Getting Started in Smallholding. Course Content:

A two day course, held on one of the UK’s finest working Smallholdings.

Learn about the day to day management and feeding of Poultry, Pigs, Sheep and Cattle, plus how to grow vegetables, both indoors and out.

Poultry:
Collect the eggs and feed the hens, geese and turkeys

Pigs:
Feed the pigs whilst learning all about them.
See the newly born piglets in the farrowing pen (if possible)

Sheep:
Hands on Sheep management: First catch your sheep, then tip it up to examine feet, teeth and udder.
Judge a lamb’s readiness for market
Get up to your elbows in a simulated lambing exercise!

Fruit and Vegetables:
Have a go at whatever is seasonal at the time, digging, sowing, planting, harvesting. (conditions permitting)

Orchard management:
Visit the finest traditionally pruned orchard you could wish to see.

Grassland management: Keep those weeds under control.

Measuring one acre: How big is it? Erect an electric fence around it. How many animals will it accommodate?

Feeding Livestock: How much do they eat and how is a daily ration made up?
Hay, haylage, silage and straw, what are they and how do you use them?

Basic marketing, the true route to profitability!

Machinery requirements: What will it all cost?

Building needs: How much space do animals require and what makes them comfortable.

DEFRA rules and regs

Finding a smallholding: What to look for and how big must it be?

Profitability and Cash Flow: How to make it pay!

Planning rules: Can you live on a green field site?

Insurance, Tax and VAT

The Consortium: Your instructors consist of a team comprising smallholders, ex college lecturers, agricultural consultants and farmers. All of them are practicing what they preach.
Each one has his or her, own brand of humour and method of delivery. Their aim is to provide information in the most enjoyable manner possible and they want to send you away happy, informed and very well fed!

Remember: ‘To NewLandOwner, there is no such thing as a silly question!’