A Word from Westyard

It's been a month of cake making, ground clearance and very positive forward movement with our 'Grand Plan' plans.   The pig ark has been salvaged from its woodland tomb and rebuilt with love to provide our three new pigs with a fine home.  They are 4-way hybrids; Dorset Blue and Landrace.  Basically, pink pigs that oink and squeak and are doing their best to make a mess.  They were very shy when they arrived, but now know that the 'man with the bucket' - aka the Ologist, is well worth giving attention to and they save their very best squeak for him.  I told the small girl that we won't name them as we're going to eat them...she seemed to think that was ok.  While I'm not a great cake maker, I enjoy the process and unfortunately greatly enjoy the eating up part too.  I made very successful Simnel cakes for Mother's Day and an Easter cake for the 20 or so children that attended our annual Easter Egg hunt - a Lamb cake!  It was r...

Our Christmas Eve treat The most important and exciting event over the last couple of months is that we have been 'En Vacance'.  Yes, on holiday.  Away.  For a whole week!  To another island.  But this one was in the sun.  With a beach.  And a pool.  And no daily grind or domestic routines.  What bliss.  We all needed to get away and re-boot. And come home with white bits.  The 'Ologist and I went on a holiday we never ever would have imagined we'd go on ten years ago, however, given the age of our child and only a week of grace from school for half term, we took the plunge and booked it up.  It was an all inclusive, no brain required resort hotel in the sun complete with a choice of pools, all day bars, all you can eat sumptuous buffet meals and not to forget the most important bit....the Mini Disco EVERY night.  Boy, we lived it up.  I can only thank the resort for having a bottomless supply of all i...

Mid winter early morning sunrise Tiz the season and all that!  We're having a busy time on the farm - I think I open this blog with that line every time, I must come up with something more original for next year .   We have dispatched our first lamb, and it was the turkeys turn at the weekend, ready for the festive table. Everyone is talking about how mild it is.  The 'Ologist returned from a walk round the fields only yesterday saying he'd spotted a primrose in full bloom.  It is only a few weeks since the lovely rose outside the front of the farmhouse lost all its leaves.  We can see the daffodils already pushing up and still no sign of coolers times.  The small girl is very keen for snow - having been born overseas in warmer climes she has only ever seen it in photographs - she has never been able to lie in the snow and make snow angels.  Who knows what nature will make of this warm winter - I guess as the new year roll...

As the Autumn rushes in and out, leaves all a-swirl, it reminds me what a wonderfully cleansing time this is.  It is time to shed and let go.  As I watch the ponies' coats thicken up in preparation for winter days out on the land, it makes me reassess and think about my own position in the field.  Having recently celebrated a year of living here, it's a good time to reflect on our achievements and our failures. Bottoming out our Northern boundary We've had an excellent start to the Autumn, with Phase Two of fencing now complete.  We are now over 50% fenced which means we can work the land in a much more organised and structured manner.  Early autumn was all about intensive hedging.  Not only siding up, but major bottoming out.  Are you with me?  Basically we thinned out the sides of the hedges and lifted the horizontal growing branches to make room for the fences to go in.  The bottoming out was intense.  Our North facing boundary...

Its been months since I had the brain capacity, let alone the time, to sit down and download my photographs and thoughts into a logical digital order. Mainly, the summer holidays stole all our time.  Long, lovely days filled with friends, family, sunshine and plenty of outdoor activities.  We have even been exploring the county somewhat and testing out the beaches. For the first three weeks of the summer holidays we had back to back guests.  Mostly they came with small children (some 3 at a time!) and what a blast we had.  It was a challenge at times to keep on top of the catering, but everyone mucked in and cooked, picked, dug or harvested vegetables for us all to eat.  Even little Charlie Cook (nearly 2) helped to dig up the potatoes and had much fun washing them - I think he got muckier than when we started but who cared....it was all part and parcel of being on the farm. We visited quite a few of the beaches along the north Devon co...

Its taken a rainy afternoon and an angle grinder to get me out of the house and garden and sit down to write this blog.  Although I love to write, I'm time poor and job rich currently which leaves me with little else outside of the daily grind.  Although I must say village life is getting better and better.  We went to our first barn dance recently.  It was fancy dress - a Baywatch/beach theme.  They had even built a pool with some cleverly stacked bales and ground sheeting.  They had a Samba band to kick the evening off and get the vibes going with lots of foot tapping and bum wiggling.  This was followed by a smaller band doing brilliant covers and then a DJ.  There was a hog roast, barrels of cider and lots of fun was had by all.  Most party goers had made at least a little effort to dress up in theme.  I was a mermaid with a full tail of shimmery nylon netting and long red Ariel wig; there were lots of life guards, two sharks, a je...