Working farm offering quality accommodation near Holsworthy

Forda Farm

Roddy and Val invite you to stay on their family run livestock farm. Forda Farm is nestled in its own secluded valley, with the house being 100 yards off a quiet country road.

The Farming Year

Forda farm extends to 115 acres with additional grass keep taken each year. This supports 40 pedigree Charollais ewes, 350 commercial ewes producing fat lambs and about 30-40 fattening cattle

Bullocks out at grass

The farming year starts in the autumn with purchase and housing of store cattle and putting the rams in with the ewes. Lambing starts in early December with the pedigree Charollais. These are kept to produce rams for sale to other sheep farmers at 18 months of age.

The commercial flock of sheep are now lambed in three flocks. The first 50 to 60 lamb in early February. These are then followed by the next group of ewes around the 6th of March. By now the weather should be settling down and the early lambs will be out in the fields and growing well. The last group to lamb are our ewe lambs (youngsters on their first lambing) and these begin at the start of April.

However the sight of newly born lambs or lambs out in the spring sunshine take some beating.

Once lambing slows down there is little time for rest as with the weather improving the spring work needs to be done.

Applying fertilizer and farm yard manure, rolling hay and silage fields and reseeding pastures.

This leads into sheering in June/July much to the relief of the sheep, it is about this time that the fat lamb and cattle sales start.

Roddy Sheep Shearing

The Hay and Silage are harvested in June and July and in August straw is bought in for the coming winter.

In September the ewe flock is weaned, checked through and ewes too old for another year are picked out and replaced with young ewes. So the flock is ready for the introduction of the rams and the sheds all ready for the purchase and housing of the cattle and so another year begins.