Please fill in the form below, choosing your preferred course from the drop down menu, and we’ll email you an invoice. Once payment has been received we’ll send your booking confirmation including directions to the farm and any other information you might need. Please note that your place will only be confirmed once full payment is received. If a course date is not included on the drop down menu, that course is now fully booked. Availability is shown here. If you have any questions, or would like to go on a waiting list in case of cancellations, prefer to make a booking by phone or email, have any problem with the form or want to discuss a bespoke option, please email or phone us and we’ll be delighted to help. If you haven’t received an email from us within 24 hours of making your booking please phone or email as technology isn’t infallible.

Terms & Conditions

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. We will not be liable for any other costs or expenses that you incur. If you have to change or cancel a booking our terms are as follows:

• If you give us more than 14 days’ notice you will be offered an alternative date within a twelve month period.  If you decide not to take up the offer and cancel your booking we will retain £25 per person to cover administration costs and refund the remainder of the fee. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, and at the discretion of the course providers, only one change of date will be accepted, after which inability to attend will be treated as a cancellation.
• For cancellations between 7 and 14 days of the course date no alternative date will be offered, and we will refund 50% of the fee. If we have someone on a waiting list who will take your place we will retain £25 per person to cover administration costs and refund the remainder of the fee; this cannot be guaranteed.
• For cancellations within 7 days no refund or transfer will be given.
• In any of the above circumstances you many nominate friends or family to attend in your place. We may not be able to cater for resulting changes in dietary restrictions at a late stage but will do our best.

Important Information

The venue: All our training takes place at South Yeo Farm West, our 110 acre farm in the culm grasslands of Devon on the fringes of Dartmoor.

Dates: We have a wide range of course dates throughout the year. 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 tailor make 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. Details on our bespoke options can be found here.

Costs: The fee for our courses can be found on the relevant course pages – see drop down list in menu under ‘Training Courses’

Books and course materials: From 2024 one copy of The Complete Guide to Smallholding is included per booking in the following course packs: Introduction to Smallholding, Sheep for Beginners, Pigs for Beginners and Cattle for Beginners. We also provide supplementary handouts 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. If you have already purchased The Complete Guide to Smallholding, we’re happy to put one of our other books in your pack instead (Keeping Goats or Keeping Ducks and Geese). You can browse the range of books that we have found particularly useful, through Amazon.

The food: We provide tea (including herb teas), coffee, biscuits, a homemade lunch and a Devon cream tea, all made from our own produce wherever possible, seasons allowing. Typical lunch menus might be Ploughman’s lunch with our Berkshire gammon, ox tongue, liver pate, duck egg mayonnaise, with homemade rolls, local cheeses, and a variety of our own chutneys, or perhaps Devon Ruby beef stew or cottage pie with pak choi and rainbow chard stirfry, mutton tagine, or venison casserole with mushrooms and shallots and baked spuds, or our own Devon Ruby beef burgers on sourdough and salad, washed down with apple juice or cider from our orchard, just to name a few possibilities. It’s home made pizza on our cob oven day. For tea there’ll be homemade scones and jams with local cream or Noemi’s hot apple cake or upsidedown raspberry cake or apple or blackberry crumble with thick cream. We frequently cater for vegetarians, and do tell us if you have any dietary restrictions (we just need to know in advance). You tell us that the food we make and serve on our courses is wonderful, and you certainly 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.

Dogs: We have big, friendly dogs who will undoubtedly make their presence felt. 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 on the farm but there are some lovely options very close by. You can find our suggestions here.

Travel: Most people do travel to us by car, but it is possible to reach us by public transport and taxi. Our nearest station is Okehampton which you can travel to from Exeter St Davids. From there you can hire a taxi which needs to be booked beforehand. Your accommodation hosts may be able to make these arrangements for you or advise.  Okehampton based taxis include Okehampton Taxis or Ed’s Taxis or Amethyst Taxis. There is also an Exeter taxi company you might find useful: Exeter Taxis. Our accommodation page gives distances from the farm and in most (not all) cases you will probably want to book a taxi from where you’re staying to us, again in advance as there are not large numbers of taxis serving the local area.

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.

Children: We do not take children under the age of 14 on courses that are open to the public, and all children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. If you book bespoke days for your family, children are very welcome, with parents or guardians taking full responsibility for their wellbeing.

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Copyright in any course notes, materials and teaching aids made available to course participants belongs to Debbie Kingsley and must not be reproduced, or used for training purposes by other providers without first obtaining Debbie Kingsley’s written permission. All rights reserved.