Our resident artist at Hoe Grange Holidays, Roger Allan, has had his watercolour painting of our son Elliot accepted for the Royal Watercolour Society's Contemporary Watercolour Exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in London, which runs from 24th February until 14th March 2012. Fame at last!
This painting is a follow up to "Boy with the broken arm" which depicted a glum looking Elliot with his arm in a sling, in front of a Derbyshire winter landscape with a dead sheep in the background. Extremely artistic, but not a picture for my living room wall.
We much prefer this second more cheerful painting of Elliot back to normal, with a smile on his face!
Christmas seems a life time away although in reality it isn't. We have been busy since October with wall repairs as we are in a farm scheme that encourages you to rebuild ones that have fallen down. A few days were lost to wet weather, colds and entertaining but at least the weather has been a vast improvement on last year when we seemed to be on an endless cycle of snow moving and defreezing! We are also in the process of planning a new cattle shed which will fit next to an existing one. We are hoping to fit solar panels on its roof so have been having the various bodies out to cost it all up. We are planning to construct it in the summer but hopefully there wont be too much disturbance. We are in a conservation area so are hoping the planners will approve. Meanwhile frozen ground conditions at present mean we are able to spread the cattle muck so have been busy cleaning pens out. I noticed our daffodils were emering last week so hope this cold snap wont affect them. Lighter evenings are also a sign spring is on it's way.
Delicate and beautiful snowdrops have emerged in our garden heralding the first signs of Spring. Guests staying at Hoe Grange Holidays during February can visit the spectacular gardens of Hopton Hall with snowdrop covered woodland walk and the unusual Crinkle Crankle Walled garden, a gardeners delight!
Winter is the ideal time to carry out restoration work on our traditional dew ponds around the farm. Following on from last year when we de-sludged three of our ponds to improve the habitat for wildlife, this year we have, with help from the Derbyshire Amphibian and Reptile Group cleared a large part of the overgrown pond at the farm entrance.
This pond is home to a very large colony of Great Crested Newts. During the winter, while the newts are living away from the water, it is permitted to work on such ponds without endangering the newt population. During Spring and Summer months work is prohibited due to their protected species status.
Our efforts have been rewarded as we have already seen a Heron visiting the pond now that there is more water and less weed.
"Get Here" and discover the fabulous Peak District and all it has to offer.
View the amazing video of our special area for yourself. You'll find something for everyone here in the Peak District; superb scenery, exciting activities, delicious food, fascinating attractions and a matchless wealth of history and heritage - make the most of your holidays and stay on a farm - Get here, if you can!
In our never ending quest to reduce our carbon footprint, the Boys from LorYan renewable engineering have just finished installing our new photovoltaic solar panel tracking system.
This clever devise follows the sun across the Peak District sky as the day goes on, so that the panels are always at the best possible angle for maximum production of electricity. This should give us a 20% better output from the same panels compared with a south facing roof system.
If all goes to plan and the sun shines as it should do we expect to produce approximately 4, 700 units of electricity each year from the 20 panels fitted to the frame. So far they seem to have been covered in snow!
As you can see the horses are not at all bothered by the installation process and are simply having a good roll in the paddock
We hope to add to our green electricity production early next year with a 12m wind turbine, these two systems together will produce nearly all our need, helping the environment at the same time as protecting us from the ever increasing cost of power which will help the farm and make sure our guests are kept warm and cosy.
Here at Hoe Grange Holidays our newest cabin, Daisybank, has received our highest National Accessible Scheme rating yet, Mobility Level 3 Assisted as well as Visual Level 1 and Hearing Level 1.
Daisybank has a partly adapted kitchen, with a pull out unit under the sink to allow wheelchair users to do their share of the washing up. We have also extended the range of specialist equipment on offer with the purchase a perching stool and a second bed rail to assist with getting out of bed. Our cabins are extremely spacious and are ideal for assisted wheelchair users.
We are used to seeing horses enjoying a stay at Hoe Grange and riding the trails across our stunning Peak District, but this week we had some unusual visitors.
Yorick and Borage, two donkeys in training for a Lands end to John o'groats trek, recently bought thier owners for a intensive training sesion. Every day they set off with their packs and walked about 10 miles over varying terrain using some of the old pack horse route that criss cross the Peak District.
Big news here at Shaw Farm as we have done some hay making using a conventional small baler. We haven't done any for about 10 years as we now make the round silage bales. This year we had 2 small fields and the grass had got a lot of seed heads on which isn't good for silage so did them for hay. It took ages to get all the hay making equipment ready as the trailers hadn't been used for ages and the baler had sat in a shed. However it all worked well except last night as we were bringing the last of the trailers home our tractor had a fit and wouldn't start. George's expertise came to the rescue and got it going!
Every week throughout the summer there are lots of lawns to mow here at Hoe Grange, as all of our self catering log cabins have their own garden area. David spends several hours mowing on a Friday, but this week swopped his usual little lawn mower for something slightly bigger as one man went to mow, went to mow a meadow !
David mowed the grass meadows on the top of Ballidon Moor, ready to be baled for silage for the beef cattle to eat during the winter months.
The grass will be harvested into round bales weighing half a ton each, then wrapped in black clingfilm to keep the air out and prevent the grass from going mouldy. Each bale will feed about 10 cows for a day.
The Green Tourism Business Scheme held an awards ceremony at the Royal Thames Yacht as part of Green Toursim Week , which was a great excuse for David and I to spend a wonderful few days in London and be guests ourselves just for a change!
We were delighted to be Highly Commended for our efforts and fantastic to be in the top 20 greenest businesses in the UK and Ireland quite an achievement!
However there is no time to sit back, we will continue to strive to improve our energy efficiency and introduce new ideas to increase our sustainability and green offerings to guests, such as our new electric bicycles which you can now hire to explore the fabulous Peak District countryside.
Once again Hoe Grange Holidays hosted the Roman & Railway Ramble as part of the Peak District Walking Festival, in conjunction with the Rangers from Derbyshire County Council. Around 25 people enjoyed the May sunshine on this moderate 5 mile walk over the farm fields at Hoe Grange, up through the Royston Grange and back along the High Peak Trail, via Minninglow Neolithic burial mound, before tucking into a delicious farmhouse cream tea.
Come and try our new electric bikes, they may look silver , but they are a very green way of exploring the beautiful undulating Peak District hills!
With a range of 20 -30 miles on a single charge and charging points dotted around the area you can seek out those country pubs and picnic sites, and get a bit of exercise at the same time.
Felicity and I recently took them on the High Peak Trail to the Royal Oak at Hurdlow, had a pint and came home without breaking into a sweat. The things we have to do to make sure our guests get the best possible experiences!
Fantastic news Hoe Grange Holidays has been awarded the National Gold Award for "Access for All" at the Enjoy England Excellence awards held last night at Birmingham University, with host Sandy Toksvig. We are extremely proud being a small family concern competing against some multi million pound enterprises!
It is wonderful to have all our hard work recognised by a panel of Industry experts. The award will go along way to help reassure potential guests that the facilities at Hoe Grange are of the highest standard, so they can book with confidence and come and enjoy the wonderful Peak District countryside, no matter what their access needs may be.
An excellent evening was had by all last night at the Visit Peak District and Derbyshire Excel awards held at Chatsworth House. The great and the good of the local tourism industry were celebrated in an Oscars style evening, including a three course meal with delicious local foods. David was particularly thrilled to receive the "Outstanding Contribution to Tourism" Award, a testiment to his hard work and dedication.
At Old House Farm we have had a very busy winter, what with the snow and ice making the daily tasks take twice as long to complete on top of which we have embarked on a new shed for the milking cows. The cows should move in soon which is quite exciting but of couse the cows dont have a clue whats going on but they will like the extra space. Our daughter has been looking for a job since October with no joy until last week and she now has a temping job in her field, maybe a post will come up and she will be offered a contract, we can only hope. It has also been a hard winter with all our cost increasing but no increase on the price we are paid for the milk.
Since the last entry in November we've managed to finish the drainage it just needs a good roll (with a machine!) and grass seed putting down. Yesterday it was great to see field fares and redwing rooting in the soil in the above field. The grass is starting to green up and catkins are out as are buds on the trees.The daffs are also making an appearance. We have applied and got into a scheme that helps pay towards the cost of repairing our stone walls and creating scrapes (shallow pools where peewit and snipe and other birds can go rooting. We have made one and are planning another.
Well hear she is the 2nd calf to be shown from Bassett Wood Farm, by Emily Moore this year. They came 2nd at the Manifold show. William wanted to show a beef calf this time.
The Hens are Laying again
Sun 30 Jan 2011
The days are gradually getting longer and so the hens are starting to lay a few more eggs for us. In commercial flocks they use artificial light in the chicken houses to create an artificially long day and so fool the chickens into laying for longer periods than they would naturally. We obviously don't do that and have to rely on natural daylight hours. I collected 8 eggs this morning so plenty to do some cake baking, with some to spare.
The snow came early this year it started to snow in November. this made life quite interesting, pips to the water troughs froze on a daily basis. So each day it was the first job of the day to defrost the pips in the cattle's buildings. We were able to defrost the tractors when the keys froze in the ignitions by using hair-dryers. With all the problems the weather brought it was still very beautiful.
With all the work on our new Daisybank log cabin David has got a little behind with the farm work and has spent the week muckspreading, trying to catch up. With all the beef cattle inside the sheds for the winter it's amazing the amount of muck they can generate in a relatively short space of time!
Good news on the egg front - our free range girls have at last started laying again - the first since the snow in ealry December. David was beginning to despair, they must have heard him threatening the cooking pot!
The wall in the picture has been totally re built as the original wall had fallen many many years ago, in fact Bez can never remember it being up. Instead there was a post and wire fence. To restore this wall we had to try and recover as much original stone as possible which involved Bez digging by hand with a pick and shovel. Over the many years the stone had become buried under the ground as grass grew over it so by digging it all up Bez made rather a mess! however he did preserve all the turf so that we could re turf it, which is what we did yesterday.
Our new Daisybank log cabin arrived at Hoe Grange on the back of two low loading lorries today. It wasn't long before the team from Island Leisure had them unloaded and towed up the hill into place on the concrete pad. It took two of our tractors to pull the second half up the hill as it was much heavier with both the kitchen and bathroom inside. See our blog and Facebook page for more photos and video!
Be the first to stay in Daisybank from 18th to 25th Feb and receive a FREE bottle of champagne to celebrate
Well what a difference since the previous entry weather wise. We could now be doing with the rain stopping!! It started end of July and has apart from the odd week not really stopped (us farmers are never happy)We've now got the milking herd inside on winter rations. They had to come in full time on 3rd November. We still have most of the youngstock out and when it's really blowy they sit down under the walls where it's nice and sheltered.We've been replacing a big stone drain with a new plastic one.Luckily we have our own digger as it's taken some time fitting it in round all the other jobs
'Daisybank' our fourth self catering log cabin is well underway in the Island Leisure factory at Perth, Scotland. Delivery to us here in the Peak District will be some time in early December. Its design is almost the same as our Rainster cabin with adjustable wash basin in the shower room and spacious entrance hall for Wellies, rain coats and riding gear.
Daisybank will also have an accessible kitchen, and we hope to achieve a rating of Mobility Level 3 Assisted in the National Accessibility Scheme. All four of our luxury log cabins are accessible to varying degrees from Mobility Level 1 in Pinder Cabin and Mobility Level 2 in Hipley and Rainster.
Whether you have special access requirements or you are looking for an ideal base to explore the wonderful Peak District we can cater for almost everybody's needs.
With our new extra cabin we will be able to cater for groups of up to 26, but without loosing that feeling of peace and tranquility for smaller individual groups.
Dannah Farms Summer Competition was drawn on Sunday and the winner is... Mrs Linda Lockwood from Surrey.
The competition was to guess the date Dannah Farm took its first paying guests. Linda correctly guessed that Dannah first opened its doors to the public on the 21st of March 1986.
The competition prize was, double occupancy, on a bed and breakfast basis, for two nights midweek with the use of The Leisure Cabin for one day during that stay. A winter competition with the same prize will be posted on the Dannah site soon.
Visit our Windlehill Farm blog to see what we're doing. It's at http://www.windlehill.btinternet.co.uk/about_us/windlehillblog.html
Gold Award for Access for All
Fri 08 Oct 2010
Hoe Grange Holidays has received the Enjoy England Excellence Gold Award in the Access for All category for the East Midlands region, and the Bronze Award for Self Catering double wammy! Amazing - this is the fourth successive year that we have been successful at the Tourism Oscars .
We are both passionate about our self catering holidays in the fabulous Derbsyhire countryside and it's wonderful to get recognised for all our hard work. We want everyone to enjoy their time with us to the full and have expanded our accessible facilities with a range of specialist equipment, including a mobile hoist, two electric profile beds, a fully adjustable Pressalit Care wash basin and mobile shower chairs.
Guests love the easy access and contemporary home from home feel of our cabins. I believe that this together with our emphasis on quality, and being actively environmentally friendly is the reason why so many guests return.
Come and stay in one of our award winning log cabins in the beautiful Derbyshire countryside and see if you agree with the expert judges!
Another nugget of gold for Hoe Grange Holidays - we have just received confirmation of our Green Tourism Business Scheme biannual audit and are delighted to have retained our Gold award.
David and I are priveledged to live in such a beautiful area and are keen to preserve and enhance our local Peak District environment, so that everyone has the opportunity enjoy the countryside to the full. Come and stay in our cosy log cabins to discover the delights Derbyshire has to offer.
Fantastic news, our new cabin Rainster has just been awarded 4 star Gold by Enjoy England. It was also rated Mobility Level 2 for accessibility under the National Accessability Scheme. It has a superb wetroom shower only missing M3 because of the standard kitchen lay out.
With it's extra little touches, such as log effect fire, LCD TVs, entrance porch, 100% cotton bedding and high standard throughout, it is truly a wonderful base for you Peak District holiday. Why not come and give it a try. See our website for availability
Twix's puppies are growing fast and love playing out in our garden. As there are so many of them our garden is beginning to look a little untidy and a large hole has appeared in the middle of the lawn - I thought it was just in cartoons that you saw dogs digging holes!
Two puppies have already found homes and we are now down to six - Twix doesn't seem to miss them - perhaps she cannot count? or perhaps she is just glad that they have gone!
Imagine our surprise to wake up one Thursday morning in June to find a helicopter, wind machine, actors, extras, camera men etc etc wandering around in one of our grassfields. On closer inspection it turned out to be a film crew filming a scene for a new McDonalds advert who had inadvertently wandered into our field. They needed long grass waving in the wind and our field provided the best effect for the wind scene for their new advert. In the sdvert the helicopter was also used for a beautiful aerial shot with Dannah Farm star of the scene. Use the following link and look out for the wind and aerial view scenes. http://www.moving-picture.com/index.php/commercials/927-mcdonalds-weather.html
Twix our chocolate Labrador gave birth to 8 gorgeous puppies on 7th July, 2 girls and 6 boys!
All the puppies are growing fast and have just opened their eyes for the first time today - children are very excited! We are hoping to keep one of the girls so please give us your ideas for chocolate names - we already have Wispa, Drifter and Maltesers. You can see her first two puppies just after they were born on our You Tube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9IvneP60NM
We have been haymaking this week; with the dry summer the crop is fairly light and there is not the usual volume of grass we would expect. Fortunately for us we are no longer milking cows so just need small bales for the horses and calves. Making small bales is a much more manual task than making the larger modern bales, so it was a family outing to the top fields and all hands on deck.
The conventional balers have a mind of their own and are difficult to set correctly, so to start with we had very light fluffy bales which were great to lift, but bowed like a banana and useless on a stack, then there was the other extreme which were as heavy as lead bricks and I really struggled to lift them at all. Finally with various adjustments we got the bales just about right, and all gathered in before the light rain that followed.
Since the previous diary entry we have had hardly any rain. We made silage at the beginning of June and the pit is only half full. We just hope we can make enough when we do a second cut later on. We have a small area of heather at the top of the farm and last Tuesday we had a 'phone call from a neighbour to say the fire engines were up there putting out a fire. Somebody in the town below had seen smoke and dialled 999. It is a known landmark as there is a wooden cross up there (erected in the 1960's) there are also some nice trees in the heather (planted in the 90's) I know the heather will recover and just hope the trees will. We are just grateful somebody spotted the smoke otherwise it could have been a lot worse
You will be pleased to hear that following the incident with the Fox in the night there are 4 new arrivals at Hoe Grange to keep our golden silky (now named Lucky after her fortunate escape) company well I couldn't leave her all alone. They are all Warrens, a good reliable egg laying breed, and are settling in well, although as you can see from the photo Lucky is not entirely sure about the new recruits!
Disaster at Hoe Grange this morning I went to let our free range chickens out only to find feathers everywhere. In horror I realised that I had forgotten to shut them up the previous evening having just come back from holiday my routine went to pot and I simply some how forgot.
The hazard of a truly free range life is that Mr Fox is never far away and ever ready to take advantage of any such opportunities unfortunately Mr Fox, or more likely Mrs Fox took 13 out of my 14 hens to feed her cubs. I have now got 1 poor lonely golden silky left, who is wondering around looking for her friends. Ever the opptomist I was hoping that at least one other survivor would reappear this evening as dusk approaches, but no such luck.
The ups and downs of farm life in the Derbyshire hills - however on the up side some exciting news Twix our chocolate Labrador is expecting puppies in July.
Welcome to Summer at our Farm we are just preparing to ensile the grass for our winter feed for the dairy cows so hoping for a nice week with plenty of sunshine to help the sugars to rise in the grass. The cows are enjoying the fresh fields since the rain came to moisten the ground and they are milking well. We have a steady stream of cows calving at the moment and all is well.
David and I have been working hard and late to get everything finished for the first guests in our new Rainster log cabin this weekend. From clearing up outside and laying the turf, (helped by clucking hens at least that's what I thought David said) to hanging curtains, washing crockery, cleaning, making the beds and adding the last minute little touches that make it home from home.
Thought you would like to see our kade lambs enjoying the Spring sunshine at Hoe Grange. Our guests love watching them gambolling up and down now that they are out in the big paddock by the log cabins.
Our fabulous new self catering log cabin arrived today on two lorries, all the way from the Island Leisure factory in Perth. All the electrics, heating, bathroom and kitchen were already installed and within a few hours the two halves were in situ on the foundations ready to bolt together. David now has a busy few days finishing off the outside decking and parking areas whilst I am busy sewing curtains and unpacking furnishings and fittings ready for our first guests on 28th May!
The weather over the last week has been amazing, bright sunshine with a light breeze. It feels like the Spring is trying to make up for last years dismal summer! We have been working hard on the new static caravan and a few late nights mean its almost finished with just the garden and path to finish off. Whilst working on the patio today I looked up and realised how incredibly clear and blue the sky was and how quite and peaceful it had been all day. The volcano in Iceland may be causing travel chaoes accross Europe but at least its given us all in the UK a break from the air pollution and faint background whine of jet engines for a few days. Maybe we could ask them shut down UK airspace for just a few days every year. I'm sure we could use climate change as a good excuse for a few days of peace!
The Teams that dress the wells are well on the way to designing and planning the beautiful board dressings. I have started to prepare for the big cake making sessions that I will undertake for 'Teas in the Village Hall' during Well Dressing week. We hope that you will visit us in there. Local cream and home made jam -scones and of course our home made cakes. We look forward to seeing you all. We still have some spaces in the B/B Check the vacancy calender.
New Static Caravan flying high at Shaw Farm
Wed 24 Mar 2010
We have just had an exciting day at Shaw Farm as a massive 70 tonne crane arrived to move our brand new Static Caravan into position. The crane lifted the caravan high over the top of the farm buildings into its new spot next to the other vans. Luckily the weather forecast of strong wind and rain was wrong (as usual!) and we had a lovely calm day.
The entire caravan was lifted up by only two iron bars slid underneath it. The straps from the crane were just looped over the ends with only the weight of the caravan stopping them falling off! I'm not sure our cows would have been too impressed to have their afternoon nap interrupted by a 5 tonne caravan crashing through the shed roof but luckily all went well.
It is now securely fastened into position so we can connect the water, gas, electricity and finish off the patio and garden. Hopefully we will get this completed by the end of April and can start to let it out. Who knows, you could be the first to stay!
Today it appears as though a large mole has been at work in the farm field next to the log cabins, with mountains of dark earth piled high.
But no not a mole, just David digging three large 100m long trenches for the ground source heating system for our cosy new log cabins. The ground source heating works a bit like a reverse fridge and uses a pump to circulate the natural heat absorbed from the ground through the ground loop pipes, filled with a mixture of water and anti freeze, which are buried beneath the surface. Let's hope it works!
This last week Colin Boynton our handy man, also poet, has been rebuilding the garden wall for us. He is making a superb job. We hope you enjoy it when you come to stay.
Drive Repairs
Fri 05 Mar 2010
The weather has played havoc with our farm drive which we share with our Treking neighbors. We have spent 2 days repairing the ruts. Lets hope the weather is kind to us and the repairs last a long time. Keep the speed down when entering the farm. Thank you.
New Cabin for Hoe Grange Holidays
Mon 01 Mar 2010
Felicity and I are delighted that we have been successful in our bid for RDPE grant funding from European Union (EU) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), for the expansion of our self catering business fantastic news! we are now able to build two further log cabins with excellent disabled facilities.
The weather has picked up and we were fortunate to have some brilliant Spring sunshine today as we laid the concrete for the foundations of our new Rainster log cabin.
7 year old William had his first trial at 'showing' a Pedigree Holstein Calf, Ear Tag No UK 162970 400821 D.O.B. 01/03/2009 Named 'Bassettwood Devil Jeanette' at The Manifold Show, where he came 1st. Later on in the year he tried again at The Ashbourne Show and came 3rd. The calf's dam Bassettwood Ramses Jeanette has just had another heiffer calf. I wonder if she will be as good as the first one?
