from North Cornwall.
I live in a cohousing community with smallholding in North Cornwall, 15-ish households and 32 acres, trying to live a bit more sustainably. We are nothing like self-sufficient in anything but most years we increase our resilience / growing capacity / sustainability. This year's main project has been our own borehole - goes live today!
Mixed flock of sheep giving wool for crafting and meat, lots of Shetland blood in there and our tup is a polled Shetland, other ingredients include Blue-faced Leicester, Romney, Wensleydale, Manx, Icelandic, Dutch Texel. Lambing now, 2 ewes of 5 tupped lambed so far, 2 good pairs of tup lambs.
3 Large Black weaners this year, our place isn't nice for outdoor pigs year round. If we can get the pigs to make use of the waste from the microgreens operation on site, we might be interested in exploring whether anyone has found any outlet for pig fat, cos we have far more of that waste than we can use producing lean meat that we will eat! So I'm interested to know how you use your Mangalitzas.
(The microgreens waste is basically mats of roots, germinated seed, and baby stems : the leaves have been harvested when the plants are still quite small. 90% of the seeds are peas and coriander.)
2 NDSxJersey house cows (rear their own calves and we take the surplus milk) and an Angusx heifer growing on to join the herd as a suckler cow. We aim to calve in winter and send our calves off when the cows come in for the next winter. The calves are then 8-10 months old so not huge, but the meat is awesome and with our ground and facilities, this works best for us.
Ordinary hybrid hens for our eggs, a few Light Sussexes have joined the hybrids and we may get a Wyandotte cockerel at some point to see if we can produce some meatier birds for the table as well as replacement egg-layers.
The fox took all the ducks, not sure if we'll get more. Need to make the pond better : year round and fox-proof - first.
A pair of breeding peacocks (coloured male, white peahen), we eat some eggs and sell some offspring.
A small forest garden is being created, year 3 this year. At 1/3 acre it won't make much of a dent in the food supplies for 23-ish adults and 10 kids, but homegrown is always a treat, and it's good for the planet.
Veg plot ditto really, we grow a lot of veg but still have to buy most. (TBH, this hilltop sloping shallow clay coastal site is better suited to growing grass than anything else, so sheep meat is about the only thing we are actually self-sufficient in!)
A few tourism businesses on site - 3 holiday cabins, a small summer campsite, a shop selling local arts and crafts - plus the microgreens setup, provides some income for some residents but most households have someone doing an offsite or wfh job (or are drawing a pension.)
Topic: Greetings from Ceredigion, Wales. (Read 3036 times)
