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Tyn-y-Mynydd lambing week - There are many short lambing courses designed to give the would-be shepherd a brief introduction to the mysteries of midwifery, and very useful they are too! I attended some myself many years ago, and am very glad I did.

However, over the 20 years that have passed since then, during which time I've been shepherding flocks both large and small (and sometimes lambing as many as five flocks/year), it has often occurred to me that one important element is missing from most short courses. Possibly the most important element of all - the ability to really understand sheep. It is this ability, intuition almost, that enables the knowledgeable shepherd to read the behaviour of the individuals in the flock, identify problems before they occur, and nip any potential crisis in the bud. This is knowledge born out of experience and observation, and this is why we now run a lambing course here at Tyn-y-Mynydd farm. Our experience of contract shepherding under a wide range of different management regimes has enabled us to develop a "best practice" system which, combined with new livestock housing, provides an ideal environment for us to offer a lambing course with a difference - a four day, round-the-clock, residential course for smallholders with a serious interest in sheep.

Our aim is to put across a holistic approach to the lambing time routine. We strongly believe - and have proven time and again - that the success (or otherwise) of a flock at lambing depends not so much on obstetrics, but more on having the right management system in place, the right sheep for that system and, above all, the right relationship between sheep and shepherd. Get that lot sorted out and other problems simply don't occur!

Keeping poultry, sheep and pigs at Open Air Museum - The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum near Chichester, West Sussex, is holding two practical, informative and highly enjoyable courses in poultry husbandry and keeping sheep and pigs in 2008. These well-attended day schools are aimed at both complete beginners, and also those who already have animals but need to increase their knowledge. These day schools form part of a series of many long-standing and popular courses with a farming and countryside theme hosted by the award-winning museum.

Poultry husbandry, on Saturday April 19, and Small farm animals: Sheep and pigs on Saturday May 17 are led by David Bland, an expert on the keeping of small animals. The days are packed full of information on handling, housing, hygiene, breeding and regulations, and participants are encouraged to send in any questions prior to the day so that specific needs are met.

David Bland founded SPR Centre (Southern Poultry Rearers) in Eastergate, West Sussex, more than 30 years ago, at first concentrating on breeding and rearing several breeds of poultry for free-range egg and meat production. His advice and assistance to new enthusiasts, and his work with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in introducing carded auctions resulted in the general improvement in standards of stock being sold. He is author of several books including "Practical Poultry Keeping" and "Turkeys - A Guide to Management".

Weald and Downland Open Air Museum has education at the heart of its work, and the Museum offers a stimulating and varied programme of courses in traditional rural trades and crafts, including hedge laying, hurdle fencing, coppicing, bee keeping, and much more. It also offers short courses in historic building conservation and courses for heritage professionals.

For more information, or to book a place, contact Diana Rowsell at the Museum on 01243 811464, courses@wealddown.co.uk.

Smallholding for beginners at Bicton - Do you have a smallholding or are you planning to buy a property with land? Are you concerned about the welfare and regulations regarding any animals you keep or are hoping to obtain? Do you dream of setting up a small land-based business and don't know where to start? It may well be that you need some advice.

Location, topography, available access, water supplies and pH of soil will influence how you can use your land. An understanding of current farming and conservation regulations is essential and will influence the development opportunities available, or financially viable. Selection of suitable breeds, siting of livestock and best practice for stock management are all skills that can be learned with guidance from experts in the field.

Bicton College in East Budleigh, Devon, will run a "Smallholding for beginners" course over the weekend February 23/24. Friendly and informal with a mixture of theory and practical sessions over the two days, it's a great way to meet like-minded people and exchange ideas. Topics covered will include: Setting up a smallholding - basic regulations awareness, contacts, helplines/advice organisation; Basic stock tasks - cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry; Basic tractor/ATV operation; Estate maintenance - hedges, fences, gates, water; Wildlife and environment consideration; Grassland management The course will include discussion with someone who ran a smallholding, speaking from experience of setting up and running a small farm-based business. It will be held at Bicton College, and the cost for both days, to include refreshments, is £195.

Follow-up courses will be available for those who require more in-depth knowledge of specific areas.

Lambing for beginners - designed for those new to lambing ewes or those with a little experience who would like to learn more, this will be a practically-based course backed up with some theory. Course content: Care of the ewe before and after lambing; Care of the newborn lamb; Difficult and assisted births; Lamb survival techniques; Fostering.

For more information on this and other courses at Bicton College, visit www.bicton.ac.uk, email shortcourses@bicton.ac.uk or ring Shirley on 01395 562311.

Rural women enhancing profitability of businesses through skills - Rural women across England have enhanced their skills and the profitability of their businesses thanks to a project aimed at women in male dominated industries such as agriculture.

The Women and Work project, developed by Lantra, the sector skills council for the environmental and land-based sector, targeted women who wanted to improve their career options, or were keen to follow up new ideas and create new income streams in the struggling agricultural sector.

They included women already employed in rural businesses, as well as mothers who wanted to get back to work after raising their families and young students looking for their first job in the land-based sector.

Farmer's wife and mother Maureen Ling, whose husband, Dick, and son, Richard, farm near Palgrave in Suffolk, said, "The project enabled me to learn new skills on the computer and to use the Internet to increase efficiency and profits on our 700-acre dairy and arable farm, The Rookery."

The intensive training Mrs Ling received from the scheme also enabled her to give new impetus to her thriving Bed & Breakfast business on the family farm by developing and improving an online website to attract more holiday makers.

Mrs Ling, who takes a special interest in the livestock side of the business, said she had been using an old computer and basic computer skills to help her husband and son as much as possible with recording and feeding formulae.

But she felt frustrated, because she knew she wasn't exploiting the full potential of the computer and Internet age.

Hearing about the Women and Work project from a friend, she immediately called Lantra (0845 707 8007) to see if this initiative could work for her.

The scheme offered free training in any subject they required to the value of £650 and appointed a mentor to guide their progress and help them achieve their aims.

They also supplied follow-up support through further skills analysis following the training to see if any further courses were needed.

Neil Ridley, from Otley College, near Ipswich, who was one of Suffolk's skills coaches for the project, went to The Rookery for a face-to-face meeting with Mrs Ling to assess her skills and discuss how the project could help her. Together they decided that she needed advanced training to allow her to keep up with Britain's rapid move towards computer farming.

"And I haven't looked back since then," said Mrs Ling, who described how she and Mr Ridley had worked together to identify exactly what she required and then she found a local computer expert to provide the advanced training at times that fitted in with her busy farm schedule.

Mr Ridley pointed out that the national scheme provided women of all ages with formal and informal learning opportunities, with a specific focus on leadership, specialist skills, supervisory and management.

"Students were able to set their own programme and time limits in consultation with the skills coach and mentor and the students were in charge of their own training programme, whether it was in-house training, a college course, or some bespoke activity. The skills coach would then ensure that it provided a suitable and recognised course."

Lantra's Women and Work initiative has proved to be a major incentive for many youngsters at Norfolk Young Farmers' Clubs (YFC), where county organiser Ches Broom organised grants for 17 young women for courses varying from website design, trailer handling, chainsaw instructor and administration, as well as food hygiene, and training for leadership roles in business and in the YFC.

"Many youngsters need training, but just can't afford it, so the YFC helped them by providing skills assessments and I would mentor them through the programme. I would discuss what they wanted to do, and then promoted their further development.

"It helped them to get jobs and also acquire the skills they needed to start their own small businesses. The skills coach and mentor were a very important part of the whole scheme, providing essential one-to-one contact".

Creating an edible landscape - The conscious design of human settlements, permaculture, seeks to integrate localised energy generation and green technology, waste management systems, provision of shelter and food production. The latter can take the form of an "Edible landscape", an attempt to mimic a natural ecosystem characterised by a wide ranging abundance of biomass and foodstuffs, zero waste/pollution, high biodiversity and beauty. We advocate a move away from our dependency on the current energy demanding infrastructure and suggest creating edible landscapes around the places we live in an attempt to reduce food miles and consequent CO2 emissions while continuing to maintain a healthy and comfortable lifestyle.

With minimal energy input mutually beneficial relationships between humans and wildlife can be developed and function within the system with the eventual aim of it becoming totally organic and self sustaining. This whole approach can be applied on a garden/backyard scale right through to an entire farm or village!

There are no hard and fast rules with permaculture but using a set of guiding principles we are provided with an approach to problem solving where we work with nature not against it and so we overcome so called "problems" by turning them into solutions. In nature everything is recycled and so we must simulate this during the design process by discovering uses for our "waste" before we create it. This opens opportunities to reuse it by providing for the needs of other aspects of the system and so the many cycles within it are continually repeated.

An example of this is our research into the use of excess pig manure for lining ponds with multiple uses and domestic grey water sources supplying back yard biological filters and ecological aquaculture.

What do we plan for the future? To experiment with the findings of our research with a view to a continuance to help others embrace practical working sustainability through consultancy and design, contracting and training/courses - sharing what we have learnt! www.ediblelandscape.co.uk.

Oaklands Pigs - One-day basic pig keeping courses on Kent/Sussex border - Easy, cheap, but most of all fun. That's what we aim to teach you on our one-day basic pig keeping course. If you thought that keeping weaners was difficult or expensive to setup, then think again. We will show you how to adapt what you already have, or the most cost effective ways of starting up. We began ourselves by buying in a couple of weaners every year and have gradually built up our own herd of British Saddlebacks with litters every month.

Our course is designed to help you avoid the mistakes we made in the early days, so that you can arrange your setup right first time. The small friendly group atmosphere of the course ensures that everyone has plenty of time to see everything and ask as many questions as they want.

We will show you a variety of arcs and environments, from shop bought arcs to DIY versions or making one cheaply from straw bales. We also cover different types of land and fencing to ensure you have happy healthy pigs whatever your budget.

Feeding, veterinary and regulations are also included in the partly indoor and partly outdoor sessions. There will be hands-on time with the outdoor herd, the breeding boars and the sows with litters of all ages.

There is advice on marketing your product, how to tell when your pigs are ready to go and how to find a butcher.

So if you think you would like to see if pigs are for you or you want to expand into breeding, then come along and find out more.

Courses are run every month from March to September.

Visit our website at www.oaklandspigs.co.uk or call us on 01892 852663.

Learning rural crafts in the Peak District National Park - Simon Fowler has been working within traditional rural crafts for more than fifteen years. Simon lives in the Peak District National Park, near Matlock, in Derbyshire, sourcing materials for his products from local woodlands managed sustainably on a long term basis to conserve wildlife. Our training courses are held at Sparklow Wood set in the beautiful Peak District.

We offer a set programme of weekend courses on a range of rural crafts. These provide sufficient practical instruction for you to be able to put into practice these crafts at home.

We are able to run courses for interested groups or organisations on other dates, either at weekends or during the week. These can be tailored to your requirements wherever possible. For certain activities we may be able to come to you.

We also offer more intensive instruction during the week, working alongside a craftsman within a real work situation. Our aim is to provide greater one-to-one tuition with no more than two or three students. Such in-depth tuition allows us to pursue the finer details of the craft, from the harvesting and selection of the raw materials to the final finishing techniques and the product's end use.

We would cover everything from start to finish, including tool sharpening and maintenance, how to overcome specific problems, cover techniques to a greater depth than is possible on a weekend course, and to installation of the final product.

Activities we cover include hedge-laying, coppicing, cleft or riven fencing, gate hurdles and wattle hurdles.

We aim to be adaptable to your specific requirements and to be flexible on the number of days you spend with us. Each day with us can run consecutively or be spaced out over a number of weeks. Please see our advert for contact details.

Rare-breed pig-keeping courses The Whole Hog Ltd, based near Halifax in West Yorkshire, is a smallholding with humble beginnings, initially offering a home to a small number of sheep and poultry. Our adventure with pigs began in August 2004 when we rescued two very large, very overweight (and very infertile!) six-year-old Gloucester Old Spots. It was a year later that, having learnt so much from our two old girls, we began buying in more rare-breed pigs.

A year after that we ran our first course: a one-day introductory course on smallholding. What we found was that most of the people who contacted us had their hearts set on keeping pigs and so we adapted our course accordingly, to a half-day rare-breed pig-keeping course.

And what a pleasure it's been! The courses have given us the opportunity to meet so many wonderful, like-minded people; people who hold good animal husbandry as a priority, people who care about our environment and about maintaining our rare-breeds.

Our courses give us the opportunity to share our huge enthusiasm for these wonderful animals - and wonderful animals they are! At the same time we offer all the information and advice you need to get yourself started with pigs - we cover breeds, buying in stock, health, feeding, housing, fencing, breeding, cost, selling your produce, land management, and all DEFRA requirements.

Our most recent course, on 8 December, was particularly special as our Large Black gilt, Ella, gave birth in the early hours and produced 9 beautiful piglets who we introduced to our course participants as they arrived. Pigs are extraordinary beasts - I don't know who it is I'm quoting, (please enlighten me if you know!) but this pretty much sums them up for me: "A dog looks up to you, a cat will look down on you, and a pig looks you straight in the eye".

If you're looking to make that change in your lifestyle you've always dreamt about, you can't go far wrong with a pig (or two!) for company.

The Whole Hog Ltd course dates 2008: February 9, March 1, March 29, April 19, May 3, May 31, June 21,July 12. Tel. 01422 883697. www.thewholehogwestyorks.co.uk.

12:51pm Monday 11th February 2008

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