Olympic Torch Comes Close to Little Comfort Farm!

Yesterday Caroline & I attended the North Devon Plus conference for holiday and tourism businesses in the North Devon area. It was an interesting and informative afternoon followed by a buffet and a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new people all working in the area. 

Most of us are so busy working in our own businesses that we don’t get to meet up very often. North Devon is on the route of the Olympic torch which is very exciting! The route is still not 100% decided, however it will be coming from Bideford to Barnstaple then through Braunton, Knowle – along the A361 main road – past the turning to Little Comfort Farm, on to Ilfracombe then on again to Lynton and Lynmouth. It will be travelling the route on the 21st May and North Devon is planning some great receptions along the way; bringing a little of London’s excitement here to North Devon.

Gloucester Old Spot Piglets at Little Comfort Farm Holiday Cottages, Devon

Baby piglets at last! Rufus, our boar has had a very lucky reprieve as there was a delay in the sows conceiving and he was identified as the potential problem. However, 10 fat, healthy piglets have proved his virility and his future at Little Comfort Farm is secure. With more due next week he has a big, smug smile on his muddy face !

Sadly it was the end of an era for Sean our old Llyen ram last week. At the ripe old age of 14+ he had had a very good innings. He was hand reared by friends of ours and was quite a pet on arrival and rather full of himself. Some of you may well have had a close encounter with his head on your bottom in the early days! He has fathered generations of lovely lambs and was a super fella to have on the farm.

Do make sure you watch BBC Stargazing Live 2012 this week, we’ve had some beautiful clear nights here in Devon recently with stunning star fields. Of course, Little Comfort Farm is not far at all from Exmoor with its Dark Sky Reserve designation.

Also Valentine’s Day is approaching so we’re getting into the romantic spirit with a special offer for the weekend of 17th February – Caroline has put the details on our website http://www.littlecomfortfarm.co.uk/offers.php and I will be baking some extra special, yummy chocolate brownies in preparation.

Roger’s father, David, has just had his 80^th birthday – what a milestone.

We all met at their home in Wiltshire to celebrate 80 well-spent years. He and Mary were hoping to celebrate with a skiing trip to Zermatt where they honeymooned and have skied regularly ever since, but apparently getting holiday travel insurance in your 80’s is rather tricky!!

Woodlark two bedroom holiday cottage, Little Comfort Farm, Devon

And back home on the farm in Devon, we’ve been working hard on the gardens of the self-catering holiday cottages. After shifting out 10 tonnes of soil and shifting back 15 tonnes of slabs and gravel, Woodlark holiday cottage now has a brand new courtyard garden. South-facing, flooded with light and now fully fenced, we hope it will be a lovely place to relax with a good book or a nice barbeque. Our visitors at New Year simply loved it! With a new, dedicated parking space as well, we are rather pleased and hope it makes holidays even more relaxing for our lovely guests.

With the family all grown up and living away from home we can’t manage to move the cattle and sheep home from Butterhills on our own so the moment the children are home the wellies are strapped to their feet and off we go. I think the picture of us bringing the cows home is a great one – my lovely girls and me!

Lake Wanaka, South Island, New Zealand

We’re back! And we had a great, great time! What a challenge for our senses – we left Britain in autumn to arrive in New Zealand in late spring/early summer with the last of the daffodils, gorgeous rhododendrons and roses on their way out! Also, someone had moved the sun around and North is South and South is North, if you see what I mean. All very confusing.

We stayed with lovely friends Michael and Raewyn Fleck who some of you may remember as they have looked after Little Comfort several times for us in the past. They live in a beautiful home in Arrowtown, just outside Queenstown, a very beautiful town looking out onto snow capped mountains – the Remarkables (mountain range) one way and the Coronet ski area another.

After a few days exploring their old haunts and farm in the Invercargill area we set off in our camper van to tour South Island. We will bore you all to death with the details when you come here but, in summary, we climbed mountains, swam with dolphins, walked by crystal blue seas on golden beaches, kayaked in Fjordland, watched and listened to wonderful new birds, went out to watch rare Kiwi in the dark, walked through rain forests, up to glaciers over very scary swing bridges and generally enjoyed New Zealand and time with each other. It is a great island to explore, the picture is of lake Wanaka, over 30km long with mountains all around – not a bad place for a picnic.

We left Michael & Raewyn planning the salads to go with their Christmas picnic meal and returned to winter! Thanks to Matthew, Fiona, Nikki, Caroline & Terry, all was well on our return. We are now busy preparing cottages for Christmas & New year and getting over jetlag!

The Farm Office at Little Comfort

A few months ago I wrote about how our business at Little Comfort benefits so much from our wonderful staff; in that diary it was Nikki, a whizz with the cleaning and the ironing. This time I wanted to write about Caroline, the voice on the other end of the phone on Tuesdays & Thursdays and the ‘whizz’ behind the day-to-day running of the computer.

Caroline only lives at the other end of the wood and comes to work by walking through her wonderful oak woodland, a real struggle she says compared to her early working life commuting by tube in London!

She is a strange one because she actually enjoys working out how and why things happen and how we could improve on what we are doing. Currently studying an evening class in web design using Dreamweaver at Petroc college in Barnstaple, she is beginning to start conversations with “Did you know….?” and “If we did this and this, this would happen……” My conversations about the computer usually go along the lines of “Bl*@?~#!!! thing has done it again!” or “Can you please sort this out for me it has eaten what I was trying to do?!”

Seriously though, with her knowledge and interest in the computer and a work history in marketing, sales and printing, Caroline is to be hugely thanked for the correct operation and spelling of our written material and how it is all laid out on the page.  Another very key member of the Little Comfort Team.

Early evening at the coarse fishing lake

We may be fast approaching December and the Christmas period but, with the recent sunny weather and clear skies, we have been experiencing some beautiful evenings here at Little Comfort Farm. With stunning star fields so visible, we were really excited to hear this super news from Exmoor National Park:

“Exmoor National Park has been designated an International Dark Sky Reserve, the first place in Europe to achieve this prestigious award and only the second in the world……

…A Dark Sky Reserve is defined as public or private land possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and with a nocturnal environment that is specifically protected for its scientific, natural, educational, cultural, heritage and/or public enjoyment mission of a large peripheral area. The International Dark Sky Reserve consists of a core area meeting the minimum criteria for sky quality and natural darkness, and a peripheral area that supports dark sky values in the core and receives benefits from them as well.

When considering light pollution and cloud cover, Exmoor is one of the best places in the country for stargazing. Less than 10% of the UK population can see the beauty of a natural night sky full of stars (Campaign for Dark Skies) and interest in the night sky is growing as proved by the popularity of the recent BBC StarGazing Live…”

How lovely that there are still places to go where the light pollution does not reach – we really are lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the country and to be able to share it with all our visitors.

Little Comfort Farm Organic Apple Juice for sale in the farm office

On a glorious day in September, Matthew and Roger (and Ruby too who had not quite worked out that dogs can’t climb trees) shook all the apple trees free of their huge harvest of apples and then spent a back-breaking day picking all the apples up off the ground and bagging them.
We keep different varieties separate from one another so as to have the opportunity to mix the flavours according to sweetness and taste. The bags are all then loaded into the trusty horsebox and pulled down to West Lake farm, near Holsworthy, where Linda and George Davies transform them into delicious apple juice. This year the discovery, an early variety with wonderful pink flesh, was extra pink somehow and has made the most fantastic looking juice ever. One – of the ‘pinkest’ George has seen.
Roger went and collected the juice and as much of the waste apple pulp as he could fit into the horsebox which he brought back to feed the pigs. They think it is delicious and gobble it up. Ruby took two days to recover from her tree climbing exploits I have never seen her so tired, goodness knows how Roger and Matthew felt.

Christmas & New Year Celebrations at Little Comfort Farm Holiday Cottages, Devon

I know it seems so early but we are turning our thoughts to Christmas here as the clocks change and we lose the opportunity to work on the land for too much longer. Our Christmas trees, which we put in the cottages each winter and then plant out again by the fishing lake, need checking, feeding and keeping clear of weeds. I think that amazing cold weather last year – which saw us all sledging in the valley on our body boards! – was a little hard on them but they will be looking their best again, decorated and in the cottages in December.
The holly is covered in berries now but the birds enjoy it so much that often it is a race to keep some for us as I love to put flower arrangements everywhere. For me, Christmas is all about holly, ivy and as much of the wonderful greenery as I can sneak past Roger from outdoors to indoors!! I have a little trick now in that I go and cover a few choice branches with garden fleece so that there are some berries left for me for in December and then in January, I put the branches out again for the birds to enjoy!
The stack of wood in the rick yard will be sawed for logs this month so that there is plenty of wood for all the wood burners. This week for me is also pudding and mincemeat time as I really think that the flavour does develop if you can manage to get a little ahead. Last year was a break with family tradition as Delia Smith’s wonderful pudding recipe was replaced by one by Dorina Allen from the Ballmaoloe cook book, which was also delicious.
There are still cottages available for Christmas & New Year please see our website www.littlecomfortfarm.co.uk for up to date availability and online booking