A Dream Life In Scotland

Hi everyone, thank you for joining me because today I have such a beautiful story and it's a story about my friend Barbara and her husband Martin and I met Barbara at school. She was the head of religious education. I've known her for maybe 12 or 13 years. I always remember Barbara as rushing past my window from lesson to lesson, stack of books this high. She always seemed to be running everywhere. We used to laugh about it together. Anyway, Barbara left school four years ago. She went back down to Cornwall but the story of her and her husband Martin is so beautiful because she said as a small child she always dreamed of having a smallholding and they talked about it together all that time. They met and got engaged when Barbara was 17 and Martin was 25 and then they always dreamed of doing this all that time and 50 years later they finally have what they've always wanted and they moved to the Scottish borders to a place called Ashkirk which is about 50 minutes away on the train from Edinburgh. Jedburgh is about 30 minutes away she says and it's also near the Ettrick forest which was where William Wallace, those of you historians will know about William Wallace and he apparently trained his men in that forest. So she's moved to a village called Ashkirk which she said is just a sleepy, peaceful, old-fashioned, historic little village. It has all the old traditional butchers and bakers and a nice quiet life, the life that she loves and it's full of independent and individual shops. They moved there three years ago mainly to be nearer to their son and their daughter-in-law and their little granddaughter and then since moving there they discovered a rescue centre for animals called Noah's Ark in the Scottish borders and since then they have acquired two pigs, they have sheep, they have ex-battery hens and she is just living the dream. She still does do a little bit of teaching but she prefers she says to be mummy pig and she has very very kindly made a video for us so that we can share her beautiful dream. So let's go over to Barbara and have a look. Here are our lovely sheep. Hello Aita. Hello. Hello gorgeous. Hello. Hello Bridget. Oh here's Oswald. Oh look at lovely Oswald. Oh yes. Come on Oswald. Oh beautiful. Beautiful. Oh yes. Lovely. There's little Winifred. Here is the living roof I planted with my granddaughter. Lovely. I've never been able to grow albricia, never ever anywhere even in Cornwall and for some reason I've got albricia. I mean obviously they're going a bit now but they've been splendid on this living roof. Hello Bridget. Sweetheart. This is the pig field. The pigs are not up yet. I mean they don't get up for ages. There's their tyres to play with and then beyond those trees there's another area but I won't walk up there at the moment because it would take quite a bit of me sounding breathless getting up there. Next field across has got horses in it but that's not our field. The wood is not ours sadly. These trees, none of them are actually fruiting at the moment. We did get two pears, little stubby pears but they just fell off or the sheep got them. One of the two. We've tried planting little hazels and cherry but I'm afraid the story of our life in this field is that the sheep get it. This is the dog field and the sheep are going to be ticed back into their own field very shortly but it's very nice for them to come in here and they keep the grass down so we don't have to mow it which is always very helpful. We have had lots of potatoes already. These are our Christmas ones, these stubby and this was supposed to be the pride of our field. It was a living willow fence but the sheep love willow and I mean you can imagine this would be absolutely splendid if it was living and there were green shoots on it but at the moment we're just going to take it down and replace it with something when we think of what. So we've got water at this point, we've got water down there and that really is very very helpful for when you give water to your animals and it has frozen over in the winter but it's only in very extreme circumstances and so it's really quite a nice reliable source. We've got trees here from the Woodland Trust and we've had them now for at least two years and they're starting to come up off the top. It's mainly rowans, oak and birch and this is a lovely little area. I'm sure animals come in here at night and have a little shelter. We've planted all around the outskirts, you can't see them for the weeds but we have planted a lovely hedge which I think in years to come will look beautiful and this is where we keep our, oh more sheep but not mine, and this is the area at the moment we're rebuilding the stone wall. That's been a quite an ongoing project and this is the bit we're going to be working on and some friends are coming next week to help us get the stones there ready. This is the area that we are planting where the sheep can't get it, quite crucially. All the dogs do anything unmentionable to it and yeah we've had some lovely, the turnips will also be winter fodder for the sheep and this is our second lot of purple sprouting and greyhound cabbage and lovely borage, oh these will be gorgeous next year. These are globe artichokes and we've got more purple sprouting, lovely marigolds, leeks, willow and my favourite pyracantha dotted around. We've had a lovely harvest of broad beans almost coming to an end, about to start with the brussel sprouts. We've got jerusalem artichokes to share with the pigs, crab apple tree, hoping to make some crab apple jelly. We had lovely potatoes from this area, the potatoes have grown best and just here out in the open we got a magnificent harvest from those more jerusalem artichokes and this is our kale, purple sensation. It has been absolutely magnificent, really really lovely in salads, stir fries, delicious. We've got, I'm not quite sure what that is because it's never actually produced anything but it keeps promising to give us some so I'll leave it. Hopefully my michaelmas daisies will pick up and we've got a black currant tree there, a bush, a plum tree, again very new so not actually fruiting. Oh yes, our currant purple sprouting, broccoli, the beans were delivered very late and we've had to plant them very late and unfortunately I don't think they're going to do much. And there's a lovely apple tree, cox's orange pippins. This is our area for the wildlife and of course we've got lots and lots of comfrey which is excellent for the tomatoes and to put as a mulch and it's also excellent for the composting area. Hello Tennessee darling, hello sweetheart, lovely nose, yes it's gorgeous aren't you? Are you gorgeous? Oh little puppies, little puppy. I feel quite emotional after watching that because somebody has realised their dream, 50 years of dreaming and Barbara is one of the loveliest ladies that you could ever hope to meet and she used to work so hard when we were at school and she used to live in Essex. Her husband was down in Cornwall a lot of the time so she would be rushing backwards and forwards and she's finally got the life that she always wanted. Keep dreaming everybody. I'm Jeanette, I'm The Enthusiastic Gardener. Thank you so much for watching, bye.