October 2009

This month was dominated by changes at Natural Horsemanship Magazine and some sharp lessons in how not to set up a business! Back in April, regular readers will perhaps recall that we formed a new company to re-launch the magazine in glorious technicolour and set it on a more successful footing. It all seemed like such a good idea at the time and being the trusting folk we are, we just formed a company with our new partners with a 50-50 shareholding and not much of an agreement beyond that. Of course, it's all fine when things are going along all nice and dandy-like... but when/if the SH*T hits the fan, well, it doesn't leave any framework for who is responsible for what and how to work through the break up. It was a month of many sleepless nights - probably on all sides, and as this month draws to a close we still have some nitty gritty to resolve, but resolved it will be.

In the midst of all this, our sausages were a big hit at Blooms Harvest Festival weekend event - Emily took along a couple of boxes of packed sausages. She sold out and it was very clear that the amount we'd made for the weekend wasn't going to do her so Lorraine set to in the afternoon making more. Nice when your produce is well received like that.

Then of course, there was the Biodynamic Food Fortnight. We participated this year by opening the doors of the farm and offering an insight into Biodynamic Agriculture with a walk, some lunch and a stirring and spraying session... good fun was had by all :-)

The rest of October was filled with lots of farm stuff...

Rebecca joined us as a WWOOFer and fell in love with the horses...
A friend's office was moving site and had shelves and goodies in need of a new home - the shop is now very organised due to our findings there one day...
The pigs and cows finally came in for the winter... the night before a few days of deluge that left the fields looking like lakes (good timing!)...
Emily got herself a new job working with Pippin Doughnuts in their kitchen and on their market stall - guess what we have for tea on a regular basis!
And we persuaded the abattoir to harvest some caul from our own pigs to wrap our faggots in...