South Dornaford Farm

Our Vision: Creating nourishment for mind, body and soul

Our Mission: To offer a variety of creative, energetic or environmental courses and retreats delivered by friendly experienced tutors, in a beautiful setting where you leave feeling revived and uplifted by the experience of being at South Dornaford Farm.

We want to help people understand themselves more deeply, in a clear unburdened way. We want people to reconnect to the land and the natural environment around them by seeing its beauty and how it nurtures us, mankind, when we nurture it. Feel the exchange of love and energy.

Our Values:
· We strive to conduct our business with honesty and integrity
· We try to be flexible and hospitable with our clients and their needs
· We want to be honest custodians of the land and river
· We manage the land for the joint benefit of itself, the wildlife and our clients

Our values underpin how we run our organization and do business with our clients.

Your Hosts: As a family run business your primary hosts are Ross and Pippa Cherrington as well as a variable team of helpers depending on the needs of the event. We joined WWOOF last year (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and receive additional help from the international visitors this brings us. Ross works for The West Country Rivers Trust as well as managing the farming and environmental needs of the farm. Pippa teaches Tai Chi is a Holistic massage Therapist and is busy developing and promoting the courses, events and retreat centre.

Our Business Story: We relocated to South Dornaford Farm in 1996 and must have made quite a site on the road that day as we travelled down here in a convoy of two removal vans, a big flatbed trailer with farm equipment ,a stock lorry with our sheep, a borrowed Land Rover overflowing with farm dogs towing a16 ft caravan, and our elderly blue hatchback filled to the brim with baby paraphernalia and our two very small children. The caravan became our home for the next three months while we made some repairs to our beautiful old cottage and we finally surrendered to the Devon rain and moved in to our slightly unfinished home just before Christmas. We still live in a slightly unfinished home but a lot else has moved on since then.
After a couple of years we decided that changing to a environment friendly way of farming was really important to us so we bought a small herd of organic cows from a retiring farmer, and the farm underwent a period of conversion, 2 years at that time, and South Dornaford Farm gained Organic Certification in 2001.We were just about to sell our first organic lambs when Foot & Mouth devastated the enterprise. For a while life was very unsettled, we felt we had arrived at a crossroads without a signpost as to the direction to take. When our new herd of organic Ruby Red cows were delivered and I saw the grin on my husband’s face I knew restocking had been the right answer.

The concept of creating a holistic venue and retreat centre has also grown organically. From the earliest days here Tai Chi became part of my daily life having found a teacher, Angus Clark, who made this ancient art accessible and relevant to life today. Firstly, a barn was adapted to provide a spiritual indoor practise space. As the time passed this became my teaching studio and now it is let out to others who wish to share their skills with students. In time we were asked to host Angus’ tai chi summer camp and the holistic centre has grown since then. We now have the Welcome Barn, the Studio, the accommodation in the Hayloft , Snug and Garden Rooms as well as the Rustic Barn for summer dining and on occasion, the marquee.

The Future:
We continuously receive feedback from our clients saying how magical it is to be here so we are planning news ways of enabling people to enjoy South Dornaford Farm. New for 2011 will be our “Wide Horizon Camping” and “Dornaford Foragers” both of which we are really excited about and hope you will be too.

Pippa Cherrington
The Centre Manager
www.holistic-courses.co.uk
01837 851218 and 07889 532 982
South Dornaford Farm, Jacobstowe,Okehampton,Devon EX20 3RJ