Any questions, please email GTO@SFTG.ORG.UK
TICKET SALES CLOSE MONDAY 26TH MAY @ 12PM
Come along to our summer barbeque, this year kindly hosted by Pauline and Colin Burnett-Dick at their lovely holding, which includes a lake, rheas and woodland, set in Winnie the Pooh country in the Ashdown Forest.
Cat Bush will be providing delicious barbeque food, including sausages and burgers from livestock reared on her own farm, followed by a lovely pudding. Tea and coffee also provided. All for the subsidised price of £7. Cat is happy to cater for any dietary requirements, including a veggie option. Please email her if this is what you require. catrionabush@gmail.com
It's a great opportunity to meet other SFTG members and to have a look around the Burnett-Dick's lovely smallholding.
The swimming pool will also be available, at your own risk.
Please bring your own chair, drinks and glasses.
Please no dogs, as they have four of their own plus cats and free-range poultry.
Le Bresse chickens are said to be the most delicious chicken in the world! They also happen to be good egg layers too!
Louise and her family have been rearing chicken for their family diner table now for a few years and are keen to show others how they organise their flock and how it provides them with food for their family.
Le Bresse are a slower growing variety than commercial meat chickens which Louise and her family chose specifically for this reason. They also raise their meat organically.
This course will give attendees an insight in to how chicken can provide a valuable food source for your family. The course will include all the information you need about incubation of eggs, rearing young and keeping a breeding family. There will also be an opportunity to watch a chicken dispatch and dressing of the bird for the table should you wish.
Come along to Emma and Dan's holding near Bodle Street on Saturday 17th May, see what their plans are for their new woodland home and meet other SFTG members over a cuppa.
The holding is approx 7 acres, mostly woodland (an overgrown conifer plantation approx 30-40 years old), interspersed with some older neglected hazel coppice and mixed deciduous. A very large pond with swimming end (currently full of brown carp and looking like the penguin enclosure at Drusilla's!). The house is a 17th Century barn conversion with attached Victorian granary (also needs considerable renovation).
Whilst they've both had allotments in the past and Emma has run an edible community garden in Hove for many years, managing land on this scale is new to them. They have chickens and hope to install a polytunnel this year for veg.
They are also members of the Sussex Bodgers (APTGW) and Emma now coordinates the Sussex Group (a role she took on as a novice bodger last August) who meet monthly at Old Barn Woods on Cinderford Lane.
Their vision for the land so far is: 1) a source of fuel for a biomass boiler we plan to install this year to heat the house (currently no functional heating) 2) potential structural material for A-frame shelters 3) a source of material for green woodworking on a small scale. 4) a venue for craft and skills sharing activities. They would like to renovate the hazel coppice and slowly replace the conifers with deciduous trees (This could be challenging given the number of deer currently abiding there though!). Their overall aim is to steward the land as sensitively as they can for maximum wildlife and low impact.
Best if dogs are on leads as they have a large pond, chickens, plus deer a plenty roaming with incomplete boundary fences.
Safety Note, this event is not suitable if you are pregnant
Due to insurances, it isn't possible for attendees to actually butcher/use equipment themselves on this evening but it is intended that attendees will leave with enough information to be able to have a go themselves at home with their own meat should they wish; have a better understanding of the cuts they might ask for from a butcher in the future and know what they might like to ask for when having their own animals prepared following slaughter.
****Due to a cancellation, we now have one ticket available for this course -
Perhaps you're about to take over a smallholding? Or are you relatively new to keeping land and animals? If so, perhaps you feel you'd like to talk the issues through with others in the same boat, and with someone who's been doing it for a while? If that sounds like you, then our "Introduction to Smallholding" workshop is just the thing for you.
Come and spend the afternoon finding out what smallholding entails from a practical perspective, as you visit this 7 acre plot. Paul Lovatt Smith has been working on the land for over 15 years, and has a wealth of knowledge that he's happy to share, including:
Please note:
this course will be held outdoors (and partly in a barn) - so please do wear suitable outdoors clothing, bearing in mind that this is England - it may well be cold and damp (or warm and sunny, boiling and dry, windy and snowing... you get the picture).
Can't make this date? Event sold out? Please email our training organiser so that you will be on the list when we run the workshop again.