Living with Livestock – beginners getting to grips with sheep, pigs and cattle

Back from your holidays and

determined to make a few life changes?  Keen

to start living closer to the land, get more in tune with the seasons and

produce your own food?  More and more

people are turning to smallholding, balancing employment with self-sufficiency,

cutting their cost of living and taking charge of what goes on their plate.

September is the month when those

holiday discussions turn into actions. 

If you’ve been thinking about how you might go about keeping a couple of

pigs, a few sheep or a house cow, you need to find out how to manage small

numbers of livestock both responsibly and legally.

After twenty years of doing it for

themselves, Debbie Kingsley and Andrew Hubbard run courses on their beautiful

108 acre Devon farm near Okehampton, for budding smallholders who want to test

their dreams before taking the plunge into the good life.  For people weighing up the pros and cons of

pigs, sheep and cattle, they have teamed up with farmer and writer Paula Wolton

to jointly run their one day Living with Livestock course that will help people

decide between these three varieties of four-legged livestock.  The morning is spent with the Welsh Mountain

sheep and pedigree Berkshire pigs at South Yeo Farm West, and after a lunch of

home produce, everyone heads for Locks Park Farm where Paula’s organic Devon

Ruby cattle are the stars for the afternoon. 

The next Living with Livestock course is on

Saturday 18th September and perhaps you’ll join one of the recent

participants who said "It's the best course I've ever been on -

and I've been on a lot of courses."   With feedback like that you can be sure

you’ll have a good time and the cream tea is all that you’d hope for too.

For more information about the Living with

Livestock and their other smallholder training courses, call Debbie on 01837

810569 or go to www.smallholdertraining.co.uk