Too much Barbara and Tom when little and look what happened....

It says introduce yourself, so may I introduce myself!

Too much Tom and Barbara Good when little has always had me a hankerin' for a bit of land with some animals. Moving from the UK to NZ 6 years ago gave me that chance and we bought a run down old villa with three acres of run down land in Taranaki.

Approx two weeks after moving in we wondered what the hell we had done and even now our refrain when ever anything goes wrong (ALL the time) is ' we should have never bought this bloody place'.

But, we are getting there and actually do love our little bit of paradise, money-pit it may be.

I run a couple of beef heifers for the freezer and have three Dorper X ewes and a Open-faced Romney Ram who pop out lambs for the table every year.

There is a small flock of chooks that we keep for eggs (never managed the eating side of things yet.....) and Wags the duck. Boadica and Prasutagus (Boadie and Gus!) are our Kune Kune pigs who had piglets for the first time this year and Fred and Arthur are the rabbits.

Bracken the English Springer Spaniel, Zip the Border Collie and Yo-yo the cat make up the rest of the menagerie, along with myself, the OH and our 4.5 year old daughter as the humans in the mix.

Hi NakiNut and welcome to lsb

It sounds as if you're doing well on your block. Where in the UK are you from?

Cheers
Kate

Grew up in the Forest of Dean but lived in Derbyshire and London too. Very much a country girl - towns bring me out in a rash.
OH is very much the opposite - needs his dose of CO2 every day!

Hi glad you have found the truth about a block[] ,sounds like you are having fun:rolleyes:, dont worry it wont change just different things happen. Know what you mean about cities:([}] God Bless

If that ram is as you descibe him, he is very very valuable ...... our darned rams have never popped out a lamb themselves.
I've never had much luck ... or enthusiasm .... for homekilled chooks, especially egg layers. They are always tough and small. Many years ago we bought 6 hen chickens at the school auction. We took them home, let them out ..... and at dawn next morning they started crowing. That's put me off stewed chook.

The Good Life inspired me too, I was about 7 when it was screening over here and said way back then that I would like to do that.... 35 years later[]

Ditto - I loved that programme

NakiNut;296601 wrote: Grew up in the Forest of Dean but lived in Derbyshire and London too. Very much a country girl - towns bring me out in a rash.
OH is very much the opposite - needs his dose of CO2 every day!

I have a friend who lives in St Briavel - anywhere near where you were?

St Briavels - yep just up the road - there is a pub there that does absolutely fab food my Dad loved - you had to book though!

The Good Life was one of my favourites shows as a child too. When they repeated it a couple of years ago on one of the Sky channels, I watched it with a new eye, to see just how "real" their self-sufficiency was.

It was actually very well done, very accurate and quite thorough in the way their property was set-up. Best of all, it showed the two of them having to work full-time on it, so it was very honest about how much work is involved.

Really must get the series now it's on DVD!

I have not seen it since the repeat screening about mid 1980's but can remember well how much hard work it was and how all the disasters they had were par for the course like weather, bugs and animal problems. And Felicity Kendel was hot.

We have all the DVDs of the series, all four of them, what a laugh! Certainly stand the test of time.