Year 4 at the Smallholding

18 October 2026  |  8 min read

So today marks the 4th anniversary of us moving to our 2.5 acre smallholding in north Wales. I can't believe it's been 4 years already - it feels like 5 minutes ago that I was writing my 3 years at the smallholding post.

Last year's update wasn't as positive as previous years thanks to us having to get a new roof, which cost a shit tonne of money, and caused leaks all over the house. But I'm happy to say that the update for this year is mostly positive. I ended last year's post by saying:

If next year I can get the polytunnel and conservatory done, I'll class that as a win. I'd love to get a quad bike for towing the flail too, but again...money.

Unfortunately there's no poly tunnel, no insulation in the conservatory, and no quad bike in the barn. Let me explain...

Goats

In March of this year we decided it would be a good idea to get some goats. My wife had been talking to a goat farmer in mid-Wales for a few months, and we decided the time was right to get some. So we ordered 4 male pygmy goats and brought them home in the back of the car!

Our first 4 goats arriving home

While we were at the farm, the farmer showed us a beautiful half pygmy, half "normal" goat and her 2 kids, along with a little pygmy goat that followed her around like a lost puppy. We immediately warmed to all of them, but we couldn't fit them in the car, so we had to pass.

After a week or so of thinking about them, my wife decided to head back down there and pick them up too. So we ended up with 8 goats all together. I'm really glad that my wife decided to get the second batch, as the mum (now called Betsy) is so friendly and one of my favourite of the group.

Betsy being lovely (as usual)

Improving their home

We're very lucky to have a pair of stables at the back of our property, one was already used by the chickens, so we setup the other for the goats. However, the stables and surrounding needed some work. We had to:

• Install a land drain and level the ground
• Extend the hard standing around the stables
• Get some fencing installed
• Replace the doors and windows
• Install ventilation and power
• Create a "rock wall" for the goats to play on

Unfortunately this all took up what little budget we had left following the roof, so the poly tunnel and insulation in the conservatory had to wait.

We completed the renovations on the stables and both the chickens and the goats now have a lovely little home that has lots of space, but (more importantly) meets their needs.

Goats and chickens on the rock wall

Here's a little gallery of how the work progressed on the stables:

Chickens

As well as goats, we decided to add to our flock of chickens, but instead of just buying more we wanted to do it a little differently. We have a rooster now, so all our eggs are fertilised and we decided to try and hatch some eggs instead. We also wanted to get something a little different, so my wife bought some guinea fowl eggs, which we put under a broody hen to see if they would hatch. They did, and we ended up with 5 beautiful (but noisy) guinea fowl.

The guinea fowl were a great success - 5 of the 6 eggs hatched. So we decided to attempt the same thing with some of our chicken eggs, especially since a fox had gotten one of the hens and we wanted to hatch some of her eggs. Unfortunately we had no broody hens at the time, so we decided to buy an incubator and cheat.

We attempted to hatch 12 eggs, but only 3 were successful unfortunately. We think 2 of them are roosters too, so we will see how that goes as they grow up and undoubtedly challenge their dad. We're thinking about doing it again this spring, but we're worried about having a plethora of roosters and what we will ultimately have to do to them. 💀

Finally I installed some new perches for the chickens to roost on in the evening. Below is a removable shelf that makes things way easier to clean.

Another blow

So at this point we had used up everything we had saved. We had literally nothing in our savings account. Then we noticed that our older dog, Tia, who's 14, was getting very smelly breath and whenever she was chewing her favourite ball, her mouth was bleeding.

So we took her to the vets and they told us she had a fairly common type of benign tumour growing in her mouth. Although it was benign, it was very aggressive and if left untreated she would have 6-12 months if she was lucky. And it would be a very uncomfortable end for her.

We had to get it looked at, but this was going to cost thousands and in a 14 year old dog, I wasn't sure if it was worth it. The last thing we wanted was to put her through all this only to find out in a few months that she had another terminal condition that would end her life anyway.

I know that sounds heartless, but I think at times like this it's important to be practical and take into account how much the dog will suffer, and whether we're doing it for us, or them.

She needed a CT scan on her jaw to see if surgery was viable, so we decided to get a full body CT scan done instead. This would give us a good indication if anything else untoward was going on in her body. Lucky for us the CT came back all clear and the surgery on her jaw was viable, so we went ahead.

Three operations, 1 infection, and lots of discomfort later for poor Tia, and she's now fully recovered after having around 40% of her lower jaw removed. Unfortunately for her, this means her rather large tongue often dangles out of her mouth these days. But we think she's still gorgeous.

As if this wasn't punishment enough, we also got a new puppy, Nelly, at the same time that Tia was going through all this. So managing a sick dog, a new puppy, and keeping 2 kids entertained during their summer holidays really wasn't a fun time.

We had bought Nelly way before we knew Tia was sick. The kids knew she was coming, and we had all met Nell multiple times. So although we knew it would be a nightmare, we didn't want to renege on buying her. Let me tell you, dear reader, it was rough. Like, really rough, but we're glad we stuck it out because Nelly is beautiful and such a wonderful addition to our family.

What's next?

Tia's surgery ended up costing us around £6,000 (~$8,000). We already had no money, so it had to go on a credit card, which we will pay off over the next few months.

Our plans for year 5 are the same as year 4, I think - we'd love to get a poly tunnel in and the roof in the conservatory insulated so we can use it all year round. But we will need to see how the finances go - hopefully there will be no more unexpected expenses for a little while. We can only hope.

In the meantime we continue to enjoy our brood of various animals and the little plot we call home.

Homelife

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