Hello and welcome to our first seasonal newsletter. We hope to have this with you quarterly so that it covers the seasons of the farming calendar and also the tourism calendar in and around Galloway.
So, where to start?
Our lodges have been busy throughout the summer, and we have been so lucky to be able to welcome back guests who have made us a regular feature of their holiday calendars over the years. We’ve also had lots of new guests stay with us this year, some of whom have booked again for next year while they have been staying, and that’s a huge compliment for us too. It’s been a trickier year for bookings though and some gaps in our calendars have taken a while to fill, but we’ve got there eventually. It seems to be quite a national problem, so we have taken the initiative to open our short break calendar from 1st September this year, in the hope that guests will be able to join us for a few days rather than have the commitment of a full week. As we always have the farm to think about, we rarely can commit to a week away during the summer but can manage a short break sometimes. Perhaps you are in a similar situation.
This year, (because of the weather or just being a bit better organised?) we were able to get 8 days away from the farm and spent a few days in Yorkshire visiting our eldest son before travelling down to the Cotswolds. We spent two days at The Great Yorkshire Show in blistering heat and had a wonderful time seeing everything from tractors and equipment to cattle judging, sheep shearing and of course, my favourite – shopping. We didn’t see much stock in the Cotswolds, but lots of beautiful interior shops (I didn’t want to leave) and a trip to Jeremy Clarkson’s pub and farm shop. There were soooo many people at The Farmers’ Dog! Clarkson is doing a great job for British Farming, loads of our guests have watched his programmes and we always get lots of questions. That’s great as we are firm ambassadors of telling the farming story.
The weather. We are always a bit cynical about weather reporters when something happens in the south, but we saw for ourselves how dry and parched the land is. Thankfully now there has been rain, the countryside will begin to turn green again, but even we have trees shedding dry leaves by the bucket load this past week and we wonder if it’s because of the dry weather or is autumn upon us?
We’ve been able to gather a wee bit of publicity for the lodges from random places this summer. Our lodge manufacturer exhibited at The Royal Highland Show for the first time and asked us if we would mind being featured on their stand. That was a fairly big ‘Yes, please’. They used some of our drone shots and when made up into large exhibition pieces looked amazing. A few weeks ago, the farm was featured in the Farmers’ Guardian, and the lodges got a shout out there too. We find it incredible how far reaching these things can be and are blown away by messages and calls on the back of them. Our socials have been lacking somewhat over the summer, so we have plans to get back on that imminently. For those that have visited us here at Bengairn Lodges you will be aware of how the farm functions around the lodges, and you will have witnessed, at some point, Robin and Finlay on tractors, farm bikes or pickups tending to their sheep and cows. You will know what our farm and our stock mean to us and you may therefore be concerned about how we are faring now that Bluetongue virus has ‘landed’ in South West Scotland. At time of writing there are 16 Infected Premises around us. So far, we are ok but it’s a ticking time bomb. Our stock suffering is one thing, the damage to our business with movement restrictions is another and so we just have to hope that some cold weather, an early autumn, a nip of frost, will come soon to kill off the dreaded midges. We soldier on regardless – as any farmer will do in the face of adversity – tough as old boots!
Thank you for hanging in there and getting to the end of this. I’ve not mentioned anything in this edition about the birds on the loch and the wildlife around us, we are so consumed by the farm at the moment. Let me know what you’d like to hear about!
All the best, Fiona
