04/09/2026
🏡 One whole year at Woodgate Farm 🏡
A year ago, we packed up our lives in Cheshire and moved to Church Stretton to begin a completely new chapter at Woodgate Farm.
Looking back now, I’m not entirely sure how we managed to fit everything into just 12 months!
We’ve settled Rory and Eleanor into their new schools, found our feet in a new community and slowly started turning this place into our family home — although the rather enormous farmhouse renovation list will keep us busy for quite a few years yet! 😂
We’ve learned more about farming life, cared for sheep and cattle, tackled fields, gardens, ponds, fences and seemingly endless maintenance jobs, and experienced every possible variety of mud!
We’ve welcomed six lovely Ryeland sheep to Woodgate Farm, along with Dinky — a cade lamb from our meat flock who we bottle-fed and fully intended to send to market. Unfortunately, Dinky had other ideas! We all took a shine to him, he became rather attached to us and now follows me around like a dog. He has officially become our first “failed market lamb” and will be staying firmly at Woodgate Farm as a much-loved pet sheep! ❤️
We’ve also made a start on some of the bigger improvements around the farm. We’ve had new flashing fitted over the annex, solar panels installed on both properties and new windows fitted — several more very satisfying ticks on a very long to-do list!
Alongside all of that, we have:
✨ Opened The Byre, our dog-friendly holiday cottage
✨ Added a private hot tub and learned far more about water chemistry than I ever expected to know!
✨ Welcomed couples, families and their dogs for holidays, anniversaries, proposals and special celebrations
✨ Received some absolutely wonderful reviews — including a fantastic run of five-star stays
✨ Opened our five-pitch Caravan and Motorhome Club CL site
✨ Created fully serviced hard-standing pitches, along with a shower, toilet and everything needed to welcome our caravan and motorhome guests
✨ Built and launched the new Woodgate Farm website and online booking system
✨ Welcomed our first caravan-site guests and watched the site begin to grow through recommendations and lovely reviews
Clever Clogs Canine Training has been through a huge chapter of its own.
After more than 20 years of building the business in Cheshire, I made the incredibly emotional decision to finish my regular Cheshire classes and begin establishing the business here in Shropshire.
Since then, I have:
🐾 Started new Life Skills classes at Woodgate Farm
🐾 Welcomed new one-to-one and behaviour clients
🐾 Helped owners make some wonderful progress with their dogs
🐾 Supported teams through their APDT Good Companion Awards
🐾 Developed our new dog-training holiday packages
🐾 Created a dedicated Dog Training Holidays section on the website
🐾 Begun combining two things I absolutely love — helping people enjoy their dogs and welcoming them for a relaxing stay in the Shropshire Hills
We’ve also launched a brand-new Clever Clogs website, continued supporting our existing clients, created more training resources and started laying the foundations for the next stage of the business.
There have been some incredibly proud family moments too: birthdays, new schools, Rory finishing primary school with brilliant results, music performances, days exploring our new area and slowly beginning to feel that Church Stretton really is home.
It certainly hasn’t all been straightforward. There have been tears, sleepless nights, technical disasters, booking-system battles, broken things, muddy things, stressful things and plenty of moments when we’ve wondered what on earth we’ve taken on!
Our fourth set of guests at The Byre experienced a huge water leak, resulting in all hands on deck as the whole family rallied around to get everything sorted and rescue their holiday. Thankfully, those guests were incredibly understanding — and the fact that they have just returned to stay with us again means more than they probably realise.
We’ve also been trying to balance our new life here with everything happening elsewhere in our family, and there have been times when it has all felt rather overwhelming.
But then I look around.
We have created two welcoming holiday businesses from scratch. We’ve begun rebuilding my dog-training business in a completely new area. We’ve welcomed so many lovely people and dogs. Our children are settled. We’re making friends, discovering this beautiful part of the world and gradually bringing our plans for Woodgate Farm to life.
There is still an enormous amount we want to do. We have some exciting ideas and new projects quietly taking shape for the coming year, alongside making a much bigger start on renovating the inside of the farmhouse and, hopefully, beginning to bring it out of the 1960s! 😂
The renovation list seems to grow faster than we can tick things off, but perhaps today isn’t about looking at everything still waiting to be done.
Today is about stopping for a moment and appreciating just how far we’ve already come.
One year at Woodgate Farm. What a year it has been. ❤️
Here’s to the next chapter — although perhaps we could make year two just a tiny bit calmer! 😂
