3 replies to this topic

[Ria]

Hi
I've just bought the book today & joined the site, so thought it only polite to introduce myself before I start picking your brains ;-) .
My daughter (24) & I are about to set out down the long path that most of you have been obviously treading for quite some time.
We've been living down here in a house on a farm in Devon (rented) for the past 13 years, and now after a rough divorce (unexpected after 25yrs!!), three years of the neighbours from Hell (in the rented cottage next to us) & various other things we've realised our only option for building any kind of life/future for ourselves and eventually having a home of our own, is to set up a smallholding.
We're certainly not naiive, we realise it is going to be a lot of hardwork, blood, sweat, tears, & tantrums.
But we're determined to go for it.
So we're sitting here drowning in thousands of scribbled notes & memo's, ideas for the business plan, land requirements etc, surrounded by all our books on animal husbandry, tomes on growing methods, Eco living, self build, self-sustaining lifestyles, ...... pretty much everything except where to obtain Valium when dealing with Planning Dept ;-)

We're now looking for 5 hectares to buy & a pen to fill out the 28 day notice ;-)

So it's official, today - the 1st July 2012 - is the start of our journey towards a new & hopefully better life.

Ria x

[Cornish Gems]

Welcome Ria and daughter to our community. Once you have received the book, please send a message to us or to Admin with the last word on Page 2 of the book so that your status can be changed to that of Book Owner. This will then ensure that you have full access to all the gems of wisdom already on the site. This will also mean that you can post sensitive questions in the right place and not where any member of Joe Public can access it.

We are just further west along the A30 from you - just over the border in Cornwall, so please do not hesitate to contact us if you need anything. We are sure that other members in the area will say the same.

[Ria]

Oh Gosh! Only five days into our new journey & already hit the first brick wall. Money!! Or rather the lack of it! We've read the F2F book from cover to cover (BTW - it's fantastic!) but depressed the heck out of us when we looked at the figures. So our business plan now has a unique twist, instead of £60k of Alpacas we're going to farm 'fresh air' and sell it to the major towns & cities ;-) Plan B involves selling the cat, dog & daughter, & if none of that works then it's back to initial thought of playing 'Lemmings' off Beachy Head!! Anyone out there wanting to buy shares in our 'fresh air' venture, it's sure to be a winner & catch on, so get in fast ;-) xx

[Cornish Gems]

LOL - forget the alpacas for now and instead think about pigs. We have been greatly encouraged by KChally's diary and they only had 6 acres and the last word we heard is still planning on having some sheep as well. We have 5 hectares and are currently allowing a neighbour to grow wheat on half of it! Next year we hope to have some orphan lambs to use up some of the other land that the pigs are not occupying. Good luck!

Love the idea of sending 'fresh air' to other places. Reminds us of the story of the woman who registered ownership of the sun (because one is allowed to register ownership of any star which has not already been registered in much a similar way as one could register ownership of unregistered land in the UK if one could show that it has not been looked after by anyone else). She then went on to talk about whether she should charge people rental for the light they were receiving from the sun - indeed what she was thinking about was a royalty for all the solar panels!!!