Booking information

Bookings: Booking is simple. Just send us your name, address, phone number and email address indicating which course you want to book with your preferred date, and we’ll send you an invoice (payment is required in advance). Once payment has been received we'll send you booking confirmation including directions to the farm and any other information you might need. Please note that your place will not be reserved until full payment is received.

The venue: All our training takes place at South Yeo Farm West, our 108 acre farm in the culm grasslands of Devon on the fringes of Dartmoor. Our Living with Livestock course is co-delivered with Paula Wolton and her son Olly, with the morning session spent at South Yeo and the afternoon at organic Locks Park Farm just over the hill, and our Cattle for Beginners day is held at Locks Park Farm.

Dates: We have a wide range of course dates throughout the year. If you are unable to make the listed dates we are happy to discuss alternatives.

Bespoke courses: If you want something particular that you can't find elsewhere, if we have the skill and the knowledge we can create a course specially; we are always happy to tailormake a course for you, so do contact us to discuss, and if we can help, we will. If you'd like to book a course for a group of friends that deals with your particular interests, we're happy to discuss that too.

Costs: The fee for our courses can be found on the relevant course pages - click on the tabs above.

Funding: For eligible smallholders and farmers based in the South West region, 50% of our course fees were reimbursed to participants through The Skills Project operated by Duchy College Rural Business School up to July 2011. Funding is not currently available but please contact us if you want to be informed of any future funding support. Our courses are also eligible for Lantra's Women in Work scheme. See here for details.

Course materials: We provide comprehensive, helpful handouts, plus a booklist and pamphlets/DVDs for you to take away so that you can concentrate on what’s being said and discussed rather than taking copious notes. But do bring a notebook for those off the cuff gems. You can browse the range of books we have found particularly useful, available through Amazon.

The food: We provide tea/coffee, a homemade lunch and a Devon cream tea, all made from our own produce wherever possible, seasons allowing. Typical lunch menus might be veg patch soup, or Scotch Broth using our own mutton, with homemade rolls, local cheeses, and a variety of our own chutneys, or perhaps shepherds pie with pak choi and rainbow chard stirfry, or venison casserole with mushrooms and shallots and a baked spud, washed down with apple juice or cider from our orchard. For tea there'll be homemade scones and jams with local clotted cream or Noemi's hot apple cake or upsidedown raspberry cake with thick cream. In the summer there might be salads from the garden, duck egg mayonnaise, slices of roast Berkshire gammon or whatever looks good that day. We frequently cater for vegetarians, and do tell us if you have any dietary restrictions (we just need to know in advance). You won't go away hungry.

Access: Unfortunately the farm is not suitable for people in wheelchairs. Please note that the terrain is quite hilly, uneven in places, and very wet in others (just your typical culm grassland farm). There may be some running about if the sheep are feeling frisky, and there is quite a bit of walking involved (NOT for the DIY website course!).

Dogs: We have two big, friendly dogs who will undoubtedly make their presence felt at some point. We do ask you not to bring your own dogs to the farm as they find our training confusing and somewhat difficult with paws.

Accommodation: For those of you travelling some distance, we don’t provide overnight accommodation but there are some lovely options very close by. You can find our suggestions here.

Gifts: More and more of you are buying a place on one of our courses as a gift, so if you are treating a special someone let us know and we can send them a card by email or snail mail as you prefer to let them know about the treat ahead.

Cancellations: We will do our utmost not to cancel training events but if we have to because of events outside our control, we will arrange an alternative date. If you are forced to postpone your booking, we will do our best to accommodate you on an alternate date if you give us 14 days notice. If you decide to cancel your booking we will retain £25 per person to cover administration costs and refund the remainder of the fee, if you give us more than 14 days notice. For cancellations within 14 days of the course date we will refund 50% of the fee. For cancellations within 48 hours of the course date, no refund will be given unless we have someone on a waiting list who can take your place.

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