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

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?

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!

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!

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!

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

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!

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!

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

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!

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

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...................