A Word from Westyard

Selecting the photos for this entry, it appears they are all about animals...excepting one Yuletide celebration - a Christmas cake made with love by Grannie, and iced and decorated entirely - and very carefully - by a small girl.  Delicious - and the joy for us is that we are still enjoying it. The festive season has been a bit of a blur for me...for a start the Ologist was away - he returns tomoro, YAY - so there was very little happening on the social front.  That is apart from one event we were invited to just before Christmas. The Elderly Dependant decided he would 'chaperone' me and having kick started himself with three large glasses of red wine before leaving the house rather stumbled around gaily meeting locals and had to be shoe-horned into the car to go home well before the cinderella hour.  Due to his aged years he totally got away with it.  All I can say is I hope I can still manage that when I'm 85. Talking of the small girl, she has a new playmate...

It has been a great start to the month.  A few gloriously wintery sunny days and the soup pot became redundant. Instead we opted for a tasty salad with some very local ingredients and the lowest food miles I can achieve.  One of our hens is laying enormous eggs, and after last weeks lunch we found out why.  Two words:- Ouch , and Thank You .  It must be good luck to have a double yolker like that! Lower East:- before After the excitement of the hedgeman last week, it was almost matched a few days later by the arrival of another enormous beast of a tractor with a mulching topper attached.   When we bought the property one of our most productive fields was in a dreadful state.  The brambles and nettles were nearly over my head and it was almost impenetrable on foot.  The field lies to the east of the property and is divided across the centre.  The top half (Upper East) is fine and that is where our ponies currently graz...

horseradish - sinus clearing stuff felling of a large coniferous tree  a rainbow fairy great way to check the sheep another large conifer gets the chop me and my girl - and Mandarin

It has been a notable end to the month at Westyard Farm.  In fact, right in the last week I think I experienced my most exciting day, ever.  Actually, it was both satisfying and highly disappointing at the same time.  I was out walking the fields and checking the sheep.  Yes, SHEEP - but I'll come back to that detail later.  I heard in the not too distant distance, a sound I've been waiting for - and banging on about - for as long as I think we've lived here.  Then I saw a flashing whirling warning light and knew instantly.  THE HEDGEMAN COMETH..... I greeted the beast of a tractor at the top of the drive with a deep bow, and my hedgetrimmer man told me that he'd not forgotten about me, he'd just had some problems.  He said there was another tractor behind him by a few minutes and that they'd get it all done in a day.  I ran back into the farmhouse kitchen jumping up and down on the spot shouting:- 'the hedgeman's here...the hedge...

Duck Island

A muddy walk We recently had a weekend of failures. Very satisfying failures.  Air punchingly deserved.  And boy, did we learn a lot from our failures.  We put our farmhouse to the test with 11 of us here.  Six adults, five children and an extra dog.  We wined, dined and had great fun.  The kids squelched in the mud. The boot room was utter muddy chaos - as it should have been!  These are friends we've known for ever seemingly.  Well before small people arrived on our horizons.  It was lovely.  The kids all interacted well.  The big boys got stuck in and had fun.  We had a tree surgeon here on the Saturday morning who got our tractor stuck in the mud - even his trusty vehicle wouldn't pull it out so off went the Ologist round to our neighbour, cap in hand, and promptly an enormous blue shiny tractor arrived that made our tractor look like a Tonka toy!  It did the job and both tractors chewed up our lawn ...

New farmhouse sign: a team effort! There is no doubt we are taking ownership of our farm.  With a bit of a team effort we have cleared the ground at the top of our drive, removed the tatty old sign and transferred it to our ICU unit....aka the Man Cave, where it will undergo intensive treatment for a week or so.  The new sign, a temporary measure, was great fun to make and we all think is far better than the old one.  It may well become a permanent feature.  Recycling at its best...an old roof tile and some white paint from the craft box.  The builders have started.  Our first project was the removal of a conservatory on the front of the farmhouse. From our first viewing of the property we always felt it didn't fit; a south facing conservatory - hot box in summer, ice box in winter...anyhow, its a farmhouse, not a 'country house' that may warrant a front conservatory in which to have tea and cake.  Justifications aside it has now gone.  ...

I realised, this week, just how much my life has changed when, on a popular social media site recently, a friend posted a photo of a view - a blissful country scene of a walk she had taken that morning.  All fields and autumnal scenes across rolling fields.  When I studied the photo all I could see, green with envy, were the neatly cut hedges and freshly mown pastures. We still await the arrival of the hedging contractor...yes, yes - I've been reliably informed he 'takes his time'. I realise how much my husbands life has changed when recently, he relayed to me a conversation he'd had with a work colleague.  It was along the lines of how much the colleague had spent that day on some (hideously expensive) online speaker cables...he'd seen them six months ago on a website and they were twice the price, so he bid, and subsequently won - and was brimming with his half price deal. We winced, together, in a knowing sort of way. My husband then asked the colleague if ...

Its been a great week at Westyard Farm. A week of meeting new neighbours; a week of establishing agricultural contacts for much needed jobs doing on the land; a full week at school for the small girl who has struggled to settle....rounded off with a promised milkshake at our local cafe. Needless to say it was given a double thumbs up and resulted in smiles all round. Morning time: letting out the hens Even the new hens are showing they are feeling at home now by laying us lovely eggs. The small girl has a little basket for her after school job, (the bottom off an egg box laid in the base of the basket, to place carefully picked eggs in...) We've had a few accidents, running to the back door in an excited frenzy when the inevitable happens. Splat – which of course the dog gets to enjoy so they never go to waste. My husband was 'sniped' this week. A new term to us. He was watching an all important tractor attachment on a well known online auction site. After...

My absolutely favourite kitchen gadget, this month, is my Spong's bean slicer - No.633.  It is such an antiquated machine, but never has a bean been better sliced.  It has been tucked away safely for years awaiting this exact moment in time to reappear and be useful, given to me by a dear friend who I hope will soon do the same, reappear and visit our new pad so we can catch up on years and years of life that has swept us by. My absolutely favourite time of year, autumn.  Crispy golden leaves thrown down to the ground by the autumn fairy.  The last of the apples plucked high off the trees and crammed into crumbles rubbing shoulders with ginger chunks topped with lashings of plain yoghurt. My absolutely favourite favourite thing to do, today, was spend some quality time in my new office.  It is a breeze block building, of sizeable proportions, with two doors, a sloping plastic roof and a wall of windows.  It has raised bays of note.  It is m...

We are actually here.  I can hardly believe it.  All our planning.  All the searching.  All the waiting.  It has totally paid off, and here we are at Westyard Farm.  It feels so good to say the name.  It feels so right to hear it.  I keep walking through the farmhouse and the yard shouting the name at the top of my voice....telling it WE ARE HERE! Our first weekend has culminated in some really good projects and ideas.  Gutters and drains unblocked.  Gateways opened and cut back.  We have inherited two bantams, apparently who refused to be collected up when the previous owners left.  Like the rest of the farm, the chicken run is totally overgrown and what was once a great idea is now prey to the ever increasing jungle of wilderness - mother nature gone feral.  Our first job entailed cutting down a chestnut tree that had claimed centrepiece of the run and was rather rudely crowding the joint.  It's branches were low ...

Needless to say, we have exchanged, and the completion date is set a few weeks after.  The stress is off, but the pressure is on for all that comes with wrapping up one life and starting afresh in a new one. We spent a week away with friends in a mountain resort in the French Alps, courtesy of my wonderful brother who lent us his chalet for the week.  If one more person sings the immortal lines: "The hills are alive....." I might just deck them!  While we were away a bunch of errant Long horned Highland cattle made their way into our garden, and up the long path to the back door of our cottage.  Our neighbours managed to herd them back into the field and block their escape route.  The 'farmer' had noticed some strange excrement in the garden and commented upon it, to which I replied it might be a badger.....a rather large one, was the reply.  While we harvest broad beans, potatoes, courgettes, runner beans, spinach and other roots I can't help...

Is it on?   Is it off?   Will we get it?  Will it all fall flat?  This is the roller coaster ride the farmer and I are on currently.  Almost a month has gone by, and although a lot of the important things have been done like the building survey and solicitor's searches with the local district council, our project inches forward in a manner which would infuriate even the speediest of snails.   It is perhaps an indicator of life as it will become, living in rural Devon amongst the farming community, I have been told on more than one occasion.  I refuse to believe that with today's advances in technology.  We are do'ers, the farmer and I, and I firmly believe we will get this farm and the surrounding land. At present, fortunately for me, I have more pressing events to keep my busy mind active.  Like strawberry cupcakes for the end of term Pre-school picnic.  Else I fear I may need another visit to my wonderful hairdresser to cover my grey ...

Timing is always king.  Whenever is it the right time to do what you want to do?  Fate does have a way of dealing hands, however I am a believer and living proof of making your own destiny.  Of getting what you want.  Of doing what is fundamentally right for you.  Of listening to the inner voice AND acting.  Knowing is one thing, but doing it takes strength and bravery. It's all a bit heavy for what is the start of a very lightweight, down to earth blog documenting the start of the next chapter of my life.  It should be a simple life.  A Good Life.  Quite a hardworking life by all accounts, with much learning along the way and I'm sure many new skills to acquire. You see, I am to become a farmer's wife.  No I am not re-marrying.  My husband is to become a farmer.  We are to become farmers.  I will be a farmer.  We are buying a farm, albeit a pretty inactive farm with no animals or tended crops currently.  We ...