Goats at Shows (to the tune of Girls on Film ….)

(cross posted on the farm blog)

We’re building up to showing our goats – very low key stuff, probably only the youngstock classes, not the milking ones which are hot competition!


We hope to keep you posted, and if you would like to come along and learn more, or join us on our adventures via the website – please feel free to ask questions and explore this strange new world with us.

We are not scary. Remember, our first two goats were given to us by a very big bloke who was not above decking anyone who mentioned meat value.

On Saturday, at Dorset County, I approached a showing lady in the hope of finding a good stud goat for my remaining six breeding does.

Unfortunately, I must have worn the wrong tee shirt, or something. Either way there was a bad smell under her nose, and she saw fit to dismiss me with a telling off. Her loss, and also, her boy’s loss, because my girl goats are the best!

This has taught me a valuable lesson. Please – if you don’t know a thing, if you’re not sure where to start, if you think you might make a fool of yourself? You know what? Join the club! Oh wait. I can’t say that, I’m obviously not IN the club! Join the fringe. Come and ask. Get stuck in. I don’t know all the answers, and chestnuts is not about standing aloof. Shout out. We can run a goats for beginners day. We can all ask stupid questions together. Let’s do it.



Additional material for my faithful Hedgerow Posse: while posting this, I have discovered a spider the size of a small hamster on my stairs. In line with Holmgren's 10th Principle of Permaculture, 'Use and Value Diversity ' I am leaving him/her there and sloping quietly off to bed. Never say I do not suffer for my beliefs :)

It's a new day

In my heart, there is a place, and I am trying to create it, out here on the ground God has lent us.
This place is a place which feeds and nurtures us, and helps us to live a life where we can do the things we need to do, learning, teaching, riding horses, growing food, sharing expertise, learning crafts, sharing crafts. It's a place which enables us to give our children the chances they need - we are both the offspring of unqualified working class parents, and we both took our chances and ended up pretty much unqualified ourselves. Our children have to have the chance to follow their dreams, and to have options. It's ok to choose an alternative course, if it is indeed, an alternative. In other words, you did actually have the option to succeed in conventional terms.
Despite all that's going on, I still want to reach out and stretch that place, so we're rejoing WWOOF as hosts, and hope to welcome lots of WWOOFers to share our journey, which will test me, as I try to prepare some communal meals, and open up to the idea of community, at least on a small scale.
I've got to make and sell more, and I so want to go back to the idea of running courses and workshops - soap making, chicken keeping that sort of thing. Anyone interested?
And, all being well, and provided I'm keeping up with my OU course - I am seriously honestly going to go on the most brilliant permaculture course in the universe, in February. I can hardly contain my excitement. So after that, I can share some permaculture ideas.
It's going to be Ok. It's going to be good. It's going to be the dawn of a new day.
And Paula, look out, you're the guinea pig!!!

Visit the farm

I also have a farm blog at www.chestnutsfarm.com.

It's pretty much under construction, and it's different in that it's aimed at people who interact with us locally, not just online, but I'd love you to drop by and say hello - and if you feel like it, post a link to your own blog - we could do with the traffic!

Girls are deep into preparation for a show on Monday (bank holiday) and I am tangling with two business plans - mine to reinvent my box scheme as a market garden, and Neil's to run a farm contracting business with a difference. I am also hoping to revive my dreams of workshops and courses.

Anyone interested in soapmaking or Christmas crafts?!

I am still here.

Unbelievably. I am still here.

Back from two weeks of pony club camp, both girls did fantastically - Lynn, in answer to your question, both are now off to school in September, we are excited about this phase in our life, as I research a return to Country Markets, and an expansion of my Usborne Business, as well as ever more frugal and creative homesteading.

Today we made an early start and the girls rode lot number one before breakfast. The two who have just been to camp are rather fit and buzzy and if not worked, get above themselves, so they rode for an hour or so in the paddock and jumped both of them.

Meanwhile, I made bread, and got to work on some soap, for my soap course - OK ladies, I still have not sent out invoices, I have had one cancellation and now have a couple of places left, am going to get to promoting those locally soon - can't wait for the course, it's going to be sooooo cool!

*If you are interested, Soap and Sisterhood takes place on 26th September, and is my inaugural homeskilling course, so it's a bargain price of £20 for the day, including a light lunch - can't wait, can't wait, can't wait .....

I made a lovely melt and pour tea tree soap today, it smells divine - need to get that up for sale soon too, first I'd like to make some reclaimed/vintage fabric bags to complement the soap ....

Then had a friend coming to pick up five dozen eggs and also had to get stuck into making cucumber relish, eight pounds of, for our own use and for selling on Country Markets.

Lunch, then out in the garden to prepare a bed in the polytunnel for winter salad, oh the garden is getting away from me, the blight is setting into the potatoes, despite my having sprayed with Bordeaux Mixture, and everywhere is a total jungle! My Dig for Victory Garden has become a Collaborator! Rats! There's always next year. Again!

Dot into town to buy lamb nuts, and dog food, and pin up the girls' ad for bantams for sale. £7.50 per hen, cockerel free with two hens. Can't say fairer than that - anyone want some bantams?!

It's just the best life! By the time I was making supper, the girls were riding the second lot (my old cob and the outgrown shetland!) and dusk was falling, for high summer is over, and the days are drawing in ...

We are so blessed.

Big stuff happens

It is hot, here in England, uncharacteristically hot. We've had a year of proper seasons, for which I am so thankful. It snowed in winter. The sun shone, the wind blew, and the showers played hide and seek in spring, and now summer is blazing, hot, and dry. Thank you Lord, for a proper year!
Finally, after long prayer, and strange days indeed, we have Boo ready to register at a small christian school in September. H has to wait for a place - she's praying and hoping one might come up in September, but if not, it shouldn't be too long.
Tomorrow, and Friday, Boo will be off for her induction days - long summer days, for the first time in her nearly ten year old life, spent in a classroom. She is sooo excited! They are ready to fly, my fledglings, and for all the world, I would not hold them back.
If it doesn't work, if they don't fit, if H turns inward again, they will be back home in a heart beat. But for now, we are content, it is what the Lord would have us do, we have peace, despite the strained finances, and the strangeness of thinking about uniforms and name tapes ... it's OK.
In farm news, two broods of chicks continue to grow and thrive, our very, very late lambs (Neil has to do everyone else's lambing before ours can pop!) are doing wonderfully well. The goats are blooming and due to kid this month some time.
The days are long, hot and humid, and since my kitchen still lacks a hob (promised Saturday) I still cannot cook properly, or do any preserving!
I hope soon to update on our Dig for Victory campaign (with mixed results at the moment) and also on Make Do and Mend - times are very tight, so I hope real inspiration will be at hand!
Finally, supplies have arrived for our soap making course in September, and I am very, very excited to get down to some preparatory work! It's going to be good!

Soap and Sisterhood!

I'm excited to be setting out on our new journey - one element of which is running simple, friendly workshops to enable women to be at the heart of the home in a truly sufficient way.
When you know how to do simple things, both to survive but also to embellish and enrich your family's experience of these trying times, they somehow don't seem so scary.
My vision is to share the tools, to encourage us all to be working, worshipfully in creation.

My very first ever workshop is to be on September 26th - and it will be a soap making session - plenty to learn and do, something to take home, and plenty of time for fellowship and chatter, over lunch.

Babes in arms and tots will be welcome, provided they are tractable enough to be looked after by a couple of 12/13 year olds in the next room, but soap making is not generally a safe thing for older, more inquisitive children to be around.

If it's a long way for you, we may be able to arrange caravan accommodation for a couple of you, if you 're willing to share.

I have to start somewhere, so the cost of the day will be just £20, and there will be very limited places, maybe around 5.

Please come and join us for this very special first event! email or leave a message to book a place.

Drum Roll, Please ....

Our new business plans are finally being unveiled!

We've spent a few long weeks, following our inspiring reading of 'Home Work' from TOS thinking and praying about how we can help support this little homestead in complimentary ways.

So ... firstly, I enrolled on an evening course, Diploma in Homebased Childcare, and I hope to register as a most irregular childminder! One who supports home education, and does not pick up from schools! Mainly, I hope to use this registration to run activity days and courses for small people, taking advantage of our lovely setting, animals, and free mud!

Secondly, we're going to be running small, friendly courses and workshops, for grown-ups, on lots of homesteady topics - the first, home soap making, we hope to do in September, so if you're interested, please drop me a line - it's a very cosy affair, so places will be very limited!

And tying in with those themes, I have returned to a previous role, that of organiser for Usborne Books at Home so if you'd like more information about holding an event, you'd like to order some books, or you'd like to consider being an organiser yourself - and joining a winning, home-ed team! - click on the link or drop me an email.

Exciting times for us, as we try to share and promote the simple life, and home based family businesses.