This diary is now three years old!! For the last three years, we have produced a daily photo and penned a mini blog about our lives here on the Relaxed smallholding. We have actually lived here for three years and ten days and it has to be said, life pre-Cadbury Cottage feels a very long time ago indeed.
Our lives her are a rollercoaster of business and utter joy. Being a smallholder is fulfilling, challenging and demanding. It is full of carefree routine and the scarily unexpected; it provides massive highs and tearful lows, it is never dull and frequently manic. And there are those times when the heart swells with so much joy and love at the sights, sounds and events that we have helped to create. It is also a privilege to live this life, plenty don’t want it, but plenty do and in living it, we have a huge responsibility to get it right: to look after the land, to provide our stock with the best possible care, to make the most of everything, waste nothing, to try to put back far more than we take.
The photos are a look back: one from every summer and winter so far lived here – it is no coincidence that goats feature twice: the most demanding and challenging of the stock we keep and the ones we love the most, well…. along with the cows, sheep, alpacas, ducks, chickens, geese, turkeys and rhea.. of course!!!