What made me give up on showing Rough Collies and breeding the odd litter was this wonderful good life that I was enjoying and kept me busy. Here is part of my story.

LIVING THE GOOD LIFE IN NORTH WALES.

Over the years, I've had all kinds of animals - chickens, ducks, jersey cow, goats, sheep - but pigs are my absolute favourite.

Pigs have become a bit of an obsession with me over the years, so I've set up this blog

I bred pedigree Middle White and Large black  pigs – both being on the rare breed pig list.

The pig is a magnificent animal and a must have on a smallholding. He will eat anything, and will clear undergrowth.
              

THE MIDDLE WHITE PIG.

Used to be known as “The pretty ugly pig” . It has an upturned snout and doesn’t dig as much as other pigs, but grazes quite happily.

I love this pig because of it’s temperament, quite docile and wonderful mothers.

The pork that we had from the Middle White pig was the best ever, together with the sausages, ham and bacon. By eating your own produce you know what you have put into that pig

THE LARGE BLACK PIG.
Another of my favourite pigs which I bred. The Large Black is a long, deep-bodied pig, well known for its hardiness.  It is the only pig breed in Britain to be all black and helps protect the pig from sunburn in sunny climated.  Temperamentally, the Large Black is a very docile breed which is easily contained by fencing.  This is partly because its large, drooping ears obscure its vision although they also help to protect the face and eyes while the animal is foraging, especially when rooting in dirt.  I must say though the piglets are very vocal, but are absolutely beautiful.

OUR CHICKENS would follow the pig, when that splendid animal is rooting away and the chicken will snap up any worms and whatever else turns up.

OUR JERSEY COW was fantastic. The Jersey makes the best house cow and has the richest creamy milk of all the cattle. The milk came up trumps for feeding the piglets, they just loved it .We used to put the jersey cow to an Aberdeen Angus or Hereford artificial insemination and had some lovely calves from it.

From our Jersey milk we used to make cheese, yoghurt and once or twice we tried some butter, my better half having the bright idea of putting some cochineal colouring in it which made it a nice pinky colour.  Looked quite nice really but not for visitors. It tasted exactly the same as butter regardless of the colour.

Over the 20 years of smallholding I also had Shetland ponies, bred and shown. 

My ponies, most of them were black and standard size. I had one that was chestnut but did not show her as she was impossible in a show, but she was still a good part of the herd.

Showing Shetland ponies was a very enjoyable part of having the ponies. A lot of hard work preparing them, especially with our british weather. We would spend days and days getting them ready for shows and in no time they were back outside rolling in the mud. The day before the shows we had to keep them in to make sure that they would stay clean. It was all good fun. We used to do thirteen shows between May and September and met some lovely people every year.

One of my black standard shetland Darkie used to pull a two wheeler cart and four wheeler cart and we had so much fun with this.

I used to take her to the Shire Horse Show that was held every year in our area and she was the greatest attraction there amongst all these gentle giants, and there she would be running around the field with children in the cart giving the children a lovely day out. I think that she had more of the attention there than the Shire horses did.

Sadly part of this life had to end due to the unexpected and sudden death of my husband.

My lovely Rough Collies kept me sane in those following months and kept me going. Had to face life, had to go out walking with them and even ended having a litter with Molly. My life then carried on, but could never forget the good life on my smallholding in North Wales, but life did still go on and returned to concentrate on my Collies followed by my Glorious Life in France.

MY GLORIOUS LIFE IN FRANCE

I had my two rough collies (Molly and Tessa) and of course there was my little Lhasa Apso which I called little sophie. Little Sophie was such a fun dog. The collies loved her and she ran rings around them which they loved to join in with her.

The house that we had in Brittany was the most beautiful and enjoyable house we would ever have lived in. It was in a beautiful village called Mael Carhaix right in the centre of Brittany. It was said that there were seventy british families living in this village together with all the other French families. We did not really get involved with any British people as it was very difficult coming across them. However we had a very nice British couple that used to live opposite us in this beautiful hamlet of seven houses and they helped us settle in very well and we enjoyed the French way of life. 

In all we travelled to Brittany eight times in the eighteen months that we lived there. We could not stay away from this gorgeous place and only came home to the uk to keep an eye on the property that we were trying to sell here.

Who could not fall in love with a place like this. Our Calm, peacfull rural retreat. We had such a happy time here, and from this place it allowed us to discover the beautiful Brittany and it's magnificent coastlines.

Lovely walks by the canal.

Nantes Brest Canal.

Alwyn and dogs in our park.

Myself with dogs in our park.

This was the main motorway through centre Brittany the N164. It was always this quiet.
So different to the UK.

The beaches down South Brittany were a pleasure to go on. They were clean, water was clear and so quiet.