What Goes Around

 A circle has been navigated, and I find myself very much in a similar place to where I was when I jumped off this roundabout some years ago, so I thought I would quietly jump back onto it.

I am 62 years old, and about to begin a new work from home job, because of the cost of living situation here in the UK, after a self employed hiatus of eighteen months.

I live in a tiny, mid terrace house with my husband of a quarter of a century, and one of our two daughters, who plans to marry and leave us in October.

We rent ten acres, two miles away, and we keep sheep, goats, hens, ducks and a retired pony, and grow vegetables.

Until recently the vegetable growing was a commercial enterprise, but it was failing to provide me with an income, so it is now back to being a self sufficiency project.

My dream is to own a house (as tiny as this one is fine) on a small plot of land ( a couple of acres would be nice, but half an acre would do) which we can call our own smallholding to retire to, after so many years of tenancies and travelling between plots.

I also dream of living a slower, simpler life where we provide almost everything for ourselves, and don't trade so much of our time for the money to cover our costs. If you look back, you'll find my dreams haven't changed much over the years! We've been closer, and further, further and closer from them like a tide. 

I do my best to live the simple life, while acknowledging that in order to get there, there are still things we have to do, which we'd rather not.

I will slowly update the links, and try to keep up to date with posting.

A Bit More Structure

We have a lot of plans.
We're living in incredibly turbulent times, not just globally and politically (although ...) but also in our house.
As Boo has just turned 18 and August races ahead of us, the time is coming closer when the house will be a lot quieter, a lot more echoey, and I will be dealing with an 'empty nest'.
Our loose plan is to get right clear of debt, put a roof over our heads (shared ownership house? co-housing? long term lease of land? buy land?) , move to building more of our own income streams (hubby is already successfully self employed, I need to move that way before I am too elderly!) and making more of them land based, increase our self sufficiency, and hang on to our smallholding, where ever we need to take it to keep it, as it were. Ultimately to live a plain and simple life, "living simply that others might simply live."
The key word here is 'loose'.
In some ways, it's good to keep plans loose because, to be honest, we don't know what opportunities for housing will come up, or what possibilities will strike us as income streams, and we need to be adaptable.
However how we finish off our debt, and save for our future, should probably be just a little more detailed!
We need more structure, more accountability, more tick lists and target dates - more detailed execution, more feedback loops.
I'm looking for some good frugal challenges to join, and I need to reorganise my time to make better use of what little spare time I do have.
What's your top time management tip?

We, Who Have Compromised?

I wanted to attend a screening of We The Uncivilised - A Life Story, before it was released as a download, but never quite got the opportunity.
We live in social economy black spot. No one believes us until they look at the map of just about any membership organisation and go 'oh there's a big hole, right there'. From beekeepers to WWOOF hosts, goat societies to smallholder co-ops,  calculate the biggest gap between willing participants, and we'll be smack bang in the centre.
Anyway tonight we downloaded and watched the film.
Motivating myself with this as the payoff, I closed out April's budget with a will of iron. Then started May's. I am, in one sense, happy to report that all our corporate and entreprenuerial diligance is making a difference. We will soon be closing the gap.

On another level, how hopelessly sold out and useless do I feel?

If you haven't seen the film (- do -) it's made by a  young couple desperately seeking place, community, sustainability, responsibility ... and they talk to many of our friends and heroes : Sarah Pugh, friend, hero, innovator, people lover, trainer, teacher, inspiration. Mike Feingold, the Royate Hill pixie, such a genius of a man, and so kind. Neil's guiding light, Simon Fairlie ... and above all, they talked to Patrick. Not long before he died, they captured his closing remarks, his legacy, his extraordinary funeral, his wife, Cathy's, poems, I will not lie, there were tears in our sitting room, and they weren't all mine.

On an unbelievably cold day, in February 2002, Patrick came to see our land. He walked it with us, talked to us about it, drew up some plans, and gave us some advice. Thereafter he never failed to support us, love us, have faith in us, and help us. He often gave us things because, he said, 'he believed in what we were doing'.

Tonight, I wailed, 'But we're not now, are we? We've let him down.'

'Not yet, we haven't' Neil replied grimly. I think that's  the man version of my response.

Patrick Whitefield 1949 - 2015

A Cunning Plan - Smart Ways to Rent Land and Live the Dream!

I thought I’d share some thoughts on looking for land.

We’ve been ‘smallholding’ for over two decades, in various ways, on various bits of land – and we still don’t own a square foot.

A growing number of people want to get onto the land and find a way to live a simpler life. I come across people who have a way to buy a bit of land, who are prepared to build an offgrid cabin, or live in a van. I’m not one of those people – I have a family. When we started out, we had baby children. Rightly or wrongly, we weren’t prepared to live in a ditch.

When we first came down to Wiltshire, fresh from a number of catastrophes, we came down to a farm job.  Neil had some experience of working on a farm, but nothing major.  This particular job had a number of things going for it, and these may or may not be some things to look out for!

1.   They were getting desperate. If the job is doing the winter feeding and mucking out for dairy cows who come in in October, and the job’s still going in September, there’s a chance they may be less than picky when they’re hiring.

2.   It was a simple, basic job. Once you knew how to drive the tractor and operate the feeder, you could do it. As time went on, you’d do it better, but you were competent really quickly. There wasn’t much training to do, and they gave someone half competent a shot at it.

3.   It was seasonal. It came with a cheap house to rent, which was a big plus, but it was only a winter job. We had to take a chance that we’d find work in summer. As it turned out, Neil started a gardening business that ran for some years off the back of those unbooked summers. But the income from the farm job from April to October was: zero.

4.   The bloke who was herd manager was less than charismatic. If you were hoping for a new best friend, you weren’t going to want this gig. If you could let it wash over you on the other hand …

So. That’s how we got our first shot at it. We got a three bed bungalow with a huge untouched slab of garden for a song, and a half decent income in winter.

•   Look for jobs which will move you into a rural zone, and which come with property you can start to live your dream on.
• Permaculture Magazine Classifieds

Once we moved away from this first job, we rented cottages from the Crown Estate.  Rented houses can be adaptable, quirky, with land, with woodburners - and you can be free to keep pets, keep chickens, grow vegetables. Your average buy to let landlord isn't going to let you do that though. Landlords like the Crown Estate, Duchy of Cornwall, and the National Trust, can be a bit more relaxed.

• The National Trust properties to let. I'm warning you there is actually a tearoom in Somerset on here. I may  have to pack after I finish writing this.

We never actually got around to community living, but it's undoubtedly a way to get onto the land, and also to learn a lot. There are some unusual opportunities and although these days some of them come with a price tag that would buy you a regular house, there are still some openings for renters.

• Diggers and Dreamers is the place to look to see what's on offer communally.

Eventually, we got into a private arrangement with a local fellow Crown tenant who had some grazing he wasn't using, and we had that off him on a handshake for a number of years before we formalised it, and we now rent on an FBT off the Crown. Having a little faith and just getting on with it paid off for us - it might not have done since he was in breach of contract, subletting to us, and it could have ended horribly wrong, but it didn't.

II have no way of knowing what's on offer in your area, but land does go up for let.

• UK Land and Farms is a good place to look for land tenancies.
• Greenshifters used to be good but these days has few lets in the UK, and those it does have seem to be overpriced. 

Ihope that's been of some use to people whose hearts call out to the land, but know they can't afford to buy, and don't know where to start to make a big life change while renting. 

Renting has its issues - don't we know it - but if you really want to get onto the land and get started, you may be like we were - we had limited choices!

i don't regret our choice to move right away, diving into life onto the land by way of tied and rented accommodation. I'd always advise you to watch your back, and have an exit strategy* but it's been a lot of fun. 

If it's where your heart is, you probably need to follow!

*ho hum. We still don't have one!

 

New World Order

So yesterday, we took H to Hartpury near Gloucester, and she began her new life as a university student.
I was less of a wreck than I might have been, as she'll be back on Wednesday for a driving lesson, and up and down frequently to ride her little horse.
Meanwhile, guess who is looking after said little horse?
I left for work today at 7.30 am and didn't get back til exactly 12 hours later, having tended to his lordship mid way on both journeys.
I enjoy this visit into my past life, but it's pretty tiring, on top of my quite newly acquired full time job.
Boo is now deep into personal statement, written work, and history assessment tests. It all feels very different.
I'm giving myself a little time, but I have to reorder things around here to make time for all the productive house and home tasks I love, and rely on to save me money.
Time to garden, sew, knit, and cook must be carved out somewhere.
The finances are pretty rocky after an unusual and hard to track few weeks - we have to get back on top of things!
I'm also now keener than ever to get on track for Christmas - having my precious girl (and next year maybe girls) back home for my favourite season just got even more special.
All this means the time and money commitment for Slimming World has gone out of the window. I must try to keep up to speed on my own.

The girl at Uni - farewell sister selfie

The gentle rustle of a new leaf as it turns

For the first time in a decade, we went on a family holiday.
Boo left these shores for the first time ever and H for the first time she can remember.
We went back to beautiful Brittany.
There are photos, but I'm having a great deal of trouble uploading them.

To some extent, we lost our hearts all over again to Brittany, and spent lazy hours figuring how on earth we could relocate once the girls are through Uni - but at the moment, that's a pipe dream.

For now, it's back to real life and the very serious business of designing a way forward that is at once frugal, entrepreneurial, simple, faithful, and ... erm ... possible. That's the one I tend to forget!

After a week of profligate (by our own meagre standards) spending on food, and lashings of gorgeous Breton butter, with scant regard for Slimming World! I have to face the Bank Holiday Monday joy of menu planning and frugal grocery shopping once again, as well as trying to make an autumn veg garden a reality, and starting to think about ... yes, I'll say it, Christmas!

I have as yet resisted the temptation to stand on the scales.

Due to the infuriating inefficiency of the library's website, I am no doubt in debt to the tune of twenty odd pounds to the Library. I really do think I will give up. I always have the best intentions, but the website renewal process is very patchy, and when you try to renew at the machine it charges you vast amounts of money before it will let you renew. I wonder why they are saying they have to close Libraries when they rob you blind if you are unable to turn up in person to renew or return a book on its exact date, and have a website which says it has renewed books, but hasn't?

One more day to regroup, and then back into an absolute FRENZY!  Two really busy weeks at work, including three days away at a conference, and a trip up to Bucks for a family event, and then at two weeks today, my first baby flies the nest to go to Uni!

Taking deep breaths.