Thursday, 26 August 2010


Well, this is my first time as a blogger! All a bit new to me, but lets see how it goes!!
I suppose I should start with a little background. About 9 months ago my partner Nige and I moved down from Bournemouth to the North Cornwall coast where we have purchased a small-holding together with 4 luxury self-catering holilday cottages. We are located just 6 miles north of the popular surfing town of Bude and very close to the popular beachs of Widemouth Bay and Sandymouth. Our property is set in a sunning location and we have 37 acres of beautiful countryside to wander around in. When we arrived the cottages were pretty much up together but the surrounding areas of garden and fields were very over grown. We didn't even realise we had a pond until about 2 months ago! We have spent a lot of time outside, cutting back hedges, uncovering pathways and digging. When we moved down here we wanted to become as self sufficient as we could so that involved us producing our own vegetables. There was an area for a possible vegetable patch but it was just a large area of grass. So we planned and built a vegetable garden with raised beds, a polytunnel and chicken coop and 4 months down the line we are now picking our own radishes, mange tout and rhubarb to name just a few!
As part of the self sufficiency life-style and also to keep us company on our 37 acres! we are slowly building up a small menargie of animals. So far we have 4 Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs, (5 months old and very cute!) 8 Call Ducks - great fun to watch them waddling into the shed at feeding time, 3 Shetland ponies - all with a character of their own(see pic) and 10 ewes with 4 lambs. We did have 10 lambs in total but the first 6 have reached the right size to go to slaughter and they are now sitting in our freezer. We have sampled some of them lamb already and although I say so myself it tastes amazing! We are hopefully going to be buying our first batch of chickens next week - watch this space! We are having a good first year business wise and we are fully booked in the cottages for the summer holidays. We always have late availability deals on our holiday cottages so have a look at our website; http://www.woodlandsmanorfarm.co.uk/

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