OP
ghostman11
New Bee
as for pesticides etc i will explain a little more about what we actualy do for a business and how we do it. sorry in advance if its a boreing read lol
i have farmed for about 35 years but grew up on a farm so i have been around farming all my life. the last 6 generations of my familly also farmed.
BUT. farming on the kind of scale we do (210 acres) dosnt pay the bills! not theese days anyway. so when i took over the smallholding about 15 years ago (technicaly anything under 350 acres isnt a farm) i was faced with a dilema... the place was going bust we did alot of things the old way and tried not to use fertiliser and pesticides. this meant we didnt get full yield from the land we had wich meant we couldnt be viable. so i tried for 3 years to do things the "modern way" and brought huge ammounts of various chemicals and sprayed them like i was demented.
it didnt take long to reach the conclusion that while our yield had gone up around a misely 4% i no longer worked fields with the sounds of birds and wildlife around me, it mostly seemed to0 have GONE!! so work wasnt fun anymore, the bank was still on my case we had no money no wildlife no FUN!!!
i did what most do at this point...i went to the pub. sat at the bar bored the rear end of the barmaid for a couple of hours, then started talking to a "old boy" who was previously head farm hand for NOAH. apparently he confirmed what i already kind of knew, farming unless on a huge industrial scale just isnt viable. but we drank more beer and talked more and more "dangly male bits" and i decided to forget working and just spend a couple of years doing what i liked
i will skip over the boreing bits but basicaly i decided to diversify and go off into other areas of farming.. so what we do now is run holiday centres that specialise in running courses for people who want to get a small holding, we run aroun 30 courses ranging from keeping a couple of sheep all the way to breeding RHEAS!!!! we are also open at weekends to the public, we have a visitors centre and educational centre that schools and various groups use.
everything we do we try and do working with the country side not against it. having said that we do use meds when needed etc so we are not what is strictly classed as organic.
every 6 -12 months we change what we call the major focus of our centre this keeps people coming thru the door as we are never the same each time they visit. for example when we did the pond stuff we had (and still do have) great crested newts etc so we had a large exhibition up in the visitors centre with loads and loads of info and pictures of the wildlife ponds and various things that lived in them. it was very sucessful with over 700 visitors a week, (we charge a small entrance fee) we also have a shop and we sell various related stuff in it.
we have guided nature walks etc etc. but to get back to the point we also hire out ..............poly ducks!!! ok there normal khaki campbel ducks but we hire them out at £1 a day for people to get rid of there slugs and snails from poly tunnels and gardens!!! nothing clears bugs like ducks and chickens so where possiable we try and show people the cheap easy natural way of doing things. the added benifit to us is we breed ducks and various other fowl and alot of people end up buying a duck or chicken or 3 from us.
so where do the bees come in???
well we need a new major focus for next year for the centres etc and my idea is to have bees! its realy as simple as wanting to do a little good and keep our farm interesting to visitors! as for me getting involved i think the best thing is as sugested that i just do the backroom stuff and get aomeone else to run it. but yes 3 of us will be going on course this winter!! and i am looking forward to that! anyway hope that gives a little more insight into what we do and what we want to achieve with bees. i hope no one thinks its a sneaky addvert for us.. so i have intentionaly kept our indentity out of it
i have farmed for about 35 years but grew up on a farm so i have been around farming all my life. the last 6 generations of my familly also farmed.
BUT. farming on the kind of scale we do (210 acres) dosnt pay the bills! not theese days anyway. so when i took over the smallholding about 15 years ago (technicaly anything under 350 acres isnt a farm) i was faced with a dilema... the place was going bust we did alot of things the old way and tried not to use fertiliser and pesticides. this meant we didnt get full yield from the land we had wich meant we couldnt be viable. so i tried for 3 years to do things the "modern way" and brought huge ammounts of various chemicals and sprayed them like i was demented.
it didnt take long to reach the conclusion that while our yield had gone up around a misely 4% i no longer worked fields with the sounds of birds and wildlife around me, it mostly seemed to0 have GONE!! so work wasnt fun anymore, the bank was still on my case we had no money no wildlife no FUN!!!
i did what most do at this point...i went to the pub. sat at the bar bored the rear end of the barmaid for a couple of hours, then started talking to a "old boy" who was previously head farm hand for NOAH. apparently he confirmed what i already kind of knew, farming unless on a huge industrial scale just isnt viable. but we drank more beer and talked more and more "dangly male bits" and i decided to forget working and just spend a couple of years doing what i liked
i will skip over the boreing bits but basicaly i decided to diversify and go off into other areas of farming.. so what we do now is run holiday centres that specialise in running courses for people who want to get a small holding, we run aroun 30 courses ranging from keeping a couple of sheep all the way to breeding RHEAS!!!! we are also open at weekends to the public, we have a visitors centre and educational centre that schools and various groups use.
everything we do we try and do working with the country side not against it. having said that we do use meds when needed etc so we are not what is strictly classed as organic.
every 6 -12 months we change what we call the major focus of our centre this keeps people coming thru the door as we are never the same each time they visit. for example when we did the pond stuff we had (and still do have) great crested newts etc so we had a large exhibition up in the visitors centre with loads and loads of info and pictures of the wildlife ponds and various things that lived in them. it was very sucessful with over 700 visitors a week, (we charge a small entrance fee) we also have a shop and we sell various related stuff in it.
we have guided nature walks etc etc. but to get back to the point we also hire out ..............poly ducks!!! ok there normal khaki campbel ducks but we hire them out at £1 a day for people to get rid of there slugs and snails from poly tunnels and gardens!!! nothing clears bugs like ducks and chickens
so where possiable we try and show people the cheap easy natural way of doing things. the added benifit to us is we breed ducks and various other fowl and alot of people end up buying a duck or chicken or 3 from us.so where do the bees come in???
well we need a new major focus for next year for the centres etc and my idea is to have bees! its realy as simple as wanting to do a little good and keep our farm interesting to visitors! as for me getting involved i think the best thing is as sugested that i just do the backroom stuff and get aomeone else to run it
. but yes 3 of us will be going on course this winter!! and i am looking forward to that! anyway hope that gives a little more insight into what we do and what we want to achieve with bees. i hope no one thinks its a sneaky addvert for us.. so i have intentionaly kept our indentity out of it 
