Communal Kitchens and Wildlife TV Presenters!
Things have been moving on very quickly here a Rocombe Retreat ,with a new communal kitchen area for washing up and undercover area in case the weather is not perfect. You can now cook by your yurt or under cover! People asked for something to keep milk (and wine!) cool, so we have also added a communal fridge in this area. We have planted more trees around the yurts this year and let the grass grow longer except for the paths to each yurt this is perfect habitat for wildlife. Most of the sheep have moved down the road to
New Arrivals on the Devon Farm – not just Yurts, Lambs as well!
There have been some new arrivals on the farm recently, I had a ewe produce lambs very late out of sink with the rest but I had a nice surprise as she had a lovely set of triplets and all are doing well. Also the 3 pedigree South Devon heifers all calved successfully to the Aberdeen Angus bull one had a heifer calf and the other two had bull calves all again doing very well. We have been busy as usual, looking after the livestock. They have been eating their way through the hay and silage that we made in
Why we turned into an all yurt Devon camp – Bye Bye Bell Tents
A big change for Rocombe Retreat. We are now a Devon Yurt Camp! This year we have changed from having two bell tents, one one yurt and a shepherds hut. We swapped the two Belltents for another 16 foot yurt and an 18 foot yurt.We have decided to continue investing into the accommodation and facilities, after all this is what makes us who we are. More comfort and snugness can’t be bad right? We found last year that the bell tents were not standing up to the weather conditions that we had (Even though we HOPE that was a freak
Otters & Owls at Christmas time in Devon
Most of the time this month has been spent feeding silage to the cattle in the barn, and keeping there bedding clean with plenty of lovely golden straw. When we clean this out in the spring this will give us lots of manure to spread on the fields as we don’t spread any chemical fertilisers. It’s lucky we don’t have any cattle outside this year as the weather has continued very wet, although it has been very mild here in south Devon with temperatures in double figures most of the time . Because of this the wild life has had
Rain rain go away, leave our campsite please!
Looking back over this blog, I always seem to be talking about the rain this year… but aren’t we all I suppose! It has to be said that this year I have never seen such heavy rain. On Wednesday 21st in the early hours, I was awoken by the sound of rain and went to the farm to check things were OK. The stream that runs through the farm was running at the highest I have ever seen it, luckily for us we don’t flood but just had to cope with the massive amount of runoff. Incredibly on Saturday 24th
September comes good, a farm clear of TB (as normal!)
Still lots of bookings coming in and much better weather at last ,nice to be able to walk between the tents, yurt and shepherds hut without having to put my wellies on when cleaning them! September is usually a better month down here, and it didn’t disappoint this year. We have TB tested the South Devon cattle this month and they all went clear which was a huge relief as always. This allowed me to sell the last few remaining non pedigree cows as once they are clear we have a 60 day window to move them. The vet did
Barley & Bikes around the lanes
I thought July was a busy month but we ended up fully booked through August with some very last minute bookings filling in the few gaps that we had. Everyone who stayed had a great time and we had a lot of good feed back. People find that our location is very central to all the local amenities. Most people couldn’t believe that you could be in Torquay in 10 minutes, yet be here in this valley amongst nature… We had our normal visit from the Canada Geese, beautiful and noisy! I am not sure if it was the olympic
Silage and The Ship Inn for Campers!
We managed to finish off making the first cut grass silage despite the wet weather trying to stop us, there was never a window of more than 2 days dry weather in a row. Shocking summer so far this one, but even so the guests staying in the yurt, shepherds hut and bell tents didn’t seem to mind with so much to do in the local area. I sent a few people down to Shaldon to take the passenger ferry over to Teignmouth, always a fun time. Make sure you go to The Ship Inn when in Teignmouth, it is
Kingfishers, Otters and Eels, gone Cuckoo in Torquay??!
I have had an interesting month. There seems to be a lot of wild life around here at the moment. There’s all the bird life which seems to increase every year I heard the cuckoo earlier in the month which I haven’t heard for quite a while, but I suppose that’s bad news for another unsuspecting bird! I haven’t seen the Kingfishers for a while so I expect they’re nesting. One thing I have seen is Otters that have turned up at the ponds 3 times in the past few weeks. The second time I saw them was at about
Otters, Otters everywhere – and some here in Torbay!
In my last blog I said that I thought a mink was eating some of the carp in the lakes. I was wrong it turned out to be otters of which I have never seen in the wild before. I went up to check the ponds at about dawn one morning to chase off the cormorant that had been hanging around and to my surprise there where two others two otters happily swimming around in the middle lake when they saw me they didn’t hang round long. It was amazing to see them but having just restocked with fish I
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