The marvellous hens and chicken coop we bought from Moorlands Poultry Supplies at Bottomhouse last spring have been keeping us in eggs all winter so far.

The hens are obviously a bit fed up with the snow as they never venture outside the coop, but we keep them topped up with warm water and layers pellets and they reward us with 4 eggs a day!

Keeping chickens is so easy, I can fully understand why it’s becoming so popular nationwide.

You need so little kit and hardly any room to keep a few chickens – everyone should have a go.

Quick plug: Moorlands Poultry are now doing eco-friendly chicken coops and arks, made entirely from 100% recycled plastics so be sure to check out their website!

Bit of a rant today – sorry.

This morning, a little later than usual, the milkman delivered our two pints of semi-skimmed.

A little later, the postman delivered my eagerly awaited copy of Classic & Sportscar together with the inevitable bills and junk mail.

I noticed last week that we were running a little low on coal for our fire, so I called the local coal company and they said they’d deliver today.

Sure enough, at 11am the coal man arrived with 10 bags of Grade B.

So – we’ve had some snow and the roads aren’t bone dry or clear from kerb to kerb, but all of these private companies managed to get their jobs done because they need to earn a living by providing  service.

In contrast, the village school was closed today because the teachers couldn’t get to school and the head teacher worried that there may be a fatality if parents tried to get their children to school.

Monday is also “bin day” for our end of Warslow.

Surprisingly, our bins remain full at the end of the day having not been collected for 5 weeks (there was a smattering of snow the last time they were due to be emptied).

We now have 5 weeks worth of rubbish and recycling from both our house and the Barn piled up at the gate, despite calls to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council.

If ever there was an example of the differing attitudes of public and private services in the UK, this is surely it.

<rant over>

I’m off to entertain the kids for the rest of the day – perhaps I could pay them to carry our rubbish down to the Council House in Leek and dump it on their doorstep.

<rant really over>

We’ve still got availability for both Christmas and New Year so contact us asap to confirm your booking.

The Christmas week runs from Saturday 19th December through to Saturday 26th December and costs £807.

New Year bookings runs from Sunday 27th December through to Monday 4th January and costs £785.

If you stay in The Barn, you’ll notice a selection of our woooden Himalayan Honey Pot Lamps around the place.

They’re all for sale along with beautiful hand painted oriental lamps and some rather nice brass lamps.

You can see and buy them all from our new website, www.originaltablelamps.co.uk.

It feels a bit like jumping on a bandwagon but I know for a fact that twitter drives traffic and the search engines love it – reason enough in itself to make it worth doing

Follow us by clicking here

Bookings for The Barn at Ivy House Farm are coming in thick and fast.

To date we have twenty weeks booked already and barely a day goes by without another one coming in.

Hadi is doing his best to keep the calendar up to date! – Book now to avoid disappointment.

The upturn in bookings may of course be pure chance, but perhaps it is a reflection on the poor state of the pound, making UK holidays better value for money than foreign holidays.

The high-profile collapses of package holiday companies and airlines offering cheap flights probably hasn’t helped.

I think that there is little doubt that self-catering holidays are very good value, and certainly round here there is a great deal to be done, irrespective of the unpredictable UK weather.

Alton Towers is a popular day out on sunny day, but Splash Landings, its inside swimming world is great fun if it’s raining.

For a more cerebral experience, Chatsworth House is beautiful inside and outside! Check out our ‘things to do’ page for some more ideas. As for walks in the glorious Peak District – the possibilities are endless…

We do still have capacity both in and out of the school holidays – if you are considering a visit, don’t lave it to long before booking.

At Ivy House Farm, we are celebrating both the New Year and also a new website. This new version has a far more straightforward availability calendar, and although it won’t make any difference to the guests, it also manages all of the relevant booking information for me here at Ivy House Farm. It also has a more intuitive blog package, which means that I will be able to resume my monthly updates. Finally it is apparently more search engine friendly – something called search engine optimization – this is all gobbledygook to me, but if it helps guests find the site more quickly, I guess it is a good thing!

The new website and availability calendar all comes courtesy of Hadi. I guess finally I have discovered some benefits of being married to a ‘computer geek’.

We welcome feedback – positive of constructively critical.

Do let us know what you think.

PS – I think that this is now further reason for us to quit the agency and go it alone! Hadi has done a great job nudging us up the search engine rankings – so there is no excuse!

“Ivy House Farm was a fantastic venue to enjoy our New Years celebrations. With a beautiful interior, with great surroundings, our stay was greatly enjoyed and Lucy was always on hand in case anything came up- which was great. Thank you!”

Thank you Rebecca!