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Monday 8 August 2016

Well that's the summer season over for us

It has been a short summer season for us this year, just June and July with some weeks off in between.
As usual it has been a lot of fun, with some lovely new friends and campfires being made with campers.
We have had some smashing reviews, please look at our review page to read those left in our visitors book.  This one was captured from a holiday diary and put straight on twitter, thankyou Amelie.
Forgive us, those potential customers, who wanted to come in August, but this year we need the school holidays to ourselves, to try and bring to fruition some of our plans. Next year we hope to make it up to you, by opening July and August instead.
We are only hobby farmers. I am a farmer's daughter, with no farm to show for it anymore and Graham worked on a farm as a lad and has worked in the industry for the last twenty years, but we would never profess to be farmers. However, our youngest son would love to be a farmer, so we are trying to put in a few farming basics, like chickens and geese and ducks, pigs occasionally and some fruit trees.
The above picture is a 'pig-in-poo' aka Dominic, attending a Junior Tractor Driving course, over two days, learning safety principles and how to drive BIG John Deere tractors! The course is for 13-16 year olds and was his birthday present.......no words can describe adequately the enjoyment he got from this course ..... thankyou Duchy College, Stoke Climsland.
Back at Ashfarm, there is now a field shelter for the ponies and a hay store for the animal feed and bedding. Both are beautifully built by him-who-knows-how, to be both pleasant on the eye and very practical. But there are still more fences to put up and gates to hang and so the list goes on. More work for Graham.
A permanent fence has been erected already in the long field to enable us to turn some sheep out. We are starting an Ashfarm flock of Zwartbles. Let me introduce you to our three ewe lambs. Wonder how long it will take them to find a way over the hedge?
Unfortunately one of our Pomeranian ducks died, leaving the Pomeranian drake a little lonely and although we have searched locally, we have not been able to find him a replacement mate yet - so we are hoping the autumn poultry sale in Truro might provide us with what we need.
Meanwhile he has been mooching around with the geese and we have bought four Muscovy ducklings to grow on and build up our duck numbers, so that eventually he will have some species company.
And following much excitement and anticipation and disaster (of the three duck eggs we put under the broody hen, a magpie stole one, she pushed one out into the cold and it rolled under the nesting box, without us realising) finally, our broody hen has hatched a Pomeranian duckling!
The treeferns have openend their fronds and matured as the summer has gone on and are looking fantastic.But my reservoir garden this year has had to go grow wild, looks green and pretty enough but to a gardener, it would look very unruly. Still there is always manjana!
For the moment though our open season is over. We have had lots of different tents and campervans and BBQs and socialising under the stars and it has been wonderful to see campers come together around the campfire. Our last week included a family who came for half-term returning and there was much laughter and many marshmallows on sticks and chocolate minirolls to 'toast'.
So, once again want to say thanks to everyone who has camped with us this year. We would love you all to return next year. Sometimes we can accomodate groups out of season, so do get in touch if you are a group of 8 adults or more for 4 nights or more.
But for the moment, have a lovely summer everyone, keep reading the monthly blog to see how are plans progress and to see what we are up to, or you can join me on twitter @ashfarmcampsite and we look forward to catching up with you next year.





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