Congratulations .......

It was so lovely to hear the news that Lisa Faulkner and John Torode have become engaged, Lisa has been here to stay many times and presented the programme on ITV called Holiday Home Sweet Home, which we featured in, we had the Feather Down tents then, back in 2012. Before that when she won Masterchef in 2010, she was here on holiday and we all watched the final on our tv in the tractor shed. Lisa is so lovely and we wish them lots of love and happiness.

News on the farm - it has been a mild winter and I am sure that there are many farmers out there heaving a sigh of relief as winter feed for many was short, this is following a long winter last year and a very dry summer. We were lucky and it looked like we had enough food to carry us through. We have struggled this year with lots of pneumonia in our calves – it has been the perfect weather, Adrian is convinced that we will pay for this mild winter at some point. We completed our TB testing last week, this was done over a couple of weeks including New Year’s Eve and I am pleased to say that for the moment we are clear. We are always dipping in and out of being clear so whilst I am generally a cup half full kind of person, when it comes to TB, I am the opposite. Last year we went down when we should have been selling animals, we did go clear in the end but the price of cattle had dropped as farmers were concerned about their feed stocks. Whilst our cash flow was affected because of the price of cattle, we had to change our John Deere Gator as our old one was worn out, I have attached a photo, although by the time the children get to ride on it in the summer, it will have attracted a lot more mud.

News on the campsite - Harry and Hermione are still here, they are so sweet that I can’t part with them, they are currently shut in the car park to eat the grass off  and to keep them out of gardens but they are bored and they miss running around the farm and hamlet. The final piece of news is that we have decided to bite the bullet and purchase a hot tub, we look at this every year and finally have purchased one. It is going to go with the two storey lodge, I dither so much and I keep looking at where to put it and I think this is where we have finally decided to site it.

We are looking forward to opening again and thinking about it now daily, I cannot believe that we are nearly ¾ of the way through January but first we have a holiday to fit in, as well as many other things. I saw this quote by Henry Kissinger and it rang so true – “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full”.

Hopefully I will write again in a couple of weeks, until then - love from Cornwall X