I
have lots to chat about this evening but I'm pretty sure I won't fit it all in
with how tired I am today.
Todays' rabbiting on is mainly focusing on farms. If
you don't like farm stuff, then you may as well press the back button now because
I will probably bore you to death reminiscing? You know what i'm like, yawn
yawn :).
I'm currently sat on my bed typing
whilst semi watching Jimmy Doherty (from the Jimmys Farm Series). In this new
series of his, Jimmy takes on big superstores like Tesco , this new
series is called 'Jimmy and the Giant Supermarkets', you can watch it on
Catch up TV if you have that option available. The purpose of this series is to
prove to the big fish, that Jimmy can provide free range sausages and produce,
at affordable prices. Currently a great percentage of customers opt out of the healthier free
range products, due to extortionate supermarket prices.For detailed figures, you can look up the marketing audit for products on google.
FOR JIMMYS FARM CLICK HERE
Anyway of the farming note; I supported our nations 'Open Farm Sunday' recently by going along
to one of our own local farms that participated in the event. Open farm Sunday was for people of the nation to explore and discover where our foods and produce come from and what is involved in how they are made. The farm my husband and I visited, was called
'Holly Farm'. Holly Farm is situated in Garstang, Lancashire and is a lovely very clean professional Dairy Farm. I was thinking about all our farms last Sunday and how suitable the weather was lately for this large farming event to take place, especially as it was on a mass scale. With our weather being what it is, I did think it was a lucky weekend for it to commence on.
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| Me posing on the way to the
farm, June 2013 |
Of
course, me, being the big kid I am, was desperate to get on the farm and join
in.
I love farms passionately.It's all the land, outbuildings, cobbles, animals, muck, machinery (not meat boohoo). Holly Farm is a super duper farm,it is very family and child friendly.It is so carefully, maticulousy set out to suit the
public, with super safeguarding for their visitors and the safeguarding of
their animals. I have never been to a farm so scrupulously clean. It was
spotless. The farm wanted to promote you - as a visitor to keep spotless too,doing so by providing you with lots of hand washing points for after you had petted the baby animals of the farm. They had great little signs
everywhere which were a wonderful touch in educating you , giving you more of an
interest in your environment.
For example, I, as a person nearing 41yrs
old (oh god, am I really?! ha), I never knew hens laid their egg, then the shell
hardened after it. WOW! Knowing this new fact, you don't feel as bad knowing the
large egg one of your own hens may have laid over its laying years, didn't need tears in
their eyes for laying it after all. I must admit, I did use to say to some of my girls "oh you
poor girl having to lay that whopper". I didn't know this little egg laying fact
until I visited Holly Farm. See, open farm Sunday did exactly what they
intended the event to achieve...educate educate educate, never too old
eh.
The farm had a super large cafe, a super little farm shop which also
sold farm made jams, chutney, pickle biscuits etc, it also had a super seating
area for families outside in a little courtyard setting, a petting farm and
small trail around their farm. It also had a kids play barn so it is open to the
public many days. It had a mini toy John Deer kids plastic ride on tractors
area, they have thought of everything, how cute!I was overwhelemed, I wasn't expecting
that at all. I have many pictures to add but below are a few selected images for
now. I will add the rest to my photobucket acount when I can prise my eyes open
a bit longer.
I highly recommend Holly Farm to visit, especially if you
have young children. Please visit their website, its a user friendly websit
being easy to navigate, please see the link below;
VISIT HOLLY FARM CLICK THIS LINK
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| Holly Farm, this little mite,
kept licking me to death, it felt like a cat licking you
awww |
As a young girl, I went around all the
farms asking if they needed any help. I had the time of my life being able to be
amongst the animals, the smells, the countryside. I went into the local turkey
farm asking if they wanted help,(I was very naive at the time and didn't really realise it was a farm where all the birds would be edible), this farm was one of the most memorable because
the farmers let me into the turkey shed to see them all and I could not believe
how many turkeys I was stood amongst, it felt, looked and sounded like
thousands, you couldn't see any of the ground at all. I also, as a 10 year old
girl, could not believe the noise in there.I couldn't believe how tall the
turkeys were. I loved that experience. They let me see all the turkeys but I
couldn't help on the farm because I was too young.
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| Holly Farm, sleepy
heads |
This didn't stop me, oh no. I went on to
visit lots more farms. I remember going to a lovely farm in Carleton Lancs as
that naive young girl. As usual, the farmer allowed me to look at all the
animals, his farm had pigs.... and oh my god, I could not believe the size of a
real life pig sow! She had about ten piglets suckling on her. She was in an old
fashioned stone fronted building, a bit like old stables,there were bars around around her and her piglets, the building was white
painted with that wet style bobbling cement on the walls, the ground inside her
house was cobbled as was the lane up to it. How fabulous eh? Cobbled
tracks/pathways, you just can't beat that proper farm stuff, I know these days
you dont see it as much and cobbles aren't the easiest grounds to sweep and keep
tidy but the look and feel of them can't be beaten in my opinion. Oooooooohhhhhh
my opinion, that sounds formal. I loved this visit too! I have driven past it as
an adult, it all looks the same and is all still there, I would love to pop
there now, but as an adult, it's just not the same. You get away with more as a
child. They would probably think I was a weirdo now. Mmmm? I wonder if I should
visit and see if they remember me?
A
GHOSTLY LINK TO FARMS IN CARLETON LANCS HERE
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| Holly Farm, gorgeous
calf |
Another farm I visited as a child, pretty
naughty wasn't I really? No wonder I was never home lol. The next farm I went to
, was a pig farm. Ok, it ended up being the pig farm next to where I ended up
buying my childhood pony from but before purchasing Jenny Wren, I visited her
neighbours at the pig farm and asked them if they wanted help.
I remember
the farmer being a short but friendly peculier character. Thinking back, you
think, there is no way you would like your own child doing that. Oh well, I was
always naughty and stubborn and got my own way haha, nothing has changed much.
Anyway,where was I? Oh yes, the pig farm. You always know when you are near a
pig farm, you can smell and hear it miles before you get there lol. I asked him
if he wanted any help, he was a quirky type, short, rough looking but a farmer
none the less and that was enough for me. He said come with me, are you sure you
want to help out? He took me to a pretty dark large shed that was full to
bursting with giant loud very vocal pigs, ok, as an adult, they are probably not
as giant but as a child, like many things, they were gigantic. Again, you
couldn't see an opening on the ground, it was like a noisy smelly moving pink
carpet. As soon as you opened the big sliding wooden doors and let a bit of
daylight through, they scuffled and fought their way to the concrete low wall
the barrier between you and them, towards you. They bossed one another about,
they were screaming at one another and grunting their way through to you. Near
by,standing in tall blue round plastic bins, you still see today now and again,
were bins containing wet barmcakes, as I sit here and remember. Eric the pig
farmer was the local farmer that went around to all the hotels and schools
collecting food waste to feed his pigs, I think that stopped in the 1990s
sometime? Oh, I think his name was Eric? anyway, in my blog, he's called Eric as
I try and turn back the time remembering it of nearly 31 years ago. I remember
them all like it was yesterday but names on the otherhand are taking some extra
brain power, anyone got any brain food to help? lol. You know, I nearly
forgot to mention; I trekked acres and acres of fields to get to these farms in
some areas, speaking to all the cows and horses along the way.(That's how I knew Jenny Wren, my first pony).
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| Me as a young girl in the late
70s, younger than ten years but it's so you can picture me around these farms,,
this is a photo of me singing at school,that was used in our local gazette
paper |
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| Holly
Farm |
You know, as I type all this, I have a big
smile on my face remembering it all. How nice. Right..... back again to the pig
farm. Eric the farmer said to me ' here, get that little shovel and feed the
pigs', so of course, I did so, it was so exciting you know! I got the shovel,
dug it into the top of the blue bin and threw a load of barmcakes out towards
the pigs.Wow, my gosh, you should have heard the noise then! Amazing. Eric then
said to me, 'now young lady, if you were to fall in there now, they would take
your arm off'. He said, I would need to go back when I was much older if I wanted to help out. I think
kids need to see real farm animals and where food is made, there is nothing more
real than the height of a cow, the characteristics of pigs, the chuckling of
hens, geese and turkeys, you get the message ,i've got to stop myself going on
about such gibberish sometimes. You can get and learn so much more from a real
life experience. I didn't know a cow was the height they were of around a
13.2hh/14hh pony until I visted an animal rescue centre who had one, obviously
called Daisy, but to be up close as a child next to a real cow was an eye
opener. Obviously me, aged around nine years old, thought wow, I wonder if you
could ride it, after all, it was big enough to ride lol. Right, I've wandered
off again......
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| Holly Farm, how ace is this mini
hen shelter for these free range hens, I love it, when I get more hens, I deffo
want one of them! |
You know, looking back, these
farmers were so lovely in letting me have this experience, seeing their animals,
feeding them, stroking them, showing me around their farms, how proud they were,
how passionate they were. They could have said 'hey, get off this farm' but no,
every one I went to showed me around. I even went to a battery hen farm, that
too, was in Carleton. I must admit, as a young naive child, that was the only
place I felt sad for the animals, I had no idea that that was how they made
eggs, all just on top of one another, eating grain from little gulley type
things at the front of their lengthy rectangle cages that stretched from one end of the barn to the other , platform thingies which seemed never
ending throughout the building. I did feel they were too close to one another
and unhappy. I didn't like being there as much because most of them looked so
poor, but as usual I was excited by
the experience.Yet, the sadness of that experience, always remained with me.
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
I'm sure i'm a reincarnation of
a farmers wife or daughter? I don't actually believe in all that stuff, but no
one in my whole family knows where I get it from? I'm actually the black sheep
of the family. The one interested in animals, outdoors, farms, farm buildings,
simple things like cobbles, smells, seeing hay bales, sounds, tractors. I just
loveee tractors, I love June onwards,love it. If I didn't look like my parents
and have a family resemblance, I'd be sure I was adopted. None of my family do
animals, outdoors, poo anything lol.
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| Holly Farm, how stunning is this
wall!? |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| Holly
Farm |
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| I thought this was ace, at Holly
Farm, even a farm has makaton, it reminded me of
school |
I have been lucky in life, amongst all
the gloom, that life throws at you. I bought my first plot of land and
stables when I was just 19 years old, it was only an acre with two breezeblock
stables but it was mine. I had three jobs and worked hard to get what I wanted,
I was desperate for land. Saying this,I sold the land and stables on, a year
later after doing it up for a good small profit. At least double the price what
we paid for it. Then, shortly after,along came children and a mortgage so my
three jobs then became one, nights. It's all about life.
Anyway, it
weren't until Nov 2004 that we saw our other plot. A basic four acre field in an
afluent area. It didn't even have a boundary fence on one side, or any gates or access area to
get on. But, it had the most stunning views across farmers fields and the Pennines, just stunning in all seasons. The sale took a couple of months to
complete due to a disagreement about mains water and having it fitted but my
goodness, when the money was handed over and the deeds became ours seven weeks later in Jan 2005, it
was the happiest time ever. I have a little piece of heaven, ok, not a farm but
it was my little farm. It took a year to fund and build what we wanted on it
through the help of an architect, 5 stables, tack/feed room, hayshed, sand
paddock and so on. It really shocked me on how much things costed, especially
post and rail fencing and driveways wow.Shocked me how many truck loads of giant
hardcore slabs were brought as a base for the driveways, hard standings and for
the sand paddock being built. Worth every penny and all the waiting though. I
later bought hens and goats, in fact, I would have had zillions of animals on
there by now. But, if you follow my other blogs, you know it hasn't quite ended
up the way I wanted. Ah well, we all know,life throws many hurdles at you. To
not finish on a depressing tone here, we are hoping to buy another plot soon and
start again. We are going to continue to rent out our current equestrian
property (the one mentioned above and in 'our yard' photo albums) as a whole and
keep it as a good investment. So, you never know, we may have the opportunity to
have another yard to build! Anyone got a farm they want to donate? I am so lucky
and greatful for everything we have. Life is precious.
Do you know what?
I have never been driven in a tractor, I would love to be driven in a tractor all
hours and at night like farmers do, for the feel of it, the sound of it, the
freedom of the open countryside. You see, just the simple things would be
satisfying.
Nope, i'm not one of these city to country type people
wanting a bit of a good life that thinks everything country is idilic and rosy.
I mean, come on, we all know, farming is a 24hr job, dont we? You just dont stop
on a farm.
BELLA
I'm going
to add a little update on Bella, my daughters' dog. Bella came out of the vets
after being in for five days ,after being attacked by a Staffy dog. (Please see
other page). However, the same day she went home, she had to return to the vets
as she was in so much pain and her stitches had come loose.
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| At the vest, Bella woke up, a
day after her ordeal |
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| Day five, she then went home and
returned back to the vets the day this photo was
taken |
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| How Bella used to look aww cute
fluffy cloud |
She remained at the vets a couple
more days this past week and has now gone back home,recovering well, with her
little character starting to shine through her pain.
The dog warden
eventually went around to the house where the staffy lived and found out in his
investigation, that that dog had been on a caution before. We are led to believe
it had attacked a cat and another dog, previously though , I can not quote the dog
warden on this until further evidence is sought?
Our local gazette
reporter has been round to the home to take a photo of my daughter with Bella.It
will be going into the gazette shortly. It has gone to the newspapers due to
lack of police support. Still, to date, no representative from the police force
have been to these staffy owners. Members of the public that saw it all and
helped my girls, were fuming on their phones to the police, rspca and dog warden.
The scene seeing my daughters and Bella in that state was shocking, still, no one
from any authority would help them, just shocking!
NEXT TIME;
Next time on my blog;
our horse trailer hunt, got one yeahhhhhh, our visit to the Thoroughbred
Rehabilitation Centre with an influx of photos, what are you sure lol?!I'm so sarky ha.
