She is the heart of the operation as she rears a calf for us each year and it fills our freezer.
She helps feed our hens and pigs and of course ourselves. She fills the manure heap and we put that fertility out on the land and veg garden in autumn. We have milk allergies and found that we can drink raw cow milk without a reaction.
We raise a few pigs each year for the freezer and currently have our first breeding sow, Sally sow. She will be an experiment into the unknown. The quality of meat produced is fanastic and we have attempted to try our hand at salami, sausages and ham.
We keep a few hives of bees, the number of which keeps changing. We take honey from them in August. We started with national hives but we are now going to experiment with perone and topbar hives using more natural bee keeping methods where possible but always trying to learn more from these fascinating insects.
We have a veg garden and had a polytunnel till the storm took it and we have planted a young orchard.
I have an interested in horses, especially show jumping. I currently have two young horses, one of which I am breaking at the moment. The children have one pony, Max, that they are learning to ride on. This is a hobby that I share with my sister and hopefully in time with my children, if they hold the interest.
We brew our own beer and country wines, make our own cheese,butter, ice-cream and yogurt.
We chose this lifestyle to encourage a good family life for our children, to teach them life skills, make good memories and most importantly produce food that is healthful to our bodies.
This journey has been long and we have made many mistakes along the way but we have never regretted it!
I hope you enjoy our blog.
My husband is so jealous looking at your photos and reading your blog, it's been a dream of his for years to set up something similar. Please God in the next year or two it will be a reality for us. In the meantime we shall enjoy reading about your journey. Looks great, well done
ReplyDeleteThanks Edel, very kind words.
ReplyDeleteI started the blog to meet like minded people and to inspire others to give it ago, where ever they currently are in life. Maybe he might try some home brewing ;-) in advance of the move
Thank you for sharing your journey in this way. I hope you don't mind if I read your blog occasionally, just to see your progress - though I'm not always very good about leaving comments. We're in our sixties now and not in good health, so very much urban. I'm going to try the courgette soup though, even if I haven't grown them myself! Good luck with your endevours, Barbara
ReplyDeleteThanks Barbara
ReplyDeleteI've just found your blog whilst wandering around "blogland" (waiting for my husband to get ready).
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading through all of your previous posts. You live in a lovely part of the world. I guess that you must be fairly near Cong. We have spent several holidays there.
Good to meet you.
Stella
Stella,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. We do live very near Cong, a great place for its natural beauty and outdoor sports.I hope you enjoy the blog :-)
lovely blog and with recipes, i am going to try the sourdough ! good luck with everything you do in the future.
ReplyDeleteThank you Gentian.
ReplyDeleteIf you feed your sourdough starter regularly by dumping most of the starter out and feeding it up well again, it produces a more active starter that creates a better rise bread with no sour flavour. It took me ages to figure this out. I dont enjoy the strong sourdough flavour.