It has been seven months almost to the day, 209 days to be precise, since I last posted here. In that time I’ve moved country, had one house move fall through and spent far too long in a temporary home with no garden. Safe to say things never go smoothly; but as I write I can only think - it was all worth it.Ever since I was a child my sole ambition was to own a field, my Sister’s was to be a duck so in that respect I wasn’t that odd in comparison, but the space and potential a field could offer me was overwhelmingly attractive. My partner and I had a burning desire to follow our joint ambition and buy a smallholding and I guess we’ve finally realised this.
After our first house move fell through things have moved very quickly. We found our new home online and after all the legalities had been sorted we moved in. We’ve been in around five weeks now and things are starting to come together. The plot consists of an old farmhouse, once a pub back in the 1800’s, and just over 4 acres, divided between garden and pasture. The garden is around 0.4 acres as it stands and is pretty much all lawn, which is great for me as it offers a completely blank canvas. Although at times this is quite daunting! We also have a large Rose pergola, a small vegetable garden, a greenhouse and a few other plants (most of which flower pink – not my colour). The plan is to extend the vegetable garden considerably, plant an orchard and develop the ornamental garden – in time.
As I write the housing for our horse has just been erected and tomorrow she arrives along with our first batch of ex-battery hens from the British Hen Welfare Trust. I also have around 20 or so hatching eggs in the incubator, one of which is hatching prematurely on day 17/18 and the rest are likely to hatch over the coming days with Wednesday being day 21. These chickens will be a mixture of laying and meat birds as we move more closely to becoming self-sufficient. We’ve chosen Speckled Sussex this time around and I’m informed by chickeneer extraordinaire and Twitter friend Andy Cawthray of Chicken Street that they make good table birds. I also have a few Brahma eggs due to hatch and these will stay with the laying girls of which there are currently six.
The next few weeks and months will see me fencing, cutting, mowing and digging until the place starts to look good. This is a big project and is likely to take some time - wish me luck!
It’s so good to be blogging again!
