Jungle returns and a quick update

Having spent so much time working on the Cledan Valley glamping site last year saw us able to start focusing a bit more effort onto the other side of the empire - our personal field, and repairing our garden at home.

A few years ago we decided to try finding a field for our chickens and occasional pigs, a search which proved fruitless for some time. Eventually we found a lovely field but discovering it was next to a tipi site also up for sale presented an unexpected opportunity that forced us to ignore our small holding needs while we bought and sorted the site out.

During those weary eighteen months all of our previous hard work at home to make a veg area, plant trees and so on was cast aside. Our garden returned to jungle and we had no time for growing for two years. Our gorgeous veg patch sprouted thick weeds six feet high and were left as an eyesore, dying and re-growing annually for two years. The good news is things at home are back on track and better still our field is now a useful space, more on this later.

During 2018 we have moved our bees and chickens into purpose built enclosures in the field - the hives so that sheep can't knock them around and the chickens to stop foxes from playing with them. 

We re-enforced some failing fencing in the small paddock at the end of our field and were able to make it suitable for pigs in time for three little GOS porkers that arrived in April and spent a wonderful seven months running around a huge space full of interesting things for piggies to investigate. Deciding to house the pigs in this spot was a huge success and we definitely had the happiest, healthiest and most pampered pigs in the World!

We also saw some additional opportunities, one corner of the field is lower than the rest and it stays pretty wet so Karen decided we needed some ducks. We now have a pond and duck area which we'll write about soon. Oh, and we bought some llamas too!

A posh loo

The beauty of having so much space on a glamping site is that we can offer solitude, peace and quiet to our guests who want to relax whilst also providing plenty of opportunity to families and couples who prefer a bit of adventure. The only downside of so much space is that some of our guests stay quite a way from the main facilities and while we make sure they no this sort of tstuff when they book, we wanted to make life easier for them.

We decided we wanted a discreet composting toilet at the end of the site furthest away from the toilet block. A loo is all we need so people don't have far to go at night - the showers are fine where they areas it is only a couple of hundred metres from the furthest accommodation.

After some research we decided to opt for a wheelie bin version, this means that we can have a comfortable toilet and once or maybe twice a season one of use can pull out the wheelie bin, slam the lid shit without having to see or touch anything nasty and then park it away securely for a year or so. After that period of time we'll be left with beautiful compost that is clean and safe and looks the same as the bags of stuff you buy in a gardening centre - we'll use it to feed the trees around the site.

So Russ went to work with some locally felled larch, some basic tools and a bit of swearing. The end result is a posh little loo that is clean and tidy inside. It is comfortable to use, doesn't smell and people who wouldn't usually fancy using a compost loo have been pleasantly surprised by the experience.

We added a urinal for the gents too and they rarely can be persuaded to sit for a wee and the system doesn't work well when wet stuff and solid stuff mix too much.