September

September started with a bang and a sizzle - selling burgers galore at the Forest Festival, Brinkworth Show, Tetbury Food Festival saw our bank balance go into the black (for one day only!) for the first time in about 3 years!!!!!

Last month was sadly lacking in calves and this month made up for it. Saffron started it all off by producing a lovely big boy Solomon, Glory gave birth to a boy Hero (he's beautiful and white with large black eyebrows), Rabbit gave birth to a girl (although we only found that she was a girl when we got up close to castrate and tag her!), she's called Ermintrude... and we had a most delightful (and worrying) experience of welcoming twins! Yes, Winnie (named after Lorraine's mum - she knew she wasn't going to have a grandaughter with that name!) was happily cleaning up after giving birth in the field and when we went over to inspect, the bundle looked most odd. Lorraine thought it might be deformed at first, but then we saw two heads!

We had a fund raiser for Macmillan Cancer Support, joining in with their "biggest coffee morning in the world" at the end of the month and we asked for suggestions for names for the twins. We have chosen Hunnie & Bea given to us by the Burden Family in Wootton Bassett. The coffee, cakes and name guessing helped us raise £200. Thank you everyone.

The Natural Horse Gathering was once again blessed with sunshine. Pictures and story can be found here... but in essence, a great day was had by all. We are proud to be creating an event where people get together with such friendship and respect. We're planning some changes over the next few years to hopefully improve on what we've started and encourage even more people to get involved and open their hearts and minds.

Finally, a very tired Rick Stein visited Borders in north Swindon to sign copies of his new book and, as one of his super heroes, we were asked to bring along some local food producers and do a mini farmers market outside the shop. We set up our stalls and provided refreshments for the long queue of people waiting for him. It was a good market and great fun to be part of, got our names in the paper (again), and perhaps introduced new foods to new people. Time will tell. Rick came out and dutifully sampled everything on offer... can't imagine what it must be like to be confronted by "the public" all asking similar questions and demanding autographs on these occasions. Bet he was glad to get into the peace and quiet of the taxi!