South Yeo Farm West is in Devon on the Dartmoor fringe, six miles from Okehampton. It’s a beautiful farm in the Culm Measures, with abundant wildlife, supported through a ten year agreement with DEFRA under the Higher Level Stewardship scheme to ensure wildlife, livestock and our farm practices live in harmony. Debbie and Andrew started smallholding many years ago with 3.5 acres, and know what it’s like dreaming over a windowbox, then managing full employment alongside lambing commitments. Since 2005 we’ve run our 108 acre farm with its small fields and many hedges and Devon banks, unchanged since medieval times.
We’ve run our courses for three years with huge success (or so you tell us)and our aim is that you go away inspired and informed, able to decide if smallholding and increasing self-sufficiency is genuinely the life for you. We know that coming on a well structured and intensive training weekend that gives you a real flavour of the life, and an understanding of what’s involved day to day can make all the difference.
“It’s the best course I’ve ever been on – and I’ve been on a lot of courses.” EN, Devon
“I must say again how much we loved spending time with you. It was a great weekend which we cant stop telling our friends about.” SM, Devon
So what we’ve done is create from scratch the kind of training we wish we’d had access to twenty years ago; practical, realistic, thoroughly informative, with answers to lots and lots of questions:
- Introduction to Smallholding: two day course
- Building and maintaining your own website – for farmers and smallholders: one day course
- Living with Livestock – an introduction to sheep, pigs and cattle: one day course
- Intermediate smallholding : two day course, going beyond the basics
- Apples and orchards: planting and rejuvenating your orchard, pressing for juice & cider
- Cattle for Beginners: preparing for your first cattle
There’s no doubt about it – coming on one of our courses can transform your life – at least that’s what participants tell us:
“I can honestly say I am having a ball. It has given me a new lease of life.” AM, Bristol
“We were so enthused and inspired by our weekend with you both, that we have gone for an 11 acre smallholding!!” J+SH, Woking
“We… have sold our place and are moving to a 8 acre smallholding… 5 miles from the beach.” CH, Devon
“Our weekend in Devon confirmed for us that we really want to pursue our smallholding/self-sufficiency dream.” J&VH, London
“We feel so lucky to have found this course and meet such lovely hosts who are happy to share secrets of smallholding and are so down to earth”
Our courses are designed to be lively, interactive sessions, with lots of time spent outside experiencing it for real on the farm (rain or no rain), so that we combine theory with practice and send you away with a real sense of what you can do next. And because this is a working farm, there won’t be courses during April – we’re too busy lambing. We keep groups small – a maximum of eight for the smallholder and livestock days, and just six for the DIY website days – so that you get our full attention. Sitting in the farmhouse kitchen munching our homegrown produce over lunch and tea is the ideal time for dealing with any questions that may not have been answered; recipes and preserving techniques are swapped, life’s dreams discussed, and we find that groups frequently exchange contact details to keep in touch.
It’s important that you know that we run our 108 acre farm ourselves, with only the occasional bit of contract help (for winter hedgelaying, bumping in lines of fence posts and summer shearing), so we do everything else, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. As well as running the farm and the courses with Andrew, Debbie is also a professional trainer specialising in the arts sector and leadership development, and Andrew has delivered plenty of software training in his time. We’ve been doing this smallholding/farming-on-a-small-scale lark together for more than two decades and before that worked in our spare time on a farm for a number of years, so have managed to gather quite a bit of knowledge along the way.
Our courses have been supported by the Duchy College through the Rural Development Programme for England, we run courses for the Devon Association of Smallholders, and we pride ourselves on the professional and intensive nature of our delivery; most participants comment on how they can’t believe how much they learned, or how much fun they had.
Do contact us on 01837 810569 or email debbie@smallholdertraining.co.uk
Our websites: smallholder training and the farm
