fearing evangelical relatives!!!!!...................I am not religious but want everyone to have a fair shair and no more.

2. Name 2 eco-unfriendly items you refuse to give up

I have to have a car as there is no public transport......
I have a house in France and use ferries.....

3. Are you at peace with, or do you feel guilty about no.2?

Partly guilty about both car and house but.....

Car...

I have a van that runs on deisel and bio deisel and do average mileage.....I need it to get to my work place and generally get around. I also have a 4x4 which is old and used for pulling the sheep trailer and heavy jobs it was designed to do.....it does under 2,000 miles a year

My French house....
It is my pension as I havent got one and is my bolt hole for when I need a break. It was derelict before I owned it for 40 years so it lives again! Everything in and about the house is second hand or home made! Even the kitchenis made of recycled wood. It is 30 mins from Roscoff and can be got to by bike.

4. What are you willing to change but feel unable to/stuck with/unsure how to go about it?

Would love to be carless.................but would have to live in town and therefore could not do my woolly job!...........dilemma!

5. Do you know your carbon footprint for your home? If so, is it larger/smaller than your national average?

We are well below!

6.What's eco-frustrating and/or eco-fantastic about where you live?

'We have the wrong kind of wind' for a wind turbine and too much shade for a solar panel!!!
But living here means I can keep sheep, harvest our own wood and grow loads of veg etc!

7. Do you eat local/organic/vegetarian/forage/grow you own?

We grow lots of our own veg, grow all our own meat and source everything else locally

8. What do you personally find the most challenging in being green?

Don't find it particularly difficult as thats how I am!!

9. Do you have a green confession?

I drive my bike to the canal to go for a bike ride.....but I do try to combine it with other things!!

10. Do you have the support of family and/or friends?

Oh yes............we are all in it together

I now tag these 4 bloggers, notaproperfarmer , Blu at Blucamels
Compost woman , and Tpals place

2008-11-29T16:55:00.005Z

Sorry to all those who are regular readers, I have been sooooo tired that blogging has been a bit neglected!
Our pigs are now relieved of their offspring and mighty relieved they were too! 3 gilts went to their new homes last weekend where they will be breeding sows eventually. I now have 6 boars that will be going in our freezer or sold as pork and sausages if there are no takers for them. If anyone reading this would like to buy a pair for raising for pork and bacon let me know! Mums and dad now have their pig paddocks back to themselves and are enjoying not being pestered by lots of children!

The sheep are very well and the coloured Wensleydales and Dorset x Wensleydales are running with my new Gotland ram Fred and 3 pedigree Gotland ewes. We should have some very pretty coloured wiggly woolled lambs next year!

The Ouessants are all running with my French Ouessant ram that I imported last December, called Sarkozy in honour of the French president (ie small & randy!!) I hope to be importing the French white Ouessant champion of 2008 in a few weeks time.

The wool washing machine is now awaiting a new hot tank and will be ready to wash by the end of the year and the new picker is having a picker box built......all will soon be revealed! If you require your wool washed, carded or felted please book your slot now or send for a price list.

AND......what every woman needs......a big spanner...........just look at the size of this one (used to adjust the feet on the felter if you were wondering!)........thats a large teaspoon for scale!

2008-11-22T23:05:00.002Z

Well I have not had much time to blog recently! Why? Because I have been spending every waking hour surrounded by wool and machinery! The feltmaker is amazing and lots and lots have been made by myself and my new employee called Taffy!
The wool washing machine has arrived from Ludlow and is awaiting a plumber and a new hot tank to supply it, but will be functional in December. The picker is a wonderful machine with nasty looking teeth that open and blend fibre ready for carding! This is having a blower box fitted in the next 2 weeks..........all very exciting!
We have a few other large bits of machinery on order and we need another unit as we are outgrowing the one we have!!!................more news soon!
On my one day off we went cycling along the Taunton - Bridgwater canal..........reccommended!

2008-10-26T19:32:00.003Z

The Natoinal Hedgelaying Championships were held this year at Sandringham........yes the Queens estate in Norfolk.........and Pete by virtue of having won a class at the Blackdown Hills hedge event in March was eligible to compete (you have to have either won a competition or have attended a certified course run by the NHLS I believe....but don't quote me!)
So off to Norfolk we went on Friday.........and I can confirm that its a bloomin long way with no direct route as in Britain all roads seem to go from north to south or east to west and we wanted to go from southwest to north east!.............6 hours later we arrived at the b&b and collapsed exhausted.
Next morning we arrived at the hedgelaying competition that also had a ploughing match attached to it....a real country day out and having met all the other people who had travelled up from the southwest for the Devon & Somerset Style class the draw for which bit of hedge was whose was made.
Now to those who have no idea what hedgelaying is I will let the pictures speak for themselves save to say its a way of turning a row of small trees into a stockproof barrier with different styles from different parts of the country.
Pete had a decent bit of hedge to lay and they all had 5 hours to complete their sections. One of our local Blackdown Hills hedgelayers called Roger Parris who is a real charecter had a Japaneese film crew following him all day!
Pete did not win anything because the standard was amazing, but gave a very good account of himself as would be expected of a man who hedgelays as part of his business. The standard in the Devon & Somerset section in which he was competing was in fact so high that the supreme champion hedge was Terry Coombes from the Blackdowns!!! To go all the way to Norfolk and win was a terrific achievement for our area and style of laying!

The top 2 pictures show a Welsh style and Yorkshire style which has a fence built in it! The next one shows Roger Parris laying his hedge, the one with the car wizzing in the background is thw Champion hedge of Terry Coombes and the last id of Pete making the finishing touches to his hedge with an enormous pile of 'brash' or waste cut from the hedge behind him!

We left as it was getting dark and arrived home at midnight, tired but happy after a brilliant day

2008-10-14T22:01:00.003Z

I have had a very busy time recently and it shows no sign of easing up! The felting is going well and it is possible to make fantastic bits of felt so here goes mulch mats, hanging basket liners, slippers, bags etc....its limitless! I am going up to Wales on a a trip to look at insulation machinery in the next few weeks....exciting!
The piglets are growing like mad, and spend their days exploring the fields with their doting mums who dig small holes for them to rummage in! Unfortunatly we lost one that had been attacked by we think, a fox! There were canine teeth marks in its head and under its jaw so now we have a humane fox trap leant by the local hunt set next to the chicken run........we have had 2 broad daylight fox attacks on the hens in the last 2 weeks too grrr!
We have a long stay Wwoofer called Duncan a graduate from Bristol uni who is here until mid December and is making a real impression on the place! He is concreting the unfinished bit of the pigs yard at the moment and this will deserve a report all of its own when finished....its looking so good.
The sheep are all in big fields of lush grass and are looking well and happy. I have some new Gotland sheep that are beautiful and the ram called Fred will be tupping the coloured Wensleydales (the rasta sheep) and the 2 big white Dorset Down cross Wensleydales I have.
Sarkozy my French Ouessant ram will join all the Ouessant girls in early November.
I have recently lost the use of a nice field I often use to graze the sheep on in the winter in trying circumstances but as my limited french would say c'est la vie, ne ce que pas?
Anyway here is a selection of nice pics I took when in Brittany recently of some amazing trees....old oak pollards, and of course the old railway line that I'm continuing to explore.....its so so quiet on that old line the silence is almost deafening!.......And the amazing calvary in Pleyben....the best in Brittany I'm told

2008-10-09T21:59:00.003Z

We have piglets and very cute they are too, all 10 of them! Here they are at10 days old. They are growing very quickly and are for sale......ready in late November.

2008-09-29T13:28:00.003Z

Felting!!..........we are up and running with the first felting training morning for those who want to learn how to use the machinery set for the morning of the 15th October. This will be FREE!!!
In the pics you can see we now have guards around the carder as there are lots of running parts that could be dangerous un guarded.............no h&s when it was built! Felting courses will follow with the first being on the 16th when participants will be able to take home a huge bit of felt of their own design.

The felting table is wonderful and big rectangles are very quick to make.................approx 30 minutes in total! The whole kit is available for hire from £50 per day depending what you need and a couple of entrepreneurs could easily base a new micro enterprise around the unit making hats or handbags etc.

Finally our other amazing find has been a 1940s mangle which is just perfect for remooving all the water from the felt and whats more you can just see our biomass boiler down the end of the unit to keep us all snug and the state of the are compost loo.

2008-09-28T21:54:00.002Z

The National Ouessant Sheep Show 2008 took place in Argol in Finistere, Brittany, France on a wonderful sunny Sunday afternoon. I was the sole person who had travelled all the way from England to attend te show though not the only persin from the British Isles as two friends who live there were there too..........one of whom, who has some smashing sheep won the Prix d'honneur for white rams............WOW!!
The pictures here show the judging of the white juvenile ewes, with very animated judging!
The next picture is of the top five ewes in an enormous class of black senior ewes
The next is of the winner of the junior black rams, this man also won the junior black ewe lamb class and his stock are all very good.

The show was held at a museum of old living rural crafts and what a place! There were lots and lots of people demonstrating everything from making Far Breton (a sort of sweet yorkshire pudding with prunes in it) to blacksmithing and sabot making (sabots are wooden clogs and a fascinating fact is that the word sabotage originates from people breaking machines in the industrial revolution by jamming their sabots in them!) Also there was spinning, weaving and basket making among lots of other things going on!
It was a lovely day which ended in true French style with my friend Celia and I sharing some good wine and a good laugh in front of a roaring fire.

2008-09-12T21:48:00.002Z

FELT!!!! I have my first trial ompleted and wow is all I can say!
I spent a while carding a load of waste wool from Coldharbour mills Fibre Harvest and piled it on the felter as I wanted to see how thick I could go with it. Once sprinkled with water and washing up liqued I turned it on for 15 mins......and waited......

After 15 minutes had passed I turned it over and gave it another 15 mins and whilst it could have done with a bit longer I had to go as I needed to collect smallest son from school.

Here is the result..........3ft x 4ft and half inch thick!

2008-09-09T18:49:00.006Z

Hoorah! The children are back at school! We have had a busy last week to the holidays with some lovely friends from Cumbria staying for the week and giving us a hand outside in between the torrential downpours! The week before we had super wwoofer Pat with us..........a lady of mature years, age unknown but suspected to be older than most of us here she was a human dynamo! We took a load of rubbish to the dump in the stock trailer and whilst there liberated a brand new top of the range folding chair complete with its carrying case and joy of joys a roll top cast iron bath!!!!! (and a pale green one at that) Getting the bath was a dastardly deed.............the man at the recycling centre (dump) said we could not have it as it was going to be chucked in the metal recycling skip when there were enough hefty blokes to shift it..................so I pointed out that cast iron was not recyclable.......which fell on deaf ears!
So...........we argued.............and argued and I pointed out that I would be recycling it in my garden as a hot tub.........so he relented but told us he had not seen us!
So we put the trailer between bath and security cameras and Pat with the strength of several men and me with the strength of a mouse hoicked it quickly amid lots of puffing into the trailer and sped away feeling like a couple of naughty school girls!
It is perfect.......and will be made into a wood fired hot tub for next year!
Pat departed and we now have Domenic a German student who is an ace painter and we are making use of his talents on sheds and in my eco business unit!
Now back to the weather...............
Friday dawned in torrential rain and countrywide weather warnings, I drove up to the Permaculture convergence in Ilkley Yorkshire in the most terrifying conditions. On getting there we were warned that the adjoining river was about to burst and we were stuck.......I have to admit I was so relieved to be there in one piece I would have happily been flooded in for a week!
On the Friday evening there was a Ceilidh and we danced until midnight including Breton dancing......it was great and helped 300 people get to know a few others!..........helped of course by good food and good beer!
Next day I ran a pegloom workshop which was so popular it ran over into the afternoon and the following morning!.................but also had time to hear Permaculture Magazine editor and publisher Maddy Harland speak (she is very good.....I reccommend listening to her talk) and had a chat with her and husband Tim...........if you read it look out for an article by me in the future....! I also had a chance to hear Roberto Perez from Cuba speak about the Cuban experience which was amazing listening and all I can say is listen!
All in all it was the most positive experience of permaculture folks I have had and several of us met together and are working on joint projects re teaching and livestock!.............the food was superb over the weekend and the journey back complimented by seeing a pair of red kites!
Talking of permaculture I want to show you all an interesting example! Above are 2 photos taken from our raised patio of a bit of land that was used by our property for years but was owned by another neighbour but about 5 years ago was split between our property and our next door neighbour. It is about 3/4 acre in total. We made a garden, orchard, duck lawn with raised beds, and wildlife corridor with willow bed soak away from our bit which is low maintenance, but high output as its now grazed by geese, ducks or sheep, full of fruit trees, has beds of soft fruit, a willow fedge, basket making willow, etc and is a haven of productivity and biodiversity.
Our neighbours levelled theirs and mow a mono culture of grass with a ride on mower. strimmer and push mower weekly!!!..........theirs is very high input and very low output.....they don't even sit out and enjoy it!
And finally my bike! 2 weeks ago I escaped to my house in Brittany and cycled 24 glorious flat kilometres on my bike along the cycleway between Morlaix and Concarneau...........passing 1 dog walker 3 pedestrians and 2 elderly men on rickety bikes.............bliss!

2008-08-23T22:00:00.003Z

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Big Chill festival as we had free tickets courtesy of having been washed out at the Sunrise Festival......see previous blog from May!.........our Sunrise tickets were exchanged for Big Chill tickets and the Sunrise held part of their festival in the other festival! Well there were 45,000 people there and it was huge!.......and more importantly very very hilly! We parked our car and headed for the camping fields....
Half an hour later we got to one and pitched on the side of a hill making staying on the lilo whilst asleep challenging!......you can see from the 'view from our tent' pic that we were overlooking the other tents! This was one of many guy rope to guy rope camping areas. It was a further walk and scramble of about 40 minutes to get from tent to main festy site first along the track, then up the hill then along another track and then the site of the main stage, pictured above unfolded below, so then down and in through the check point. Exhausted from all the lugging of stuff the excitement was just beginning, no wonder the porride with everything food stall was the first thing you came to......after all that walking sustenance was needed!
Talking of walking........once you made it to the main site it was soooooo big it took 30 minutes to walk from one end to the other.........if 1. you didn't get caught up in the crowds leaving one of the stages or 2. you didn't get distracted!
AND add to the equation my bad knees (ouch ouch) and the fact that due to the hilly ground the only people who could get a vague signal on their phone was vodaphone customers.........if you lost someone you never found them again!!!
The Sunrise end was an oasis of peace in a dizzy round of clubbing and comedy interspaced with main stage acts. Below are 'The Buzzcocks' on the second stage. While there I enjoyed some interesting music but thought it a little boring to be honest! Also I thought the amount of overt drug dealing and rubbish dropping was appaling!
Last weekend, on my return from the Permaculture teachers course we went to Beautiful Days Festival.........Foul weather but great line up including Squeeze, Gabriella Cilimi, Stiff Little Fingers, Seth Lakeman and the ever green Oysterband.........It was great, and despite leaving early and missing the Levellers and the firework finale because of extreme rain we loved it!

On yet another sad note we lost one of our Ouessant sheep today, Two days ago she was seen to be a bit quiet and on closer inspection was found to have a very acute, fast acting mastitis known as 'blue bag' This is where septicaemia happens before you even know the sheep is ill and less than 25% survive. We kept her going for 2 days following vets advice, but yesterday we took her in as an in patient at the vets.........unfortunately despite the best care she died. Luckily this is a very rare condition......but of course it was one of my best ewes and I have a very large vets bill!
Below are some very jolly drummers etc in the Sunrise field at the Big Chill

2008-08-15T10:40:00.004Z

Well news update is that the felting machine has arrived and is in the unit awaiting a plug and installation! It being the summer holidays progress is slow, but we are getting there! I have been on a training of trainers course, primarily to brush up my teaching skills as I am about to embark on a lot of teaching and awareness raising about felt, wool and sustainable textiles, but secondly because it was a training course aimed at permaculture teachers and as far as I'm concerned what I'm doing is all part of permaculture......or is it?
I am beginning to dislike the 'P' word and have come back from the course reflective, sad, disillusioned and angry......yes very angry!.........not the sort of anger that is violent or aggressive but the sort that will mean I keep battling on.
You may well wonder what on earth i'm muttering on about, well I will try and explain!
I am a small farmer, a smallholder, hobby farmer, backyarder, good lifer,..........there are so many terms, some like hobby farmer rather derogatory.........I'd like to see the face of a farmer with 200 acres who works his butt off farming, but has a day job to make ends meet when he is called a 'hobby' farmer!
Most 'farmers' in developing countries have postage stamp size plots and they are called subsistance farmers.....its certainly not a hobby to them!
I digress, forgive me!
I have been this past week on a lovely little 5 acre smallholding in Dorset called Ourganics run by a lovely lady called Pat Foxwell, with the help of wwoofers and other volunteers.
I thought attending a course there would be great.....a fantastic resourse that we would be taught how to use in teaching permaculture, sustainable living etc.........how wrong can I be!
To be quite honest the wonderful setting, the local countryside was totally ignored and we were in a yurt or sitting outside on the grass, depending on the weather!
I will not go into the course itself here as that would be wrong and I will consider the feedback I will make about it to the convenors carefully.
The thing was that it felt to me as if I permaculture was a religious order! Holmgrens principles = the ten commandments, meditation to me equates with prayers, a mandela/altar, songs of permaculture = hymns, closing ritual ceremony = eeeek I want to get out of here and now!
I felt like running home and staying there!
However I am going to use one of dear old Holmgrens principles to explain...........
'Use the edges and value the marginal'
In a nutshell these are "complex interfaces between one habitat and another.......for example increasing the 'edge' between a field and a pond can increase the productivity of both"
I have been a smallholder for most of my life! I was recycling before most had heard of it......so had my dad....he kept his nails and screws in old baccy tins.....you never threw things away! I had been making my own and cooking slow food as opposed to fast food and heating my home with wood long ago!..........I however just did it, I lived it, I didn't label it! So did many of the people I knew! My love for the land and my life is integral, my friends consist of farmers, huntsmen, conservationists, butchers, smallholders, vegans, anti hunt protestors, etc etc........my life is across the divide and all encompassing! When I met my husband I was a paid up hunt supporter, he a paid up member of the league against cruel sports! I produce quality meat from my animals, he is a vegetarian. Neither of us have changed our views but we love, respect, understand and tolerate each other.............you see I am an edge! I have a foot in 2 camps I can identify with both but am neither ..........I am not a hunter, I am not a mainstream farmer, I am not a 'normal' person with a 9 - 5 job I don't quite fit there..........but neither am I a 'weirdy beardy in sandals ' type(apologies to strange folk in sandals who happen to have a beard!) nor am I a hippy, a traveller or an 'earth activist' whatever that may be ..........its a lonely road being an edge as both habitats see you as not quite belonging to them.......but its an edge that can increase the productivity of both habitats, so really I'm quite valuable.........

Permaculture is a challenge to me..............I didn't' see the permaculture light!' It didn't 'change my life'...........and I want to show and teach sustainability without props, structures, principles, functions, elements, acronyms ..............without morning circles, reviews, and bloomin spirals AND without the dreaded 'P' word

I could walk away, shake my head, tell myself that they are winding themselves into a web that alienates themselves from normal people, but what would be the point.? No I am going to hang on in there clutching hold of the shirt tails of permaculture with one hand and the collar of farming with the other, whilst yelling my head off from the edge with a vengence!
I end with a picture looking from the A37 Yeovil to Dorchester road where it crosses high along the Downs beloved of Hardy....I took the picture on the way home from the course when I stopped to look at one of my favourite views across towards Rampisham and think for a while leaning on a gate.

Addendum....just after publishing this entry I got a phone call from one of my daughters to let me know that a contempoary of theirs from their days at pony club, a nice lad at whose mothers farm i had kept my horses and loaned their old eventer Misty had committed suicide from a Dorset clifftop aged 27...................

2008-07-27T22:38:00.003Z

My beautiful 1920s cotton carder that will be carding wool into webs ready to layer in the felting table!

2008-07-27T21:34:00.003Z

Well its getting exciting here! I have taken posession of a fabulous carding machine which is now installed and working in my eco unit! The walls, bare wood in the pic (which is now alone in the next post due to editing probs with blogger!) are now being painted white and the felting machine has arrived in a crate from Canada and is presently in the container at Liverpool docks........can't wait for it to arrive! I have recently exchanged my little car for a van that now sports the Woolly Shepherd logo (pic of it parked by the unit) and we are applying for funding for a scouring plant to wash the wool prior to the felting process.....watch this space for news!
I have a top of the range compost toilet in the unit as do the other units and a biomass boiler so its an eco business in an eco unit!
The veg plot is starting to produce well and we have salad with everything! runner beans are looking good and so for a change is the sweetcorn.....very difficult to grow up here. We have some new livestock, two new Ouessant ewe lambs, a white one called Lulu and a little chocolate one called Fleur, they have settled in very well. We also have two young geese and two Aylesbury ducks.......all of whom have an identity crisis as they were raised together since hatching........not sure if the ducks think they are geese or visa versa!! swapped them for two of the oven ready chickens from the freezer, a good bit of bartering methinks.
Last Wednesday I joined the Transition Taunton group. For those of you who are scratching their heads and wondering what that is I can only say look at this link 'Transition Towns '
The idea is that each town, city, village, area can start thinking about what to do when the dependence we have on oil comes to an end (called 'peak oil') and measures to reduce our carbon footprint and combat climate change.....I can see myself getting very involved in this as I really think its the only option, and wonder of wonders Somerset County Council has aparently just adopted it as one of its strategies!
Yesterday and today were beautiful summer days, and we ran our first Introduction to parmaculture course here with 10 people booked.....a full course! They came from as far away as Stoke on Trent, Chepstow and Banbury and we had a fantastic time discussing design, zoning and edges and constructing a compost bin from pallets, a water harvesting roof over a 1000 litre IBC to provide water for the pigs and had a charcoal burn with the charcoal kiln. Permaculture Magazine provided free copies for participants and all went on their way happily promising to keep in touch. I hope to repeat the course in the autumn and also run a design course next year. I will post some pics of our construction efforts in the next day or two.....I have to admit to being so absorbed that I forgot to take pics of the course in progress!
Last weekend it was Buddhafield festival 500metres from our house and it is a truely green festival, very peaceful, in fact so peaceful that you could miss the fact that it was there if not for the copious AA signs pointing to it. Pete and I went up for the Friday evening, meeting up with my good friend Brigit and having a fantastic meal in the Chai Organic cafe before watching Seize the Day on the big stage.......all powered by solar and wind power.........they were awsome!

2008-07-11T21:57:00.003Z

Well I'm back from France....came back early as I was feeling poorly and changed my ferry for one in a force 8 gale....nevermind! Berrien was as lovely as ever and we went to the beach in the pouring rain too!
Back to the grind stone the weeds have grown at the same pace as the veg so lots of weeding! All the spuds were lifted before I went and we have a large sack of lovely first and second earlies. The mixd salad leves are amazing this year......we can eat salad with every meal! The tomatoes are ripening, the first cucumber has been eaten, and the radishes are taking on giant proportions! We have grown so far....tomatoes 5 varieties, tomatilloes, cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, chillies, spuds, parsnips, persil(a sort of cross between parsley and parsnips) carrots, kale, russian kale, cabbages , white sprouting brocolli, red cabbage, celery, round and long courgettes, 3 types of squash, sweet corn, black salsify, leeks, onions, french beans, runner beans, pumpkins and other stuff I cannot remember! Tomorrow the bed where the spuds were is being planted up with lots of new stuff!.........I love growing food! Talking of food the meat chickens were all killed this week and our freezer is stuffed! They weighed between 2 ad 2.8kg at nearly 10 weeks old. We ate a small one tonight........it fed 5 people with more for a pie tomorrow! Fabulous taste and texture!
One of the pigs went to the abattoir on Thursday morning.........C Snell is one of the last family run abattoirs in the west country and is where Hugh Frarnley Whittingstalls 'River Cottage' livestock are killed. All my sheep and pigs go there and I wish people who think abattoirs are cruel could have seen my pig sauntering down the ramp to Trevor, the head honchos encouragement of "Come on sweetheart, this way" and the nice Spanish vets words of "come along darling" ..........this to the pig....not me! She is to be made into sausages by Somersets champion sausage maker!
I want also to tell you some good news and some bad/sad news!
First the good news..........you can hear me on Farm Radio!!! follow the link!
The sad/bad news is that Yeovil market has closed after over 150 years trading on the site in the centre of Yeovil. Why is this sad? Well Taunton market and Highbridge market closed earlier in the year, both markets that were in 'Market Towns' There are only 2 livestock markets in Somerset now........the new out of town shiny new Sedgemoor livestock centre near Bridgwater and The out of town Frome livestock centre. There is a certain poingnancy about all this because this is first of all a long way for many people to travel to market but more importantly it destroys a way of life, the weekly social outing for farmers and their families, a place where frmers, who are often isolated and socially excluded can chat, moan, laugh and talk the talk with others who understand their way of life. Often while the men talked prices, bid on the beasts, bemoaned their losses or rejoiced in their meagre profits over a fry up in the market cafe, the rest of the family who had come too hit the shops to stock up on rewritable CDs, school trousers, new wellies etc as well as a trip to the hairdressers and the bank or a quick rummage in Morrisons!
At these shiny new out of town livestock centres you can buy a few things, but they are too far from the local highstreet or indeed anywhere!
Our local rag summed it up with the following quote at the end of their report.........
'It was late in the evening before an erie silence descended over the site and the market gates were padlocked for the last time. A large chunk of what had been Old England, a place of tradition and community spirit had gone for ever'
What will replace it? Apparently a housing scheme including social housing, an old peoples home and some shops are to be built as part of Yeovils regeneration scheme..........no doubt called 'The old market'?

2008-06-30T14:56:00.002Z

URGENT PLEASE READ............this link.
There is a problem all over Britain with this particular chemical which has got into manure, compost etc!............I have lost 2 tomato plants in my poly tunnel and I have, as far as I know not used any contaminated compost! I bought some tomato plants from our local country market and it must have been in the compost of the person who grew them..........this is quite awful!

And what is more, and whats worse, as a person who rarely if ever uses chemicals on plants we had one of the fields we use in the village sprayed by our local environmentally conscious contractor to finally defeat the huge quantity of docks (almost more docks than grass!) that were in it that had defied our efforts at puling and topping...................and he assured us he had used a reliable, selective (thistles, stingers AND docks) dafe herbicide, judiciously so as to leave some banks of nettles for the butterflies, but dispose of the docks.........and what did he use....Forefront!!!!!!

Therefore we cannot take hay, we cannot safely graze the sheep and then use any manure they may produce on our garden!..........and though we are assured that the meat from them is safe, we will not be grazing that field due to the contamination.............Oh I am sooooo cross!
The label on the bottle aparently says 'not for use on food crops', our poor contractor didn't have a chance....and we also wouldn't have guessed...........because it was used on permenant grassland.
This is my last brush with a chemical company...............back to topping and pulling and I swear never again will I spray anything even if we think its 'safe'
I'm off to Brittany tomorrow................after this I need a break! I will not be totally relaxing however as I am looking at 2 flocks of sheep and giving management advice, updating my accounts and attending the British Pigs in France gala where I'm demonstrating peglooming! See you all on my return!

2008-06-29T22:51:00.004Z

Its often said that there is no culture left in Britain....and our traditions are dying! All of you who read this blog from France will know how local traditions are still observedand enjoyed by old and young, for example the Fez Noz (or night festival) in Brittany. Well yesterday we had a scarecrow safari around the locality folowed by a barn dance in Churchinford village Hall. Churchinford is the next village up from ours.....in fact we are almost between the two! Nick and Ruth Strange of Blackdown banger (sausage) fame were hard at work on the bbq and inside the dancing progressed with great hilarity from old and young. Our youngest son....the small boy in the blue t-shirt aged 5 loved every moment!

I think it is true that this sort of thing does not happen generally....but in quiet backwaters like this special things happen!
More often unfortunately we let our traditions die........listen to the somg 'Roots' that is in my playlist. It is by 'Show of Hands' a local band well worth listening to.

And here are some of the 56 amazing creations that were dotted around the village and surroundong countryside

2008-06-25T11:45:00.002Z

Meat chickens! We have 33 of them and it has been interesting this time around. Last time we had 12 SASSO chickens (SASSO is a french acronym) and after spending 4 weeks indoors under a heat lamp that was gradually reduced they went outdoors to free range. Well to my 3 black rock hens who are egg laying hybrids free range means going from the ark to the fields, up the lane, in the orchard and sitting annoyingly outside the patio doors waiting for a human to emerge who just might have an edible treat handy! In the course of a day they walk miles, eat lots and lay lots. The Sassos however walked about a maximum of 50ft if persuaded away from their hen house, sat around a lot and ate a huge quantity of food. They were killed at 12 weeks and weighed on average 5lb.......in fact we only got 8 as far as the freezer due to a fox raid!
This time I bought some Hubbard chicks......another French breed and have 3 types, white, brown and grey. I ordered 20 and ended up with 33 (with an hours notice)......which caused a bit of a headache as the meat hen house will not accommodate that number!
However as they grew and GREW they went quickly from brooder to stable (10 x 9) with their heat lamp. Now they are 6 weeks and still indoors as the picture shows AND weigh.......between 2 and 2.8kg!!!!
They eat, drink and then sit down in little social groups..........they have natural light, sunshine streams in and I give them a rack of grass and cabbage leaves which they show interest in BUT they show no inclination to want to venture out.........so they are staying where they are! I have had a lot of worry about them not being totally free range but if they are happy so am I!They will be killed quietly at a tiny poultry abattoir down the road (so small its almost unknown, its behind a garden centre and is literally one man in one room) for the freezer in a couple of weeks time. I think they have had the best life possible, they are all bright, happy birds who enjoy human company.........I am going to keep 2 or 3 to join the laying hens as Hubbards do lay well apparently!..........be interesting to see if they are prepared to walk as far!

2008-06-24T22:16:00.003Z

I read a blog called 'A mouse in France' and though I have no idea who she is who writes it I can only say read it.........you will find it makes you think! This quote came from her blog.....a famous little ditty, but so so true

" Dont hurry and dont worry Enjoy the sun and the showers We are only here for such a little while Take time to smell the flowers"

I spend ages watching...my sheep, my chickens, my ducks, the veg.....the view, the flowers....its true we need to slow down and look because if we don't we may miss the important things!

And that got me thinking on my way through town today!
I had an early appointment at the hospital for the consultant to check up on my knee.....well having waited nearly an hour a locum pronounced from reading my notes that my knee should be ok given that I WAS over 40 and not heavily engaged in sport to which i replied "no not exactly but do not have a sedentary life either".....he looked at me quizically.....no he didn't have a clue....and I left it at that! Parking 10 minutes later in Taunton I got caught up in the road closure that meant walking further than i had intended.....not too sure why the road had closed, I soon saw the reason.........lots of children flanked by an army of yellow vested 'helpers' were marching down the road with drums, percussion, whistles and several chineese dragons! On enquiring exactly what it was for i was told it was ' An african carnival celebration in the spirit of the Notting Hill carnival in London'. Mmmmmm I thought and asked why? Wrong question as the bemused parent of a child taking part informed me that it was all the local primary schools learning about and celebrating our diverse culture??? I may well get shot for saying this but we are so concentrating on celebrating other parts of our diverse culture that our local West Country traditions, pastimes and occupations are slowly and sadly being allowed to die out without a care or comment...........it would never happen in Brittany where I have a little house and lots of friends because local traditions mean so much to them.....still I enjoyed watching and took some photos!
I also watched the seller of 'The big issue' dressed up in full evening dress and sporting a topper....took a photo when he wasn't watching!
I have to share a lovely picture of my new ducklings! They were hatched from my duck eggs in a friends incubator! There are 4 altogether.....indian runners

2008-06-17T21:09:00.002Z

I got sunburn today............sitting in the very pretty garden of a lovely lady in Kingsbridge in Devon where I was teaching peg loom rug making to a wonderful group of enthusiastic ladies and gentlemen! The sun shone, tea flowed ( and the home made flapjacks) and everything was good in the world for that little micro moment!
On the way home I went to Totnes to have a walk up the high street, and to check out the shops! I returned with a delicious piece of cheese and some mixed salad leaves.....all grown and made locally! Even though I was working it felt like being on holiday today........would I work in an office.....NEVER!
And for all those who wanted to see our shearer at work on Saturday.....we have a picture of Jock in action!

2008-06-15T22:07:00.003Z

Some nice pictures of Ouessants and Kune Kunes in the sunshine!

I have had a really interesting and busy weekend! We have a new wwoofer/helpexer! Ross has departed to France to help a friend of mine and another person has arrived! L is a local who is radically changing her lifestyle and striving to learn sustainability and how to tread lightly on this planet!........she is revamping the caravan and giving it a makeover and also helping with the growing veg garden.
So Saturday began with L arriving and settling in and then the village fete in the afternoon with my middle son aged 15 working hard on the bbq of locally produced burgers and sausages. Youngest son was 2nd in the boys aged 5-7 running race and Pete got a long handled stapler on the bric a brac stall. I chatted with lots of people and secured an order for some good hay over a Pimms!.....back to reality at 5pm with the organisation of the shearing of all the big sheep, plus the Ouessant rams and my neighbours sheep! Several trailer loads and we were ready for Jock the mega fantastic shearer who does all my big sheep! I had already vaccinated the Ouessant ewes and lambs earlier that afternoon and so did all the others as they were shorn.........once cleared up and sorted out all the wool bags were taken home and I sped off down the road to vaccinate several pet sheep belonging to a friend.........we ate dinner as the sun was sinking....about 10pm!
Today Lesley and I made lots of Lemon Curd before heading off to the Green fair and Scything festival where I was supposed to be selling woolly stuff, but had decided against going early in the morning due to a poor weather forcast..........sensible decision as they had a monsoon for about 10 minutes! Pete was there selling bags of home produced charcoal.........he had sold out by the time we arrived and the weather had improved. I had a good time browsing the stalls and came away with a knitting pattern for a baggy jumper and 2 CDs of my band of the moment 'Damh The Bard' I chatted to many friends and contacts and thouroughly enjoyed myself!

2008-06-10T17:12:00.002Z

Permaculture is one of those mysterious words that many have heard of but not many are sure exactly what it means! It is a word made up from a combination of 2 others PERMAnent agriCULTURE or just CULTURE! It is a system of sustainable production that takes its cues from what is happening naturally and relies on a period of observation before rushing in and changing things irreversibly! For example there are reasons why bog plants grow in boggy areas........so rather than draining the boggy area and putting in great effort to grow something that needs dry ground it would be easier and better environmentally to grow what likes damp ground! And whats more rather than use gallons of water to irrigate bone dry ground it would be better to grow drought resistant plants!
This may seem simplistic but basically its true! Problem is everyone wants to grow the catch crop of the moment.........sustainable agriculture based on permaculture principles of which i have only just touched upon is probably the most environmentally and climate friendly option.
Industrial agriculture is not the fault of the farmer........although he or she often takes the blame in the eyes of the public..........it is the fault of the consumer demanding cheaper and cheaper food....we now pay about 10% of our income or less for our food and we expect better quality and rather than eat what is in season we demand strawberries in January. Therefore farmers have to produce more for less........a very unsustainable position!
I read the other day that in Britain we throw away four and a half million apples per day.......this is waste on a staggering scale! We also throw away 5,000 unopened whole chickens every day......that is approx 5 broiler houses full per day..........and the farmer gets paid 10p per chicken produced for Tesco and the other supermarkets to sell at £2.50/$5......makes you want to weep! I want to give you an idea of what industrial farming is like and how soul destroying it can be. Paul, a friend of Stuart who writes the Permaculture in Brittany blog keeps pigs.......indoors. Pig prices across Europe are at an all time low at the moment with many people going bust . Take a look at the short videos of Stuart driving Pauls tractor to get an idea of what it can be like! If you want cheap food the environment will pay.....and people like Paul will work for decreasing returns.
The chicken situation is an interesting one...........it costs me around £7 - 8 per bird, not including my labour, to raise the 33 meat birds I have here who are now 4 weeks old and about to go outside onto the grass.
to cheer you up after such a heavy post here is a picture of one of my wensleydale cross rasta sheep with her lamb by a suffolk ram

2008-06-04T17:38:00.003Z

Pics of my veg garden showing how its growing on....and showing the brassicas....cabbages, kale and white sprouting broccoli mulched with waste hay which they really like! I have mulched the potatoes with it too and they seem better than ever....remains to be seen if there is a good crop! I have problems with creeping mint and horsetail in one raised bed so its war! I have a watering system set up with a hose coming off this huge tank, which due to the amount of rain last week easily reached its 1000litre capacity from Petes shed roof!
Also here is a nice picture of my garden before the rain of last week finished off the clematis blossom which smelled wonderful......now the jasmine and honeysuckle have taken over. The willow fedge is looking amazing and much leafier than in the picture!
Ross our current wwoofer from Australia is a gem and has done just about everything in his life (he is 68!) It turns out not only did he belong to a sheep shearing gang in his youth, but taught sheep shearing! So....I have sheared 3 Ouessants and half another and Ross sheared the rest....a master at work too!
He has also dug out every dock plant on the place.....wow!

2008-06-01T15:28:00.003Z

We went to the Sunrise festival.....pictured above in someone elses slide show! It was to us a well orgainised little break, we got in Pippa a smallholding sitter to keep an eye on everything, Ross our Aussie wwoofer was keeping a gentle eye on Pippa, and the packing to get away took ages. This was to be a treat for Petes 50th birthday which was celebrated on Wednesday........however we should have known what would happen........after all it had been pouring with rain all week....!

We left in beautiful sunshine........but as we parked our car and tried to put up our tent the heavens opened and it came down in stair rods! The fields flooded, the river burst its banks, the festival was abandoned as the camping fields became waist deep in water!The flash floods caused made the national news!
We got out, aided by a fery nice tractor driver, but as the clip shows some had to wait 24 hours for rescue and partied the night away....

2008-05-25T15:30:00.003Z

Butter......it is so easy to make your own I cannot believe it!........well I can as the pictures prove I have made some!
I have always wanted to have a go at making butter.....at one time long ago when I had at least 3 dairy goats producing 5-7 litres of milk per day each I was literally awash with milk and made tons of soft and hard cheese as well as feeding calves, kids, pigs and the family on it....but I never made butter! Partly the reason was that goats milk fat globules are smaller than those found in cows milk so wholst it separates it is not very easy to skim by hand and a cream separator was always out of my price league.
Well I got to thinking I would like a go, spurred on by seeing cartons of double cream marked down in the supermarket due to reaching their sell by date.
I knew Blow a company that has long gone out of business used to produce hand churns in the past and decided to look on ebay......where I discovered a whole new world of butter pats, moulds and....yes churns! So I bought a small one called a 'dazy mazy' from a seller in the USA for a very reasonable price! Now it must be remembered that most people collecting butter making paraphernalia want to display it....I wanted to use it and this has fascinated everyone!
I then purchased 2 very large pots of organic double cream from a supermarket for under £2 for the two and set to work turning the handle.....
First it went thick like whipped cream followed by thin like single cream......and just when I thought it had gone wrong chunks of golden yellow butter magically appeared and very quickly the butter was a big blob completelt separated from the buttermilk!

The buttermilk was poured off and the butter scooped out and salted, shaped and refrigerated....the buttermilk was used for scones........yummy!...........AND there was still a pot and a half of cream left for the next attempt!

2008-05-15T09:51:00.003Z

Rain.....at last! I know its unpopular but after 10 days of continuous wonderful weather all the butts were running dry and I was getting a bit fed up with continually watering my seeds! I have a weed problem in one of the raised beds with creeping mint! Worse than bindweed it is and I have resorted to painting each bit that pops up with a paintbrush dipped in glyphosphate as pulling it disturbs my tiny carrot and parsnip plants and beheading it with the hoe makes it pop up 5 new ones for everyone I chop off!! I have horse tail(equisetum) in that bed too......now that is a different fight completely as it is a plant descended from the time of the dinosaurs and as you can imagine is nigh on impossible to get rid of! Both these 'weeds' have their place.....but not in my heavily mulched no dig raised bed, and certainly not in the middle of my seedlings thank you!
I have started to shear the Ouessants last evening while waiting for my regular shearer Jock to phone to tell me when he will come and see to the large sheep. Last year when presented with the Ouessants he laughed and commented on needing a magnifying glass but did a reasonable job considering they wriggle like eels! Well I have a nice set of shears I use for the odd dagging job(tidying up bottoms that are grubby) or sorting out and flystrike that occurs when it is vital that the area is sheared clean of maggots very quickly....uggh!
But I have never in all this time sheared a whole sheep......I have clipped plenty of horses in the past and just regard sheep as a rather larger woolly version when it comes to clippers.
Well I did a reasonable job on the chosen 2 that were first in the queue as they were starting to lose their wool......primitive sheep such as Ouessants 'rue' their wool which means that when it starts to get a bit warm the oils and lanolin in the wool 'rise' and the sheep gets a bit itchy and rubs and the wool breaks and falls out!..........not ideal if you want to use the wool!
The Ouessant has more wool on it per pound/kilo of sheep than any other in the world and so from under a large fleece a very small sheep emerged! The first who is a bit of a tearaway got a couple of small 'nicks' from the shears which were sprayed with some purple antiseptic and the second one got away with no nicks at all to her.....but nicked my finger top with the shears and she had blood everywhere on her.....MINE!

I am doing some work for Dorset Community Actions 'Three Rivers Partnership' at the moment called Friends and Neighbours and at the moment am meeting all the agencies involved (known as the stakeholders) before surveying the general public in the chosen case study areas. Whilst on my travels I went to Shaftesbury for a meeting and after getting a sandwhich ate it at the top of Gold Hill in the picture. I am very familiar with this area having spent most of my adult life in North Dorset and it was interesting and sad to discover how things change......you only notice when you go back to an area and I had not really been back very often for about 10 years except to visit friends....so I went to see what had happened to my good friends old farm........

They had a County Council farm on the Dorset County Council farms estate near Shaftesbury where they worked harder and harder over 25 years for an ever diminishing return! My friend (I will call her S) and her husband (R) had a dairy herd of 60, raised rare breed pigs, rented a little attached cottage as a holiday cottage, did B&B, AND S worked nights in an old folks home and R did fencing contracting. Yet everyone who met them but did not know how hard they worked commented on how lovely and relaxed it must be to live in such a beautiful place! When 3 years ago they could no longer make ends meet they were forced to give up the tenancy of the farm........the County Council decided that the farm was too small (60 acres) to be a viable unit for anyone else (?) so decided to sell the house with 12 acres as one lot, the lovely old barns as another with a few acres and give the rest to an adjoining Council farm (the only one left in that area now) Well S & R were given first refusal to buy........but having few assets except that from the sale of their cows could not dream of buying the home that they had lived in for 25 years......!! They received notice to quit with the offer of a council house on a local estate.....well they had been good council tenants for the past 25 years hadn't they? Their lovely house was sold........to the only ones who could afford it....downsizers from London. So S & R left the farm.....they have never been back although they rent a small cottage 5 miles away........its too raw for them to return even to see their old friends and neighbours.....they meet them elsewhere!
I drove slowly past remembering all the good times we had had there and drove on seeing that some of the other council farms had changed into art galleries, alpaca filled smallholdings etc, the farming community long gone. The fields I noticed were rather unkempt along with the general feel of the area and hardly a cow in sight.....sad as this is the Blackmore Vale described by Thomas Hardy as 'The vale of little dairies'........subtle changes are going on and this description will soon no longer apply as we import our milk from elsewhere whilst those who can afford to buy up the little family farms who had the little dairies.....I will say no more as it causes lumps in my throat and tears in my eyes.

2008-05-11T21:34:00.003Z

I have added to my solar powered world with a solar powered oscillating fan in my polytunnel! I got all the bits from.....ebay for a good price..... and connected them all up to one of my electric fence batteries. To my amazement it works and keeps the hot air circulating rather than becoming humid and its very good! I have also connected one to the ducks fencing along with a little gate made from a pallet to get in rather than climb over the electrified netting. Itworks so well and keeps the battery topped up so well the ducks, who are prone to diving through the netting and raiding the hens food have not been near it!
I also planted my tomatoes in the polytunnel a few weeks ago and mulched them with good old waste wool and installed a 'leaky pipe' a recycked rubber hose pipe with deliberate leaks that trickle feeds the bed with water. Its great and the aubergines are now planted too. peppers and chillies will follow when big enough as will the cucumbers any day. Pete obtained a tomato planter in a job lot of bits and bobs at an auction, it is now lined with wool, filled with compost and home to 2 totem variety basket cherry tomato plants

2008-05-06T21:12:00.004Z

Just before I found out I had got the funding for the felting project I went to Wonderwool in Builth Wells. I had my knee surgery 2 days before and was told not to drive for 2 weeks.....in fact the pale and pasty indoor type surgeon (who is very nice really!!) had said I wouldn't be doing much farming for a few months........what planet does he inhabit.....us self employed folks don't get sick pay and the sheep won't feed themselves!.........Anyway off I went with the most splendid person as my co conspirator....Lucie Wilby sheep artist extrodinaire!

I must explain..........when I booked my stand at Wonderwool I had a double stand including a pen for some sheep booked. I was due to exhibit the Ouessants but due to the Blue tongue movement regs could not. I had a brainwave (it occaisionally happens) that if not real sheep some pictures would be good....and the artist responsible sitting painting them too!
So Lucie and I set up our wares and retreated to an amazing b&b with the best hosts ever thouroughly shattered!
On the following morning we were back at the showground bright and early and sampled some of the foodie delights as the show was sharing with the Mid Wales Mouthful starring Anthony Worral Thompson........and yes he is very short and very plump!!!
After a very hectic busy day selling a lot more than we could have hoped for we had some dinner and followed a fellow sheep breeder (coloured sheep and Ouessants) back to her remote Welsh farm to look at some rams with a thought to buy.
Now I live in Wellies and am even seen in the supermarket in them.......but of course both Lucie and I had our glad rags and shoes.....we had not even contemplated buying sheep. So whilst Lesley sent her sheep dog over a distant mountain to find the rams we found ourselves in a boggy field being approached bu a herd of Dexter cattle intent on loving us and rubbing their heads all over us. Well I was still not to steady on my feet so rather than be knocked over by the amiable cattle we climbed a gate into the next field where we had 2 stark choices 1. go back through the cows who were convinced we were bearing gifts of food and were all looking longinly over the gate and were too tame and friendly to be shooed away or 2. ford a small stream that in our normal wellied state would be easy but was like crossing the Nile in new shoes!!
Lucie decided to do the stepping stone hop.....and promptlu slipped and got her feet soaked. I decided that as I could neither jump nor hop due to my knee a cold paddle was in order and removed socks and shoes and waded across much to the horror of the flock of sheep who were making up the spectators!
Eventually we both got to solid ground, the sheepdog found the rams and I agreed to purchase Josh a Wensleydale x Charolais x Icelandic coloured ram and I also put my name on a nice little Ouessant ram to be collected at weaning.
Sunday passed with hectic sales and Lucie and I returned home tired but happy with several purchases too! I bought some icelandic wool tops to knit and felt into bags, some dye stuffs and a skein of Colinette yarn that I took a fancy to trying out as I am having some of my wool made into slub yarn later this year. I made a cosy for my coffee pot and am making a tea cosy with the rest........as you can see I am a wool producer not a knitter!!
Thanks all for the very positive response to the felting project.........its going to be amazing and will hopefull raise the profile of wool!

2008-05-01T20:39:00.002Z

STOP PRESS NEWS!!!!

The funding for the felting plant has been successful so we will be up and running by the autumn!!
The eco business unit that the project will occupy is a recycled ww2 building on an old ww2 airfield at Dunkeswell in the Devon bit of the Blackdowns! It now has a new roof, good insulation to the roof and walls, a latest technology compost toilet and a wood pellet stove that will use local wood chips!...........it is fab and I saw it today!! This felting plant will hopefully be up and running by the autumn..........more news to follow soon!

2008-04-28T10:49:00.004Z

Have been working hard in the veg garden and here are some pics to show you what I have been up to! I manured several beds with very well rotted sheep and cow manure (rotted for 2-3 years until crumbly) I am now putting a weed cover over through which I will plant beans, courgettes etc!
The cabbages, kale and white sprouting broccoli are in a bed topped with home made compost and to keep the pigeons away......and the rabbits of which we have lots, I put several large flower pots over the bed and stretched netting over the top. A few old give away CDs on strings to sparkle and flap completed that bed....and they are growing nicely. Some blue water pipe I found has been used along with some netting to keep birds, cats, errant hens, and other marauders off my onions and seeds....parsnips, persil (a german parsnip type root) and carrots......very good results so far and a good use for the pipe! Plastic sheeting could be used instead to make a temporary tunnel.
I have also bought a huge trailerful of wood chips for £5 to cover the paths and areas around the beds. This has a triple function.....1 it stops slipping and sliding, as the veg plot is not flat. 2 It acts as a mulch/weed suppressant on the pathways, and 3 the slugs and snails hate it as it is sharp!! With that around the beds, the hens ranging around 2 sides and ducks on the other 2 sides hopefully I will have good slug control......we will see!
The Ouessants are grazing the new orchard where temporary tree guards have been built with free recycled wire and non treated posts that were 5p each. There are a lot of nettles in this area which are going to be strimmed regularly for the sheep to eat as they like cut nettles, and also to encourage grass growth. Have also planted potatoes and they are through. Now installing leaky pipe system in the polytunnel to combat water running downhill too quickly.....more to follow soon.
On Wednesday last week I went to the hospital for my knee surgery and was in and out in 5 hours! Well they found not a torn cartiledge but a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament so now I have no ACL in either knee! I will now be put on the list for the ACL physio clinic and knee ligament reconstruction at a later date......oh joy!

2008-04-17T12:11:00.004Z

Beautiful knitted christening shawl..........a real work of art was knitted in my Dorset Down 4 ply type knitting wool by Sarah D an amazing knitter and owner of the blog linked on this blog....the 21st Centuary housewifes unbought blog!

This is a commission knit..........so if anyone else wants an heirloom, get in touch!
This wool is being used by a lot of people now and I have it on cones for weaving and knitting machines too!

2008-04-14T22:10:00.002Z

We had snow last week......lots of it, enough to throw snowballs! It was all gone by lunchtime but I went out and took some photos to prove it. The recycled fencing is now all finished and had a couple of second hand gates added to it and very smart it all looks.....ok so the stock wire is not quite as tight as if it were from a new roll since it was pulled from its previous home with a tractor but with Petes skill as a fencing contractor among other skills its not bad!

Some friends came over to move some manure for me on Saturday and we now have 3 raised beds topped up with very well rotted(3 years) crumbly black gold! I will now put on some more mulch and the beans are going to love it! Got some tomato plants in the country market in Taunton 2 yellow, 2 plum and 4 cherry toms. Peppers and chillies are in pots and its all looking good.
Sunday I went to a meeting of some of the creative living forum to catch up with one or two and have a natter....I really don't get out enough! Knee being repaired next week......counting the days!......will have to take it easy as I don't want to spoil the repair, but am off to Wonderwool a few days later........I am going to sit down and rest (?) whilst I'm there!
I have just tendered for and got a big bit of community development work in Dorset so will be working hard over the next few months. I have a lovely student from Bournmouth Uni as my assistant!

2008-04-07T11:02:00.005Z

Red tape.............!
This morning I should have been talking on the Radio this morning, on the Beeb, about all sorts of stuff including the embryonic wool felting business I'm setting up called Woolly Waste......but I wasn't there at the studo due to a variety of factors, mostly my knee that decided to hurt like crazy whilst getting out of bed!.........dangerous activity getting out of bed with a torn cartiledge!
So having been promised an appointment 'within 2-3 weeks' I have waited 3 weeks and .......nothing! So at 8.30am right on the start of their opening time I phone hospital.....and the conversation went something along the lines of.....you are booked you say.....yes, please can you tell me a date yet......mmmmnnn ummmm well we have no record of you are you sure you saw the consultant and went to the pre op assessment?.....YES (through gritted teeth).....have you a reference number from your letter?.... No, because you havent sent me one yet!.....Oh! Ok I will see what we can do the earliest appointment seems to be August as I know we are chokablock until the end of May.........but I cannot wait until August I have a life to get on with and cannot even take the dogs for a walk or safely handle my sheep, infact I cannot even cross the road without risking my knee giving way (at this point I burst into tears) ........oh sorry, we have found you on the system and you are under non urgent surgery.................BUT IT IS URGENT I sob, feeling rising hysteria.........Right we will see what can be done and phone you back.

I was so devastated.....if I was rich or a footballer or the queen I would have had it repaired by now but not being able to do my job properly, having to have someone help me with my sheep, someone exercise my dogs, someone carry the washing downstairs, and friends and family helping with ordinary tasks such as heavy shopping bags is classed as non urgent! What is this country coming too!!

Phone went at 11am......hospital.....they could fit me in on the 23rd April.....2 weeks time!
Well why had it taken me getting hysterical on the phone for that to happen? Probably the same reason that by my persistant phonecalls had got me an appointment with the surgeon originally, out of hours at the private hospital and cost me £120. I have had to buy a very uncomfortable metal hinged knee brace too at £75 to be able to walk outside the house and do tasks.....if it were not for that brace I could not even walk down the field or feed the pigs let alone lay a hedge. If I try to do anything quickly or suddenly or carry anything I am in trouble.

So I will get knee repaired on 23rd 7 weeks after the initial accident. BUT the important issue here is if I had not the capacity and confidence to make a song and a dance, and not the money to pay.....I would still be waiting for the initial consultation let alone be on a list even for August....best health service in the world the NHS......thats what my father thought.....I don't agree!

Add to this a phone call I received last week at 7am............from Animal Health the dept that sends us ALL those forms and regulations. They wanted to know if my animal records were accurate! They had some queries......firstly why had I only recorded 2 sheep deaths. I answered because I only had 2 sheep die ......well what about lambs.......well yes we lost a few one to a fox (no body to be found), didn't mention the 2 to the dog as they were very tiny and we incinerated them. Well she was very 'official' and said we must report ALL lamb deaths even aborted ones.
Well.....I obviously have been at this too long....we can bury a dog but not a tiny aborted lamb foetus.....we must take it to the appropriate disposal facilities....brings to mind a story I was told this week by a dartmoor farmer who put 150 sheep out onto the moor but when he got them in for lambing only found 141. Animal health of course asked him to account for the missing sheep! Hid reply was 'well they is probably dead' the animal health officer wanted to know how he had disposed of the bodies to which he looked blankly at them and said you'd be best asking the crows and foxes that my dear........which right flummoxed them as there were now at least 9 once eartagged skeletons on the moor.....along with all the other hundreds of bodies of deer, ponies, sheep, cattle etc that have dies over the years and not been found!!! Scandalous!!! ;o)

2008-04-03T21:40:00.004Z

Lambs! We have 2 ouessant lambs a ewe lamb born last week and a nice ram lamb born yesterday. We also have some Dorset Down cross lambs and the new owners of my pedigree Dorsets that I sold last year sent me a lovely pic of 101s lambs....ewe on the left ram on the right!
I have also been busy.....making lemon curd....jars full of it to keep the egg mountain at bay! and I took a pic, along with bread and apple buns. We make all our own bread, shop bought is not the same and everyone loves home baked bread here. Also am posting a picture of the veg plot....so that I can hopefully see something growing when I take a snap later on!!!
Its been beautiful here the last few days, warm and sunny with little fluffy clouds. As a result I have mowed the grass, strimmed under the electric fence, painted the fences and me with one of those sprayer things that is supposed to be quicker than a brush....mmmm! Unpainted me and my jumper!! planted my onions and spuds and generally tidied up.....!
Wrenched my knee despite strapping and knee brace..........(wish they would hurry up with my appointment!).......climbing over the chickens electric fencing. Oh the joys!!

2008-03-25T21:04:00.005Z

Pete won a class at the Blackdown Hills Hedge Event.........and a large shield is now on the shelf for the year!! Here are the before and after pics.
I have finished the hedge shown in a previous post and it is shown here along with a picture of Pete making pea sticks and hedging stakes.
The material taken out of a hedge when it is laid is a lot, probably half of the stems in a thick hedge are coppiced out and as this hedge is hazel we made a lot of useful items such as bean poles for this years beans, pea sticks for both growing the peas on and protecting seedlings from the pigeons, a lot of stakes for temporary fencing and for staking a north somerset style hedge at the national championships which Pete will be entering in the autumn and lastly stems to put by for making walking sticks. A little of the waste was tidied up and burnt but in true permaculture style the harvest from this hedge was huge.....coppicing is an example in true low input high output!!

2008-03-22T14:32:00.003Z

I have recently explored my family tree via some interesting websites and got right back into the 17somethings with some of the names which are unusual! Most of my family come from Devon, Dorset and the Somerset/Gloucester border where they were variously agricultural labourers, sailors and horse dealers!. However my paternal grandfather was from Freston in Suffolk, just down the road from 'Constable country' and came to Devon when sent as a policeman to Devonport dockyard near Plymouth, why I don't know, but he met my grandmother whilst there! He was a great grower of veg and though blind in his later years would grow veg along lines of wires so he knew where the parsnips etc were located by touch....fascinated me as a child!My father was also a hobbyist woodworker who actually built 2 houses in his spare time and who grew veg!

His father, my greatgrandfather was the local postmaster and a smallholder who grew industrial quantities of veg.........he, my gt grandmother and their garden, including conservatory that apparently contained vines, are pictured above, he died at the age of 45 in 1908 of scepticaemia (probably from his farming activities!) leaving behind a large family. His father and fathers father were all woodsmen.........so what I get up to is probably in the genes!! My son George works for the National Trust at the moment and lays hedges and works in the countryside, so allowing for my father who was not that serious about 'growing your own' I reckon thats a line ofat least 7 generations of smalllholders, veg growers, woodcutters etc!!

2008-03-20T20:38:00.003Z

Well it was not the cruciate ligament but the cartiledge! Apparently after manipulating my leg and looking quizical, then asking me when I last injured my leg.....which to be honest I couldn't remember as being recent, the consultant informed me I have already ruptured the anterior cruciate in that leg and it was my cartiledge I had damaged this time! It would account for a lot, having ruptured the ACL in my right knee stupidly jumping some electric fencing 5 years ago I had completed the set not done the first one. Thinking about it I have had so many little accidents over the years such as falling off horses, whacking my knee on gate posts whilst riding horses, being kicked across the parlour by fractious cows etc that its not surprising to find out why my knees are so wobbly! The latest injury just added to the list! Am now on the fast track for key hole surgery to repair it, they say about 3 weeks wait! In the meantime I have become the proud posessor of a knee brace.......a damned uncomfortable device that has metal plates on eitherside of the knee with a hinge in the middle.....means I can hobble!
I have been getting cabin fever stuck indoors so today I made lemon curd and a large loaf of bread, and plotted my escape to the top of the field! Pete had taken all my hedgelaying gear to the hazel hedge that needed urgent attention as it was beginning to tangle in nextdoor smallholdings telephone lines and with the aid of 2 electric fence posts as walking sticks I made it down there. Spent an enjoyable afternoon laying the hedge, completing two thirds of the length, will finish the rest tomorrow if the weather permits. I was getting desperate to do this as the end of the hedgelaying season is nigh!
Took a photo with my phone to illustrate what I was doing....not good quality but I didn't have the energy to get up to the house to get the camera. Still got to tidy it up and put in a few pegs made of hazel to neaten it up and hold it in place.
Talking of hedges I posted several pics last year of the Blackdown Hills Hedgelaying competition which Pete competed in. Well this year he took part again....and won!! He now has a nice shield to polish for a year!........and I was not there to take a picture of the moment of triumph!