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drferox · 6 years ago

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Pig Production

Anonymous said to @ask-drferox: Hi!Two random unrelated questions: What's your favourite smell? sounds weird but I just smelled coffee coming from my kitchen so I thought about it; and second, is the welfare of the animals in pig production well managed generally?(just read your mummy fetus post,tysm,and fot inspired) I don't know much in detail about this but I hear and read a variety of opinions about it and personally don't think it's well managed,but again I don't know that much and maybe shouldn't be asking but I'm(I (II)curious and I trust your opinion. Maybe my problem is with intensive productions specifically buy I dunno. Thank you in advance for your time!

Favourite smell is hard to pick, but frying onions and garlic is hard to beat.

Pig production, and by extension animal agriculture in general, is certainly a hotly debated can of worms to stick with me here and we’ll mostly stick with pig production.

I have been to two different piggeries during vet school, one was well managed and associated with a research facility, and the other was very poorly managed and going broke.

And the poorly managed one was... just bad. It wasn’t deliberate cruelty or abuse as such, but the animals were really just existing rather than thriving and the production was limited. They used dry sow stalls, so the non-lactating sows could only stand up, lie down, eat and drink. They only left those stalls to either walk to the mating pen or into a farrowing crate, which offered them no extra room but at least a little more fresh air. Piglets were born and kept in groups until they were grown up to size, and not given anything remotely close to a toy at all. They’d push and bite you through the wire of the cage because they were curious and you were new, and they’d injure each other for the same reason. Then when they were grown they’d either go up the road to slaughter to grown up further for breeding. The boars would be kept on their own until they reached size and went into a breeding pen for visits. The gilts were kept in a group until they were ready to breed, and once they were bred went back into the dry sow stalls. This was about 2006 when dry sow stalls were still acceptable.

The better managed one was cleaner and had more space, didn’t do silly things with it’s quarantine and offered toys to the piglets, but the basic underlying principles were the same. They used dry sow stalls and farrowing crates... but they had multiple different types of farrowing crate setups as they were researching the effect of those designs on piglet survival and sow welfare at the time.

The animals live. They grow. They’re managed fairly intensively. But I’m not personally super happy with even the good version of this set up because those pigs don’t really get to thrive. They’re not really doing all the piggy things they’re wired to do. You could give them an apple and most of them just ignored it because they didn’t know what it was, and these naturally clever, curious creatures had over the course of years in the system lost their curiosity. Now I think there’s a case to be made there that the loss of interest and curiosity is a symptom for poor mental health and we are probably very bad at recognizing that in pigs.

And while this experience may well be anecdotal, if you get the opportunity it is worth comparing pig farmers to cattle farmers. Ask a cattle farmer whether their cows are happy, or who their favourite one is, and you will generally get some variation of a warm answer, detailing endearing behaviors of that cow and the general impression that not only do they like animals, but they like the environment the animals are in.

Compare than to a pig farmer, who may well like the animals and have favorites, but they’ve never seemed really happy to have those animals in that system. They want to take them out to their own property, or change something about the system they’re working in. They are not as happy about the set up as the cattle farmers are.

Some of the things I’d personally like to change about pig production can be summarized as follows:

Outside access. Let them dig in dirt and run around. A lot of piglets receive an iron injection at birth because they will be deficient, because they never will touch dirt.

But change the breeds. Putting a whole lot of pink-skinned animals with minimal fur out under the Australian sun is a bad idea, as everthing else with that set up gets sunburn and skin cancer. So colored breeds and their crosses. (Tamworths are underrated for this potential, I personally feel, but it’s why a lot of free range producers use black pigs)

Dry sow stalls need to go. I will concede they are useful for lining up the sows, checking them for oestrus, administering medications and so on, but you can do all of that in 20 minutes if you convince the sows to walk into those racks (say, at feeding time) and then let them out again to move around and do normal pig behaviors.

Alternative farrowing crates are also required. Farrowing crates are intended to stop the sow from squashing the piglets, which she will do sometimes even with the crate. It is primarily to protect the life of the piglet. But there are alternatives, including low-tech ones like slanted bars on the walls that slide a sow away from the edge when she lies down.

Now I understand there will be those that stick by their guns and insist the current system is alright, and these husbandry procedures are in place because they’re necessary. Maybe so right now, but we could choose to completely change that system as above, to do better than just ‘alright’ and to let these animals have a life that’s good in some way, instead of the absolute bare and technical minimum.

It might be a challenge, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

#veterinarian #vetblr #pig #swine #meat production #agriculture

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scalpelsister · 3 years ago

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Isn’t vegetarian a lot about environment and also industrial farming? Even still yeah I can see why a person would shift to different patterns after not seeing killing something as repulsive anymore. Or honestly I do find it upsetting but I also see it in certain cases as a part of everything as it is. Death is serious and there is nothing after it. There is a total loss of that organization of matter that could on some level feel and think. But also there was nothing before. And it was always going to be lost at some point unless it was an immortal jellyfish or something.

I just don’t eat anything (including veg) I think hurts the environment for me to get it. So for my area this means almost no tropical fruits but yes carp that is fished to control invasive populations. I also avoid things I just don’t feel right about like squids/octopi or other apes besides me even if they were invasive here. Hell we could list humans as something that even if found dead I don’t feel right about and also find highly likely disease causing to me. Pigs and animals with similar immune systems to humans like ferrets would likewise on that basis alone = no. Dogs and cats no. Really I guess I barely eat anything that could die. Carp fished out of rivers (not farmed) in population control and roadkill. Then there is health and what helps me feel functional to eat vs not eat.

Vegetarianism can be about that, but I think you may be thinking of veganism. Lots of branches and different sub communities there, but tldr vegetarians dont eat meat but do eat eggs and dairy, vegans will not eat any animal product or use any animal product (ie no honey, leather, wool, eggs, dairy, etc). I tried out veganism, but I found their movement is more based in shock tactics than reality + some of the rules dont make sense to me (ie, eating a pet chickens egg, keeping honey bees, using wool- all seem like clearly ethical and eco friendly choices to me- and in the cases of wool and leather vs synthetic fibers, it is not even a comparison. My leather doc martens turn 4 this year, and look great. My vans I got 2 years ago are shredded). I am still interested in ethical farming + environmental health, and have been this whole time, my opinion has just changed on how to do that. For that reason, I do not eat pork or any birds, or any fish / seafood. One, I disliked many of those foods regardless (seafood is so nasty tasting to me lol), but two, outside of farms trying to break the mold, the farming / mass culling of these animals... sucks. Mass fishing is one of the biggest threats to our environment. Certain industry standards methods of care for animals sucks (farrowing crates as they exist on most farms, battery cage hens, and both animals can face rough ends depending on where and how they're dispatched). Cows, on the other hand, do tend to have it better- beef cows are almost always kept with their mom on pasture, occassionally sent to feed lots, and unless they're shipped long distances, their slaughter is generally humane.

I think your views on death are very reasonable- I have slightly different ideas due to my spiritual and religious practice (ie, I believe in spirits and such). It definitely contributes to my ideas on death and mortality. (worshipping an irish goddess connected to death will do that to you lol).

Eating invasive animals is great! I will fully admit that I am currently on the path of restricting my diet less- years of disordered eating = idc if me eating a piece of tropical fruit out of season is bad for the environment. Compared to oil companies and billionaires, its not a very large impact.

Idk how to wrap this up and my phone is dying and also im chronically low energy today, but there you have it! thats where I am at rn.

#asks

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salutethepig · 6 years ago

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My Dad's pigs

Well, strictly, there weren’t his.

OK, I’d better give you some more background hadn’t I? There’s already some words on my Mum in this blog from earlier, so it seems only right that he also gets a fair crack of the narrative whip in my ongoing pig tales. And I’m actually more than a little surprised that I’ve not got around to talking that much about them — except in passing — until now, some years after the blog was started. So, sorry to you both! I love you; it wasn’t a deliberate slight 🙂

But first, here’s a shot of the (in-)Famous Five. Not sure where this was taken but I’m the one on the right in the back row. By the way, you will note that my pristine discriminate suss vis a vis clothes, hair-cuts and general hard-core posing, has always been with me…

Dad had an interesting, varied life. He’d been a merchant sailor on the Russian Convoys in WWII. He’d graduated from the Royal College of Music as a pianist and, initially at least, taught piano, but after he’d met my Mum (met up again that is; they’d split up and gone their separate ways, until Mum went down to Devon and, so her version goes, “dragged him back to Oxford and away from that other woman”), five children came along in rapid succession and it was soon apparent that the measly pay offered a music teacher wasn’t enough to support us all. Taking a cue from his own Dad, he re-trained as an accountant and started working for firms up & down the country. We moved. A lot. By the first 10 years of my life, I think we’d had 4 or 5 different places we called home.

And a couple of early shots of them attending someone elses’ wedding and, in the second, their own.

[I’ve even recently attempted to map some of the houses — it’s available here as The Bulow Clan homes for any of you stalkers out there — and, using Street-view, took a look at how they’re doing now. It’s quite surprising quite how much hasn’t changed from my memories of them, memories in some cases, from over 40 years ago]

Whilst it meant that we were forever making & then saying good-bye to short-lived friendships (at first those children next door, or just along the road, then later, those at primary school), it also resulted in us becoming a superbly well-tuned and tight-knit fighting unit, skilled at packing up one day and then efficiently moving these 7 people, their dog and their furniture to a new location, the very next day. I think I said before that my Mum could easily have organised the Normandy landings — her grasp of logistics was that good. We were the civvie equivalent of the Royal Engineers, moving men, vehicles & supplies through a devastated wasteland.

Here’s a later retirement shot — from the back garden in their nice, newly built, modern house. Finally, my Mum got to have a house that she didn’t have to look after all the time. Didn’t stop her still doing so, mind you…

And then, just like that, Dad gave up the life of an accountant and became a pig farmer. Well, in my memory, it was like that. In all likelihood, it took probably a few weeks or months — at least — to convince my Mum that this wasn’t the most insane idea he’d ever had. Dad was bright (and funny and kind), but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. He also could (and did) drink. And that was a problem at times. I recall being driven by him (in retrospect, a very pissed him) at high-speed around Bournemouth, where we were visiting his parents and after he’d had a row with Mum. He was often pretty useless with money; rather surprising for an accountant and I recall Mum keeping separate little pots for each bill and, once or twice we kids and Mum had to hide silently under the bed and pretend that we weren’t in, when the milkman (or similar dunned debtor) came a’ knockin’.

But become a pig farmer he did. There were, I’m sure, some sharply hissed, unkind words from behind the closed bedroom door or from the front-room, as they discussed it, but again, in my memory, we just effortlessly and calmly segued into our new lives on farms. Dad had always loved pigs, working with them in Devon, so, whilst an unexpected change of tack — at least to us — maybe not a total bombshell for my Mum. Who knows now? But there we were. Living in farm cottages as Dad never owned his own farm; he was always a tenant farmer. But one big advantage of this was that the job came complete with a large house. I’m sure the wages were pretty crap but at least they didn’t have to find rent money and were able to have separate bed-rooms for (most) of us!

Here’s the place at Kingsdown, in Kent. We moved here when I was just 11, from the previous farm in Essex. This was the last one he worked at and it specialised in careful, highly skilled breeding programmes. Now. this pristine, white house is divided into two properties but when we were there, it was all ours. Complete with nests of rats under the garden shed. An endless source of fun for us and the family and farm dogs. Corn fields behind. Bluebell woods on the horizon. And an old Royal Marine training ground further along the farm road — dangerous as all hell, full of collapsing tunnels, hidden drops and unstable sandy banks, so therefore irresistible to us.

And here, the farm buildings that housed the pigs, now looking almost deserted (and a likely asbestos health & safety nightmare), but these were where Dad worked, where we all ‘helped’ him and, from the concrete jetties, where the animals were loaded and off-loaded. The grain store and chute, at the back, was another treasure trove of rats for hunting. Oh, and it also had a large oil-drum sized tub of black molasses given to the pigs to supplement their diet. Scooping a fistful out when no one was looking, was a treat for all of us kids.

And so, as I said therefore, not his pigs. But as far as the porkers and we were concerned, they may as well have been. He loved them. He cared for them. He bedded them down when they were ill, supervised their births, farrowing, feeding, growth and deaths. As a breeding experimental site, we had quite tight access controls (for that time); and the occasional foot & mouth outbreaks nearby meant we often went into lock-down and once — luckily only the once — we had to watch as all the animals there had to be killed and burnt. An horrific sight, sounds and a smell that lingered in the air and clothes and even the hedgerows for days afterward. A lot of us cried that day. Including my Dad.

An earlier farm was also the cause of more than one or two nightmares for me. The pig manure was swept into huge underground pits (using what were, in effect, giant rubberised Squeegee mops) from where it was rather (to me) ingeniously pumped out, through a network of pipes either onto the nearby fields or into tankers for disposal elsewhere. Leaning over the manhole covers, seeing the churning, stinking dark, seething mass below, made me wake screaming in the night as I ‘watched’ Dad slip into it and get sucked away.

Gentle reader? Of course, it never happened. For which I for one am profoundly grateful. He went on to live for another 30 years or so.

But “what about the pigs”, I hear you cry? “Tell us more about them”?

Despite (or rather because of) the intensive breeding attempts, these weren’t anything special — certainly not rare breed types, just pink & large — except in their ability to grow quickly to weight, to be low in fat, to produce large litters. You know, the same as everyone else, the same as almost the entire rest of the world was looking for. We (Dad and his fellow pig-herds) were ‘guilty’ of the crimes I’ve previously excoriated the English farmer for. I suppose we could claim that this was a different time and that we “knew no better”, and in all honesty, I think that’s pretty much the case. I don’t recall anyone then extolling the benefits of the old style pigs — hardier, tastier, able to live outside — whilst calling for them to be retained. The dash for profit was headlong and Dad’s employers weren’t immune to that siren call. So these ones weren’t kept outside; they lived in inside sties. The floors were concrete (although they had huge quantities of fresh straw changed twice daily to move around on, root round in, dig for their food in). Food was generally high-energy pellets. They got given some fruit on occasions. But precisely because this was a breeding farm and the owner was paranoid about infections or diseases from outside, pigs weren’t allowed the scraps and swill from school canteens that we saw used on the earlier farms.

Ideal? No. Unfeeling? Yes, pretty much I guess. The sows had large-ish farrowing crates even then, so the natural bonding that should occur was less likely to happen. We docked tails. We de-tusked the boars. They didn’t get to run around outside, to root, to dig, to play in the way that this most sociable of animals needs to. And whilst I never saw anyone treating them cruelly or unkindly, still, this was a processing operation. I’m not happy looking back at the lives these animals led because of us. I’m unsure how to end this piece. For the time and place, they had a better life than some and Dad was uniformly caring of them. I suppose that’s the best I can say. Somehow though, it doesn’t seem a fitting epitaph for all the work and care and effort that he put into his animals. We never really spoke about this or how welfare for animals had changed when we’d both got older. And I regret that. And I miss him. Of course. But I think he’d have approved of my coming back to write about these lovely creatures. Thanks Bernie. For everything.

Oh, and one last thing? As far as I know, we’re not related to this branch of the extended Bulow Clan. We visited there whilst living in Florida. A beautiful place, calm, green, verdant. And yet. And yet. The stench of slavery — like burning pork — doesn’t wash away, even in the torrential Florida rains…

In 1821, Major Charles Wilhelm Bulow acquired 4,675 acres of wilderness bordering a tidal creek that would later bear his name. Using slave labor, he cleared 2,200 acres and planted sugar cane, cotton, rice and indigo. Major Bulow died in 1823, leaving the newly established plantation to his seventeen year old son, John Joachim Bulow.

After completing his education in Paris, John Bulow returned to the Territory of Florida to manage the plantation. Young Bulow proved to be very capable. John James Audubon, the famous naturalist, was a guest at the plantation during Christmas week 1831. In a letter to a patron, Audubon wrote:

“Mr. J.J. Bulow, a rich planter, at whose home myself and party have been for a whole week under the most hospitable and welcome treatment is now erecting some extensive buildings for a sugar house.” Bulowville, Florida December 31, 1831.

Bulow’s sugar mill, constructed of local “coquina” rock, was the largest mill in East Florida. At the boat slips, flatboats were loaded with barrels of raw sugar and molasses and floated down Bulow Creek to be shipped north. This frontier industry came to an abrupt end at the outbreak of the Second Seminole War. In January 1836, a band of raiding Seminole Indians, resisting removal to the West, looted and burned the plantation. It would never recover. Bulow returned to Paris where he died the same year.

Today, the coquina walls and chimneys of the sugar mill remain standing as a monument to the rise and fall of the sugar plantations of East Florida.

My Dad’s pigs was originally published on Salute The Pig

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anneedmonds · 6 years ago

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This Year’s Family Holiday: The Lake District

This post is what it says in the title: a post about my family holiday to the Lake District. We actually went in June and I meant to write it up then, but it takes me half a year to do anything these days. And it would have been completely forgotten had I not gone online to search for winter sun holidays and remembered that it needed editing and publishing!

It’s that time of year again: the time when I feel absolutely desperate to escape the UK and seek out warm weather. I say “that time of year again” but “that time”, when I have an almost sickening urge to find some sort of heat and sunshine, seems to stretch from around the second week of October until – I dunno – May. So in reality it’s over half the year. Maybe I should think about moving to warmer climes! I haven’t actually been on a winter sun holiday in about eight or nine years, so perhaps it needs more drastic measures? I could “home school” the kids from a beach bar for half of the year… Ha.

Anyway, my thoughts on taking holidays with small children are fairly well documented: it’s not a true holiday, in my opinion. Yes, there might be sun, yes there might be a beach, but can you really relax? Can you bury your feet into hot sand whilst sipping rosé and snacking on oversized olives stuffed with chilli? Can you let the wine go to your head and woozily read some trashy book on your Kindle before slipping off into a deep sleep, sun on your back, sound of the waves gently lapping the shore?

Can you rubber duck!

Maybe it gets better with every passing year – we haven’t been abroad as a family since April 2018, so can’t comment – but I wouldn’t say that I found our one trip en famille as restful as I had hoped.

Which was why for this year’s family holiday we went to – wait for it! – the Lake District. At the start of June we had a family birthday to go to and so we worked the trip around that, but I’m always quite nostalgic about Cumbria anyway because my mum is from there and there are loads of relatives to visit.

Practically speaking, it would probably have been much faster to go abroad. You have to spend a few hours on an aeroplane, frantically worried that your kids might scream and piss everyone off, but then at least after that you’re there. The hot walk over scorched tarmac, the tense passing through foreign passport control, the clunking of the luggage carousel as you nervously wait to see whether your suitcase has made it… At least you feel as though you’re on holiday.

Lake District? We drove for what seemed like about nine weeks. It rained the entire way. We got there in the dark – in the rain. When you go on holiday somewhere hot, they say that it’s the “same shit different scenery”. Getting out of the car in the cold and the rain in the arse end of nowhere wasn’t even different scenery; in fact, as the dog did a poo in front of me and the plastic bag of food I was hauling into the holiday cottage split open, it became abundantly clear that it was, one hundred percent, just the same shit.

We woke, however, to a glorious scene. I had rented a house a mile or so outside of Ambleside, at Loughrigg, and the house fronted the River Rothay. We opened the curtains to a beautiful June day and a view from a picture-book. The river rushed past, metres from the doorstep, providing a constant white noise that had the children sleeping so deeply we had to (for the first time ever) wake them up. Sheep and cows bumbled along in the surrounding pastures, a magnificent view towards Wansfell rose up in the distance. It was proper food for the soul.

Don’t get me wrong; a view doesn’t solve everything – I’m well aware that the attractions of the location were short-lived for toddlers – but it was at least a splendid setting to come back to for the short periods between trips to the toy shop (in the rain), trips to get snacks (in the rain) and trips to the ice cream parlour (in the rain). When it wasn’t raining, we were in the perfect position to go on walks straight from the front door – lots of holiday cottages boast “walks straight from the front door!” but few really deliver. There’s usually a walk, but you have to cross the M5 motorway first, or there’s a walk but only if you’re willing to climb over the farmer’s barbed wire fence and risk being shot at as you traverse the killing grounds to join the public footpath.

There were lots of walks.

In fact, we walked partway up Loughrigg, much to our own disbelief. It was quite steep for a two year-old and a four year-old and both ended up being carried for lots of it, but the sun was shining and the air was clear, we picked our way up the rocky slopes like sprightly little mountain goats.

We also walked to Ambleside a few times, on the most beautiful pathway. Very few cars, lots of walkers. I’d go so far to say that the holiday house was on a Walkers’ Highway. During civilised hours, there were probably two walkers that passed by every minute. (Worth noting if your dog’s barking is triggered by people walking close by!) I quite liked people walking past, actually – we’re so out of the way in Somerset that people rarely pass on foot, so it seemed rather convivial and lovely.

You never really know what you’re getting with a holiday home though, do you? Until you get there. The pictures either “don’t do it justice” and you rejoice at the fact you’ve landed a Farrow & Ball-pimped bargain complete with proper coffee machine and working Netflix, or you open the door to a damp-smelling hallway with laminated signs telling you not to flush tampons and to put the bins out on a Wednesday.

I booked the house through Lake Lovers because, after hours of tedious searching, they seemed to have the best selection of nice properties in the Lakes. I love the holiday houses on Unique Homestays but they were prohibitively expensive, the ones that were still available, because they slept about twenty people. The ones left when I was booking also didn’t take dogs. To be quite honest, I was almost about to bite the financial bullet and confirm an amazing one that looked out over a lake, but then reality did a check on me: would I really be spending my days looking out over the still water, book in hand, glass of wine on side table?

No, I would be spending my days trying to stop Ted from pulling plugs out of wall sockets and keeping Angelica supplied with a constant stream of snacks. (She likes “options”. I have to give her three options and she deliberates for a while, finger tucked under chin, eyes to ceiling, deep in thought, before giving me her choice. It was pretty cute when we started it, a year or so ago, and I could make up ridiculous options so that she chose the one thing I actually had in stock, but now she actually requires three solid options and it’s getting more and more difficult. Why do we start these crazy games?)

So the lake house that looked like something from an interiors shoot was out; a smaller, cuter cottage was needed. But nothing with very low ceilings, and it needed to be remote enough to be quiet but near enough to a nice town that we could go to cafes and see real life people, and so on. Being able to walk to a town was going to be the biggest novelty – I was incredibly excited about this. “I’ll take Angelica to shops when Ted is having his nap!” I said, excitedly, as I was searching the holiday websites. “We can just potter! And we won’t need a car!”

As it turned out, it rained pretty much constantly so we did need the car, but the thought was nice. The walk through beautiful scenery to get to Ambleside took about forty-five minutes but possibly would have taken twenty five had we been striding along as adults. Walking with small children is like walking through a giant vat of treacle, or it’s like having massive lead boots on that have been velcroed to the ground. It’s slow progress and you have to stop every ten seconds to look at a leaf that has fallen into a puddle.

It’s great fun, and I will treasure every single one of these slow-paced memories, but good lord it’s impossible to raise your heart rate above anything greater that “sedentary”. You’d get more exercise reading the paper in a rocking chair than walking with toddlers!

So anyway, we booked through Lake Lovers. The house was good – location great, house well-equipped, not much going on in the way of a garden because it was on a slope but no biggy. I didn’t fall over with interiors lust, but neither was I disappointed. The setting was idyllic, but once you were inside it wasn’t as though it enveloped you – there were large windows, but it wasn’t one of those houses where you sit in an Eames chair with a huge panoramic view rolling out in front of you. But as we know, holiday houses of that ilk cost the same as going to the bloody Seychelles!

We paid £1200 for a week – I’ve just looked at the same place and it’s currently £695, woe is the person who books at half term – plus a refundable deposit. I did look into hotels, thinking that if we found somewhere with a family room that took dogs, it’d work out to be around the same price but

it didn’t, it was about eight billion pounds and

I’m so glad that most places were fully booked anyway, because had we been in one room in a hotel, with a dog, relationships would have been seriously harmed. What an earth was I thinking? Imagine us all, stewing away in our kingsize+sofabed+travel cot+dog crate room, steam rising from our wet waterproof coats, rainwater dripping onto the bathroom floor. Nope, nope, nope.

There are pros and cons when it comes to holiday homes, but over the years I have come to the conclusion that the pros far outweigh the cons. Yes, I like to be waited on a bit if I’m on holiday – I don’t want to have to stack the dishwasher, pick the squashed peas out of the plughole, etc – but the joyous thing about a rented house is that if you decide you want to eat out every night, and budget allows, then you can. No problemo. You can also, though (and this is especially important when you’re with kids), stock up the fridge with kids’ Fruit Shoots and Innocent Smoothies, adults’ Prosecco and Beer and indulge them/yourself at any time you want without having to pay £3.80 for a small bottle of fizzy water or £16 for a miniature Prosecco. Crisps, nuts, all kinds of snacks can be at your immediate disposal – you can make a doorstep sandwich with local cheese and chutney whenever you want and the supply of tea and coffee can be endless.

I do love the cocooning, luxury feel of a good hotel but they come with a hefty price tag, don’t they? Great for a couple of nights, but once you tip into a week you could almost rent the James Bond lakeside abode for the same cost and invite eighteen friends. More space, the freedom to cook or eat out as you fancy and your own private outdoors areas.

What do you prefer for a longer holiday? The self-catered route or the fully-serviced hotel? Mr AMR prefers his own space and his own kitchen and has always been of this persuasion – I used to be a luxe hotel kind of person but now, with family, I think that I might be rented houses all the way…

I booked The Mews through Lake Lovers here. The crazy-nice place I’ve been banging on about on the lake is at Unique Homestays here – it costs from £1450 per week.

Things we did near Ambleside:

Crossed over the Stepping Stones at Loughrigg. Ted refused to be carried and then obviously got his feet wet! Obviously!

Hired a boat and chugged our way around Lake Windermere. My health and safety paranoia was in overdrive, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have, but when I had both kids firmly in my arms I loved it!

We used to have a little seventies’ motorboat when we lived on a river, so it brought back nice memories. Even if it was raining for most of the time!

We also went on the steam train that runs from Haverthwaite, but really more to give the kids something interesting to do. They weren’t too fussed by it really, which surprised me – I thought that all kids loved trains! – but they sat and ate their tangerines and looked at the rain whilst I spent half of the journey trying to take a completely symmetrical photo of the inside of the train carriage…

Results:

By far my favourite outing was to Hill Top, which was Beatrix Potter’s cottage up in the middle of nowhere in a tiny village with the most incredible views. I have a strange affinity with Beatrix Potter (don’t bloody laugh, I see you!) but I think I need to write a separate post about it. I don’t even like the books that much (sacrilege!) but I like her story and I like her cottage and I think I might have actually been her in a past life. I’ll come back to you on this particular revelation.

Anyway, I really enjoyed poking about the cottage, so much so that I bought the book about it in the gift shop. I’m usually allergic to gift shops! Although now I’m a fully-fledged National Trust member, I like to be supportive and buy the apron/fudge/fridge magnet, etc. It all helps. You can read about Hill Top here – if you’re an NT member then you get in for free.

Right, I’m off to look at winter sun holidays I’ll never book. Tell me, people, where is good to go in December with two small children that won’t be too hot but will also be guaranteed warmth, with a flight time that won’t make me want to eat my own hands with anxiety?

Jumping back to the Lake District; I would definitely go again, when the kids are slightly older. I mean I will definitely go again, because half of my extended family are up there, but I would actively choose there too. It’s so beautiful. So dramatic. I love walking, I love heartstoppingly beautiful scenery (who doesn’t) and I bloody love tea rooms. There are so many tea rooms…

The post This Year’s Family Holiday: The Lake District appeared first on A Model Recommends.

This Year’s Family Holiday: The Lake District was first posted on November 10, 2019 at 9:21 pm. ©2018 "A Model Recommends". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at [email protected] This Year’s Family Holiday: The Lake District published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley

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josephkitchen0 · 6 years ago

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Raising Pigs for Profit

Finding the best return on your investment when raising pigs for profit is the ultimate goal. Piglets are cute and fun to watch, but they grow quickly and require a lot of grain to grow to market weight. Should you raise hogs and sell the piglets as feeder pigs, or raise to market weight? What type of set up do you want to use for housing the hogs and piglets? These are just a couple of the questions you need to think about when starting a farm business and raising pigs for profit.

Methods of Raising Pigs for Profit

As with many livestock business ideas, there are many ways to raise pigs. Pens, pastures, concrete slabs, or wooded settings are some that come to mind. You do not need to start a large hog growing operation in order to make a profit. But you do need to have a working idea of how pigs should be raised in the environment you have set up. If you are going to be a small producer, you need to have a plan on how that will work.

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You will need to start with secure homestead fencing. When using electric fencing, you’ll have to train the breeding stock and later the piglets. This is not hard to do and most pigs learn quickly. We rarely have a pig touch the wire, as they have learned where it is and that it is unpleasant. Fencing can be built from pallets or boards and posts. The electric wire should be a few inches from the ground on the inside of the fence line. Some farms grow pigs in a wooded setting. The pigs root and feed naturally and grain is added to ensure good growth. It is common to find pigs on pasture also being fed grain, or a hog ration.

Modern pig breeds have become efficient growers. The time from buying a feeder pig to butchering a market size hog is in the range of six to eight months. The market for small farm produced pork products is good. Consumers are happy to find the taste of pork from their younger days is making a return. The confinement raised hog meat can’t hold a candle to the taste of locally raised pork from small farms.

Identify Your Buyer

I would argue one of your first considerations should be who you will market your product to. When you have farm piglets for sale, you need to move them quickly, or the feed costs will begin to eat into your profit. If you are raising hogs to a market weight of about 220 to 250 pounds, who will be buying the carcass or the meat cuts? Friends and family are likely to want to try your product, initially. The piglets will keep arriving and you will need to enlarge your buyer list. Raising pigs for profit requires some forethought about who the buyer will be.

As your business grows, the ideal buyer may change. If you have marketed your product well, new opportunities will appear. Consider chefs from local restaurants, Community Supported Agriculture share groups (CSA), and independent grocery stores. Eating locally-sourced food is a growing trend. Smaller markets are often willing to pay premium prices for a superior tasting product.

Costs Associated with Raising Pigs for Profit

The first category is infrastructure. It’s hard to look at the infrastructure as a cost when raising pigs, but it must be counted in for a true cost figure. Fencing, housing, and the electric line supplies are the fixed costs to get started. For example, if you spend $600 on these structural items, and assume they will provide four years of service without replacement cost, your infrastructure cost is $150 per year. This figure is an estimate of course because repairs are often unforeseen occurrences.

There is the cost of the initial piglets unless they are gifted to you. Our piglets sell as feeders for around $40 each. I have heard of prices a bit lower in our area and of course, purebred piglets will cost considerably more. Remember that bargain prices might not be a bargain in the long run if the piglets are slow growers or unhealthy.

Other costs associated with raising pigs might include a freezer if you are selling cuts of meat or coolers for transporting the meat from the butcher.

Don’t forget to include transportation costs, fuel, trailer, crates, or whatever else is necessary for you to do business.

The feed cost will be your largest amount per pig sold. A standard guesstimate is two and a half to three pounds of feed will grow one pound of pig. For this purpose, I will use three pounds of feed per pound of pig growth. If market weight is 250 pounds, you will need 750 pounds of feed. For a small producer using 50-pound sacks of feed that equals 15 bags of feed per pig, to grow to market weight. Our feed currently costs close to $14 per bag, making the feed cost $225 per pig. Of course, your figure will vary slightly based on the feed conversion of your pigs and the cost per bag of feed.

Feeding kitchen and garden scraps is a good way to add more variety to the pig’s diet but this won’t add a significant amount of calories. Ask local markets if you can collect the trimmings from the produce department to feed to your hogs. Be cautious about feeding excess baked goods to your hogs, as the manure can take on a very strong smell if pigs eat a lot of processed, sugary, baked goods.

Miscellaneous costs include straw bedding, worming medications, and iron injections at farrowing if you choose to add that practice to your routine care.

When raising some of the piglets yourself to sell packaged meat, keep in mind the processing fees for the butcher. There is routinely a kill fee in addition to the actual cost of getting the meat processed. Cured meat might be an additional fee. Call around in your area for estimates. There may be only certain days the butcher processes hogs, so plan ahead.

At What Age Should You Sell?

Feeders are young pigs after weaning, weighing between 35 and 50 pounds. Feeders are sold to other producers or farms that want to grow them to market weight. This would seem to be your most effective selling point. The feeder pigs will not have a considerable feed cost in them at this point.

Growing/finishing hogs weigh over 50 pounds and are being fed for market weight. Growers will bring more money but you will have already put more feed into them, so price accordingly. There is a bit of a gray area in the terms, feeder and grower. Some farmers may use them interchangeably. It’s best to ask questions about the age of the piglets and their current weight, and not just accept a label. The end goal is important. Are you growing the pigs to market weight or feeding them to sell to another farm who will grow to market weight?

Breeders consist of gilts or boars. One boar can serve quite a few gilts and sows. Selling potential breeding stock can bring extra money if you have piglets showing good potential.

Hog Pricing and the Commodity Market

Commodities are based on supply and demand in the marketplace. When prices fall, producers often slow up production to increase demand. As a small producer, you’ll want to have an idea of the current price of pork. When selling to private markets, you may not be as affected by the commodity pricing as you would be selling to large hog grower operations, or at the auctions. However, when investing in any market product, it’s good practice to follow the trends and pricing.

Many farmers start their livestock operations by raising pigs for profit. Hogs can be an economical way to get a good return on your initial investment if you keep track of your expenses and infrastructure costs. Raising pigs for profit isn’t for everyone, but it can be a good way for your homestead to earn income.

Have you been successful at raising pigs for profit? We’d love to hear your stories!

Raising Pigs for Profit was originally posted by All About Chickens

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fear-originates-from-imagination · 7 years ago

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There is a HUGE difference between animal welfare and animal rights. Welfare is based in science and understanding how to fulfill an animals needs. Rights is based on emotion and making the animals seem human-like (like saying “look at this crying cow” yet at the same time knowing cows DO NOT cry out of emotion like humans do). This gets mixed up so often and is so important to understand as the world seems to be taking more of a “vegan” view, which is fine, but needs to be based in science and realistic. Take farming for example: some practices seem strange to humans and even cruel at times, but a lot of the time those practices are in place for the animals benefit (like farrowing crates with pigs help keep the piglets alive as the mother is more likely to crush her babies in the first few days). Basically if you love animals and wanna make a difference in their lives, learn about what they need first. Learn what actually makes them happy not just what YOU think makes them happy. And always base arguments in science...not purely emotion.

And overall, I support zoos as long as they follow the guidelines set for each animals needs...but all the zoos I’ve been to or worked for that is taken care of and then some! These aren’t jails for the animals they live great lives and sometimes are even spoiled. Most zoos have breeding programs set in place as well that help increase the numbers of species...so I don’t get why people think they are evil?? Other than they just plain aren’t educated in how zoos work or about the animals themselves...or have never been to one. PLUS they are great for educating kids about the environment and introducing them to lots of animals they’d otherwise never get the chance to see. It’s the starting point for a lot people in learning how to care for/about the environment! The ONLY thing I can understand is not having SOME species in zoos if they are not endangered or need breeding protocols. This would include mainly migratory animals, as there really isn’t a way to provide an itch for the migratory behavior in a zoo (or if an animal has a need that cannot be fulfilled by the zoo). BUT that is only if the species isn’t in danger. Elephants are migratory and this includes them, but due to all the poaching and issues surrounding their numbers, I think they should be kept in zoos still.

There's an enormous difference between animal rights and conservation.

I stopped buying Lush products a while ago, largely because of this issue (I didn’t want to give money to charities that use fear-mongering, hand-wringing anthropomorphism to actively fight biodiversity), and their treatment of the Little Fireface Project only solidified this. Now Lush has sponsored a conference whose end goal is essentially dead elephants, whether they want to admit that or not.

I’m sure they wouldn’t admit it, but their goals- no captive breeding, no zoo care- are hugely problematic from a conservation standpoint because- let’s face it- there’s no way to ensure elephant survival in the wild at this moment in time. Not when there’s such a global demand for ivory, and not when their habitats are so valuable to developers, timber companies, and mining companies.

This of course brings up a really salient ethical issue- if elephants can’t survive long-term in the wild, should we be “ark” breeding them, trying to preserve them in captivity for future generations? Unfortunately, that’s not the question these groups ask. Their “solution” is to just take the elephants from “bad” captivity (zoos) and put them in “good” captivity (sanctuaries).

However, these sanctuaries aren’t actually all that safe for elephants.

They’re not the African savannah minus people, where the elephants can just run free. There’s still barns. There’s still fences. There’s still tuberculosis- zoos can have that too, but zoos have better vet care and actually train the animals to participate in their own healthcare- which means that vet checks are less stressful. Sanctuaries, even the ones that do some vet training, still can’t really disinfect their grounds, and they can’t get rid of that TB bacteria- which can stick around for absolute ages. There’s still risks, and I don’t think these free the elephants people actually realize that. It’s like with cetaceans- the answer isn’t “free ‘em all,” nor is it “captivity is the ONLY SOLUTION.” Animal conservation, especially for species like elephants that have a pretty good wild population, is all about middle roads. There’s got to be a middle ground, and animal rights totally misses that. They’re so obsessed with the idea of “freedom” that they don’t actually stop to think about what freedom really means for these animals. Humans are the most successful invasive species anywhere in the world, and we’re not just going to go away because a bunch of animal rights activists think it’d be good. Even if they do successfully get elephants out of zoos, what good will that do? It won’t stop poaching, it’ll just make good science more difficult to do.

But animal rights people don’t actually care about science. They might think they care about individual animals, but they’re totally missing the point at a species/ecosystem level. Closing zoos will do absolutely nothing positive for wild animals- if anything, it’ll just make things worse. But that’s what these groups want- they still think zoos are animal jails and are willfully ignorant about the actual science of animal conservation. It’s not just about warm fuzzy feelings and the souls of animals- it’s about making logical, rational decisions to protect genetic diversity in these animal populations. Putting all those “poor abused zoo animals” in sanctuaries is not how this is done, and if you refuse to understand that despite the piles and piles of evidence, if you’re fundamentally anti-science, if you really think that feels are more important than reals… well, you’re part of the problem, then, aren’t you. It’s 2018. We’re wreaking havoc on our environment and our ecosystems, and without the careful application of scientific processes and knowledge, we are going to lose these things. We are going to lose the rainforests, we are going to lose millions of species- but hey, at least poor Dumbo got to live out his final years suffering from tuberculosis while somebody who thinks elephants actually talk to them dictated his care.

I’m gonna close with a quote from someone who was at the conference, because it’s kind of ridiculous, but I think proves a point.

“But what, at the end of these three, informative, tear filled, days, did we all come away with?

Did we put together a white board filled with bullet points and action steps on how to free every last one of the elephants around the world that are rotting away before our very eyes?

Nope, not even close.

But what we did achieve is something, in my view, even more important.

We listened to the elephants.”

We listened to the elephants. This is not science. This is not conservation. This is homeopathy at best. It’s not how you “save” elephants. How you save them is through careful captive breeding, making actual efforts to preserve wild elephant habitat with a minimum of human interference, studying their reproduction, diseases, biology, and other things that can impact reproductive success, and work with local communities doing boots-on-the-ground work to help develop sustainable infrastructure and jobs so that elephant ivory is less appealing to the communities that coexist with elephants. Taking elephants out of zoos and putting them in sanctuaries is not at all how to preserve a species.

Elephants are not people. They have extremely different needs, and to assume that a bunch of people who “heard the call of the elephants” but have… no actual scientific, medical, biological, or relevant zoological experience can somehow know how to conserve them better than people who actually study them is fucking ridiculous.

Which is why I’m still not gonna support Lush.

#sorry i got a lot to say on these kinds of issues #its fine if people wanna be vegan or fight for animal welfare or whatever #but do it for the right reasons #the world is becoming far too based in emotion #and i cant stand it

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peachhplum · 7 years ago

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RENOVATION STORIES – A HAND BUILT KITCHEN BEFORE

It feels like forever, since we started the overhaul of this little house of ours, this year and the last have been exciting and busy. My posts here have been sporadic, to say the least – so thanks for sticking with me. The truth is – once our hand built kitchen and living space was almost completed we just started living in it. It was so nice to be able to cook on an actual oven and wash up the debris in an actual sink, that the days rolled past and I nearly forgot all about the documentation and the fun of sharing what we’ve been up to!This post is filled with photos I managed to take during the refurbishments and a dash of decorating fun. I must add the paint we used were colours we had chosen ourselves but were generously given to us by Farrow & Ball and Annie Sloan, everything else we bought ourselves, salvaged or repurposed from around our home or garden. I hope you’ll enjoy a peek around our building site and then a tour of the room now – to follow soon!So, way back when – we knocked a massive hole in the living room wall to make the kitchen and living room a joining space then blocked up the original narrow doorway. The old kitchen door can be spotted above right (with a fridge wedged in it), it felt like the world was caving in at this time and we would be under a blanket of hostile brick dust for the rest of eternity. For six months all that remained of our old kitchen (a cheap rental update put in by the previous owner) was a section of ugly worktop, an oven that barely worked and a washing machine.Our bath was now the sink and once we finally ripped all of this out for the plasterers to come in – we were cooking on a camping stove down in the Tea Shed or out in the hallway for another five months.Luckily the floorboards that were hidden under the laminate were just what we were hoping for, so we took off the skirting, ripped up the floors and insulated underneath and then put the rustic boards back down. It has taken an age as we have been doing nearly everything ourselves in between real life and work. We got our log burner and windows/bifold doors fitted by professionals and plasterers came and put neat edges on all the walls and the gaping hole. Then they came back the next day and smoothed everything over – except one kitchen wall which Dean rough plastered for a textured backdrop to our kitchen.The only jobs we didn’t do were – the bulk of the plastering, fitting the log burner, some electrics, install the windows and the main kitchen replumb. It has been a slow journey but one that has been a lot of fun in amongst the stress of chaos and having no mod cons.Above – the radiator pipes were poking up out of the floor where the wall used to be – we moved these, sprayed black water everywhere and nearly severed a thumb – but we did it! On days like this we found oursleves looking around and wondering if it would ever be normal around here again, but then we got going and it snowballed towards completion and everything was almost good again. After a month of letting the walls dry we got to finally open the paint! We chose Dimpse by Farrow and Ball a lovely soft and calm grey to settle us back down after all the crazy. It’s a soft and gentle grey, just the type we have been looking for.This finished corner was my salvation for the next few weeks as we handbuilt our kitchen from bought, salvaged and found things. We have a garage full of hoarded stuff that might look like junk to an untrained eye – but old floorboards became shelves, copper salvaged from under the floor when we moved the radiator pipes became curtain rods and a huge slice of elm got cut down into the best worktops ever!We bought our ‘naked’ kitchen units from a maker on eBay that was nearby in Kent. They are solid FSC pine and we painted them inside with Osmo clear varnish and outside in two colours of Annie Sloan – Paris Grey as an undercoat and Graphite on top. I absolutely love using this paint – so much so that we also painted our kitchen wall with it too (keep scrolling). Now for that kitchen wall paint job – I was quoted thousands for polished concrete or Tadelakt so we rough luxed this ourselves and it was the most fun ever! Easy peasy and all you need is a rough surface (or not – as adding thicker layers of the paint can do that too) some cardboard scraps, three paint colours in varying tones, paintbrushes, bare hands and high spirits!Above our plainish wall ready for an art attack, the bottom half we left raw as it was to be hidden behind the cupboards and I didn’t want to waste any paint! We used the Annie Sloan mixing mat placed inside a cardboard box (to form edges) which was great for blending and making a confined mess. It has some paint mixing tips on it – I’ll admit we didn’t pay much notice to that and just went wild. We sealed up all the plugs and sockets and started by scraping the darkest shade of paint and a grey all over the walls randomly with no particular pattern just gusto and care not to go over the edges on to the other walls! I chose the Annie Sloan Paris Grey wall paint for the main bulk of this wall and used the smaller tins of chalk paint in Old White and Graphite as accent colours. We just kept wiping, scraping, painting and building the layers until the colour and tones were blended to our liking.We worked all three colours over and over each other, swiping a bit of extra dark or light where needed. As you can see above perfection is not required for this look, this pic shows before all the shelves were finally put up and the tiles we were considering for a splashback. Once the paint was dry Dean brushed a layer of the Anni Sloan Clear Wax all over as a seal – this is great and I highly recommend it, as it is wipeable and resolved our dilemmas about a splashback, we didn’t need one – hooray!With the walls complete we moved on to the worktops – we made these out of a huge slice of English Elm that we got from a local woodsman and are so happy with it.The stainless steel (Ohio) sink in white was bought online from Reginox, and it was a sweaty palm situation cutting the hole in that gorgeous piece of wood with only one chance to get it right! It was quite a bit of work and a hell of a lot of sawdust and sanding outside on fair weather days but so worth it as we couldn’t find anything we really liked the look of pre-made (they are still unsanded in these pictures). Almost ready to install everything – finishing touches were the door handles which I bought from Rowen & Wren and our new Smeg oven. We got this from an online discount store that sells big brand items that have minor cosmetic faults. Ours had a barely visible scratch on the tea towel bar and some marks on the sides (where they would never be seen) – so perfect in my book. Something that is discounted because of a scratch or minor dent seems like a good money-saving plan to me – plus I don’t feel bad for marking it myself! Sadly our kitchen is too modest for the matching fridge.We had been looking for a vintage style oven for ages and I spotted this beauty in a Pinterest photo of the River Cottage Australia kitchen – it was great to discover it wasn’t actually old and still available online.The oven also added to delays as before it could be installed – we had to have all our outdated electrics re-done as it required a stronger power cable than our old oven had used. But we got there in the end. Then it was time to make some shelves out of old floorboards and crates, get the curtains up, find a kitchen table, stain the floor and paint the pantry door to match the kitchen units – phew!So there you have it! The bad and the ugly – only the good to come – just need to get the latest images off my camera and hopefully, I can share in a few days. Happy Halloween! xxx

#home decoration #interior design #floor care

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spencerthorpe · 8 years ago

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Inside a beautiful Crouch End Family Home

Run a house with a large family and the décor will often be substituted for more practical needs. However, there is one family in North London who have learnt to buck the trend and keep design at the forefront of their home, whilst keeping it at the heart of the family.

Jade Lovejoy and her husband Andy have six children collectively and live in a 5 bedroom, Victorian semi-detached property in Crouch End. Jade is an interior stylist specialising in commercial & editorial photo shoots, window installations & visual merchandising displays. She has styled the windows for Liberty & Harvey Nichols and designed store layouts for Jack Wills, Urban Outfitters plus Cabbages and Roses (just to name a few).

Our home is an eclectic mix of styles, vintage treasures and old window props

Jade’s unique family life and interest in interiors has led her to document a series of creative family homes and lifestyles, in a truthful and realistic style blog.

When meeting with Jade she made one statement about her home which really summed it up: ‘Our home is an eclectic mix of styles, vintage treasures and old window props. But living with children, you learn not to be too precious about things. Our children’s masterpieces hang next to art we have collected and antiques we have inherited. Our house is a loud, vivacious family home and I think that is reflected in its style.’

As the focal point of the house, Jade’s kitchen has been renovated, incorporating an extension which allows plenty of light into the area through glass windows above and at the rear. The dark frames and walls complement the space by adding a beautiful contrast to the light streaming through.

Keeping the shelves the same colour as the walls helps to emphasise the pieces featured on them. This vintage dining table from The Old Cinema is beautifully rustic, whilst also providing enough space for all eight of them to enjoy a family dinner.

The kitchen-diner flows effortlessly with the use of colour. The Fired Earth tiles balance the transition between the walls and work surfaces, which themselves are accompanied with wonderful personal touches – the children’s sketch taped to the wall keeps the atmosphere homely.

The living room is beautifully designed with painted floorboards and contrasting walls. Pops of colour are added through accessories, such as the cushions and children’s artwork.

This showstopper of a cabinet creates a huge statement against the dark grey walls. Discovered and purchased at Kempton Antiques Market, Jade painted it herself with Farrow & Ball ‘Yellow Cake’. Accompanied with a Bianca Hall neon sign it adds life and intrigue to the room, plus a spirited style which is resembled in Jade herself.

In the bedroom Jade continues with the use of darker tones with bursts of colour. Her eclectic taste runs through the house, with a lot of pieces being market finds or family heirlooms. This trunk was found at Pure White Lines in East London and works perfectly as a bedside table.

Having children means there is always extra storage needed for books and toys. However, it is just as important to create a space in which children can also feel relaxed. This tepee was purchased from Etsy and creates a cute hideaway for children to read or even do their homework. The wooden storage crates add a rustic element, proving that toys don’t have to remain on show or be stored in unattractive, plastic boxes.

The bathroom is beautiful, and Jade has taken a lot of care to create a stunning sanctuary that is perfect for escaping a busy city life. The muted colours are calming, whilst the plants add life and freshness to the room. The vintage frames help to personalise the space and the mirror adds an extra dimension making the room feel bigger.

We wanted to know how Jade’s house remains so beautiful, plus any tips she has for keeping it that way. We asked a few questions to find out more!

IDEALIST: What is the biggest challenge of running a family home?

Learning to let go of perfectionism and realising a neat home is a dull one! Storage is one way of putting some of the things in your life in order and a big challenge in the family home. You have to create ways of hiding all of the kid paraphernalia, or at the very least closing some small door on it all! (the toys obviously, not the kids!)

The biggest design challenge is the chaos, the mix of styles, personalities and collections, although it does make our home unique.

IDEALIST: What advice would you give to other parents with children, in keeping the home a place you all love?

Teach your children to respect and love the things you have in your home as much as you do.

IDEALIST: Who is your biggest design inspiration?

Jan Showers says, “Every room needs a touch of black, just as it needs at least one antique piece.” I love this.

Pinterest is brilliant but the problem is we all follow the same boards so covert the same Berber rugs and we all have a tile obsession!

Inspiration can come from art, travel and nature as well as other inspirational designers.

IDEALIST: From doing your own renovation, what are your top design tips for a family home?

Paint is one of the easiest ways to transform a room, and it can also be one of the cheapest.

Darker walls can instantly make a space feel more luxurious, stylish and, contrary to what we may think, it doesn’t make a space feel smaller – AND it hides handprints, scooter scuffs and whatever else they wipe on the walls!

‘Your home should tell a story of who you are and be a collection of what you love’. In our house it’s the dark colours and curiosities that create the drama (as well as the teenagers!).

Get the lighting right. I love our ceiling roses and decorative pendant lights (bought at Kempton antiques markets), but I feel uncomfortable in a room with the overhead lights on. We have lamps everywhere. Lighting will make a room cosy and inviting, but also highlights your home decoration.

This may make me sound boring BUT I wish we had the luxury of a big utility room in the middle of the house. Instead we have a washing machine in the basement. That was bad planning, all those stairs!

Make your downstairs loo a show stopper. You can be a lot more creative in a smaller space that has one function. Paint your ceiling, walls, skirts and trims all the same colour – it will unify the space.

The bigger the mirror, the bigger the impact. Our bedroom mirror is from Graham and Green and we bought the biggest one we could hang. It reflects the light, making our bedroom feel larger (and therefore a little more luxurious).

IDEALIST: What has been the biggest challenge in the renovation?

Not having an endless pot of pennies! We still have a to-do list.

I think you’ll only make a mistake with builders once, a well recommended builder is worth its weight in gold.

Interior wise, it’s been a challenge to try and incorporate everyone’s personalities into one well designed space.

IDEALIST: What is the focal point of your home?

To make our house feel like a home, a happy home.

IDEALIST: What would you change about your home décor if you didn’t have kids?

We would definitely live in an edgier, cooler part of town.

Interior wise, I’d like to think we would spend a bit more money on our furniture, but we probably wouldn’t. Maybe we would be more Scandi, and I’d have a beautiful collection of cacti!

IDEALIST: Which is your favourite room and why?

Our kitchen, it’s were all the parties start and end. The kitchen is the hub of our home. We hang out there as a family, cook and eat and the children also do their homework at the kitchen table.

It is however, on some occasions, my least favourite room too. I would like to extend, rebuild and redesign it. I would like a huge pantry and a central island unit on wheels, so it could be moved out of the way for dancing!

IDEALIST: Which purchase for your home has been your favourite?

We don’t have expensive furniture but some great pieces of art. I did an installation at Harvey Nichols for the launch of Another Magazine with Jefson Hack years ago, and afterwards we all got to keep a few of the art pieces – fashion campaigns printed onto huge sheets of acrylic – which have been scattered around the house and have a massive impact.