Rhydgaled became our home and new way of life in December 2014 when we moved from Oxfordshire.
After about three years of talking, planning, thinking “can we really do this?” and many, many property viewings we finally waved goodbye to the 9 to 5 lifestyle and headed to rural West Wales to start our good life adventure.
We are me – Lindsey, and my husband, Paul Stribling, Kevin the Irish/Red Setter, our own cats Peat and Islay, who joined the already resident feline residents of Rhydgaled – TomTom (now more farm house cat than farm cat), Avery and Amalia.
Then there’s Jackaroo, affectionately known as Roodle – not so affectionately as The Senile Delinquent, Lindsey’s dressage horse that moved with us, and Mojo who has since joined the family.
So, Paul left his job with a builder’s merchant and can now be found either building sheds, barns, putting up fences and the like both here at Rhydgaled and for new-found friends and clients, as well as helping out on a local farm.
I still have a “day job”, providing marketing support to the company back in Oxford that I have worked for for more than 20 years. This is now on a self-employed basis and I work remotely (yes, very remotely) from home for the most part. I now combine this work with my duties at Rhydgaled which include the general management of our livestock with Paul, sales and marketing of our lovely produce and head gardener.
When we arrived here, other than a small stone outbuilding, there was nothing other than the very beautiful house. No barn, stables, sheds – and very little fencing. Thanks to Paul’s very nifty handiwork and a lot of just plain hard work, Rhydgaled is now a fully functioning smallholding.
We have a small flock of sheep – 18 breeding ewes, producing our very tasty home-grown lamb, British Saddleback pigs for pork, bacon and the most amazing sausages, and our free-range chickens producing eggs that are used in our home baking or sold from the farm gate.
Some days it can be really hard work – but we are very definitely rewarded and this is very much now, our good life.
