Liz Gill goes down on this unique farm which offers holidays, retreats, workshops, and an animal sanctuary
It’s fair to say that Buddy would probably not be familiar with the works of Winston Churchill but the great man was certainly fond of his kind. “Dogs look up to us,” he wrote. “Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
With this in mind I crouch down to look the little chap in the eye: he responds with what I hope is enthusiastic snuffling and snorting. Buddy is the latest addition to Haye Cornwall which offers animal themed retreats. The idea is to combine get-away-from-it-all relaxation in beautiful surroundings with encounters with a variety of creatures.
As well as Buddy, a six year-old kune kune (the word means small in Maori – the breed are farmed for meat in New Zealand), there are three ponies, three donkeys, half a dozen chickens and a rooster, three cats and Harvey the dog. All are rescued and all have a story.
Buddy’s is that he was someone’s pet until they tired of him and kept in a small space in summer and a cellar in winter. At six he is now too old to be neutered – the operation would be dangerous – so finding him a companion is tricky. In the meantime, says Kate Hinze, he is being given plenty of attention and enrichment.
The intelligence of pigs is well established – not for nothing did George Orwell make them the leaders in Animal Farm – but even so I was pretty impressed to see a pig play a game of fetch and press a target with his nose. Kate even thinks he has the ability to learn agility.
All this is done by version of clicker training where a sound is linked first to a food reward and subsequently to a behaviour. It is all about positive reinforcement. Kate can’t handle a clicker as well as the throw, the target and the food so she shouts the word ‘ping’ instead.“Goodness knows what the neighbours thought at first.”
For 52 year-old Kate and her husband Phil Davis, 56, Haye is the embodiment of a long standing dream, enabled by a radical life-style transformation. “We always wanted to live in the middle of nowhere so we could give a happy retirement to rescued animals, grow food in a permaculture garden with space to reclaim and recycle and to share our love for nature with others,” she says. It was her experience years ago of having pet chickens that made her increasingly aware that all animals had individual personalities. “We value animals and believe we should share our planet with them in a fairer way.”
The couple met in 2010 – it was a second marriage for both of them – but needed to wait until Phil’s children had finished school before making the move. In the meantime they lived a typically affluent metropolitan life. Phil worked in marketing for the investment industry, Kate in marketing for law firms. They had a big Arts and Craft house in North London and all the trappings including exotic holidays. “Today we regard two hours on the beach as a holiday,” says Phil.
They wanted somewhere in the West of England because of the dramatic scenery but with decent connections back to London to see family plus a town nearby with coffee shops where Phil could work from his laptop: both have kept up their day jobs part time. Half a year’s search and the £1,275,000 proceeds (minus a mortgage repayment) from the sale of their house brought them to Haye near the tiny village of Quethiock near Liskeard.
Here for £830,000 they got a four bedroom 16th century farm house, a three bedroom cottage for rental income, a double garage, outbuildings including stables, barns and a piggery and 25 acres. They moved in between lockdowns, bringing with them the cats and Harvey whom they had found begging for scraps behind a restaurant in Portugal.
An old dog now, he still loves to accompany guests as they stroll round the estate, go for walks or continue their animals encounters. After Buddy we go onto to see the three ponies: May and her daughter Grace who escaped the annual Dartmoor cull and Leo, an appaloosa and another ex-pet.
Phil and Kate have designed a circuit for them around their fields with food, water and shelter at different points. The aim is to keep the ponies active. In the wild, says Kate, they would cover 20 miles a day. Her knowledge is extensive and fascinating. One of the attractions of the retreat for me was learning more about creature care. She talks, for example, about how horses cannot sleep properly if they are alone – being prey animals they always need another to keep watch with the result that many are chronically exhausted.
Pigs she adamantly defends against charges of being dirty. “People think they are because they make such a muddy mess by their rooting and then live in it but, of course, in the wild they’d just move on. And Buddy never pees or poos in his bed.”
Our next meeting is with the chickens which Kate whistles to gather together for their evening roost. Like all the animals they are described as if they are close personal friends though Kate is pretty scathing about the character of Bob the rooster who is both aggressive and dim. “I don’t think he’d eat if if he didn’t see the hens doing it. And it’s always one of the girls who sees a hawk and raises the alarm.”.
Her and Phil’s new-found expertise is mostly self taught though she did a course in hoof care and trimming and he did ones in carpentry and plumbing. Both seem to work incredibly hard though Kate had a painful warning from her body last year when she had to spend two weeks in bed with a bad back.
“People go to the gym and think they’re fit and strong but there’s a huge difference between gym fit and farm fit. I was determined to do everything myself. I used to carry 20kg bales of hay almost as a matter of principle but I don’t butch it out any more.” Instead they now employ five locals part time; providing these jobs has become a source of pride.
Our first afternoon ends with an introduction to the delightful donkeys whom I help feed with hay: ex Scarborough beach donkeys Zippy and Woody and Coco who came from Ireland. The next afternoon I get much closer and for longer as I’m guided to give them a continuous supply of special food from my hands to distract them while Kate inspects and cleans their hooves.
In the morning we have had a lovely walk on beautiful Bodmin Moor dotted with the huge towers of old tin mines, a reminder of an industry which was once vital to the area. As we pass the Hurlers standing stones (legend has it that a group of hurlers were turned to stone as a punishment for playing on the Sabbath) and pause to gaze out across the views from 1000ft up, a group of wild ponies canter past. Beyond them the sea glimmers on the horizon.
The nearest beach is at Seaton 20 minutes away with the traditional resort of Looe a further ten minutes. Other attractions include the Golitha waterfalls, the ‘adrenalin quarry’ with its zip wire and aquapark and a new museum which tells the story of Emily Hobhouse who revealed and campaigned against the terrible conditions in the concentrations camps of the Anglo-Boer War.
Other retreats have included yoga, vegan cookery (both Phil and Kate are vegans), wild swimming and walking. Numbers are kept to a maximum of six and are very reasonably priced. “All the money goes back to the animals,” says Phil, “but we also want to be affordable.”
Most cost £265 per person with the yoga ones around £340 because their price includes a professional teacher. Prices include accommodation in the charming Apple Tree cottage (which can be rented independently of the retreats), vegan food (ours included Cornish pasties, risotto with roasted butternut squash and endame beans and carob ‘chocolates’) and all activities. Visitors who come by train can be picked up at Plymouth and also driven to local attractions. The atmosphere is relaxed and there is plenty of free time.
“We want to share our space because we appreciate how lucky we are to live somewhere like this where the loudest sound is birdsong,” says Kate.
“A lot of our mental health problems stem from not having a connection with nature but research shows contact with nature relieves anxiety and stress. Learning about and being with animals can be transformative. I’m a pretty stressy sort of person myself but you can’t be like that with animals, they won’t put up with it, they just run away”
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