Living up a hill in the North Pennines at 1000ft above sea level, I had assumed that water wouldn’t be too much of a problem for us. Why should we worry about that when we are all taught in school that gravity means water will naturally flow downhill. We are another 200ft above the main …
Having reached the 5th anniversary of our move from suburbia to a North Pennines smallholding, it’s clearly a good time to review the current situation and take stock of our progress so far. Not least of which is where did all those years go! The first task for me was to look back at my …
Continue reading ‘Looking back over our first 5 years as smallholders’ »
Surprisingly, today marks the 4th anniversary of the move to our smallholding in the North Pennines. This is hard to believe partly because it’s just 4 years since we left the suburban semi-detached house but also because it feels longer than 4 years given that so much has happened in that time. From having 3 chickens in our …
It’s that time of year again when the friendly neighbouring farmer comes along to cut the hay meadows. Unlike last year when everything happened while I was out for the day, this year he arrived while I was pottering around the place so I was able to take some pictures. In our area it seems …
After a month or more of grazing the limited grass in a nearby paddock, today seemed a good time to move our guests to a new spot. We’re only looking after the neighbours tups while he is busy with lambing but it’s been interesting to see them at such close quarters. Somewhere with an untouched …
Some last-minute preparations and planning for the pigs journey – it’ll be their only time out of Northumberland! We’re very glad that we decided to try having pigs but also glad that they are on their way in good time before any really bad weather sets in. It was a frosty morning on Friday with …
Sometimes it’s nice to take it slow at the weekend and enjoy the slower pace of our new life with the wonderful scenery around us. Since we moved to the new house I’ve always been very conscious that I should be grateful for the combination of persistence, good timing and dumb luck which got us …
According to the BBC Weather page for our area this morning, it looks like we may be getting the first sub-zero temperatures at night this coming weekend! We’ve particularly enjoyed watching the onset of autumn with the associated array of colours but we can’t ignore this sign that winter is coming. Even after 5 months, …
Slowly I find that we are settling into something resembling a routine and each day that passes sees us getting more used to the realities of our new life. Even the few animals that we already have here are adjusting well to the new regime although we’re still not too sure where some of the …
It barely seems possible that we only moved in just 4 weeks ago given that there has not been a dull moment in that whole time. We have no problem in coming up with plans for things to be done but there is a definite lack of spare time to get on with things at …