On downsizing…

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roobarb wrote:
Hello, I’m a newbie downsizer-in-the-making. Hoping for a bit of useful advice on my situation.

My wife & I have recently sold our flat in London (luckily just avoiding the recent market downturn) and we’re now renting a smaller place while we look for somewhere in the country. That was the plan, anyway.

Our current position is that we’ve found a smallholding in south Wales (4 acres) that would hopefully be enough for us to be fairly self-sufficient in veg and some meat. The trouble is that bills will need to be paid, fuel, seeds and feed need to be bought, etc., so getting some kind of income is essential. That’s where it gets tricky. Neither of us have many skills outside of marketing/web development and I doubt that these are going to be much in demand in rural Wales! My wife is a keen gardener (or was, until we lost the garden when we moved) and I’ve been learning beekeeping. We have no debts or children (and no plans for either) and enough cash in the bank to buy the smallholding and get ourselves started. Plus plenty of enthusiasm.

Are we crazy to be attempting something like this? Has anyone here been through a similar experience, and how did you manage financially? We don’t just want to cross our fingers and hope for the best. We don’t want to be the cliched townies making a hash of things in the country. We want to be sure that it’s a viable plan.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

    Rolls around in hysterical laughter…

Are we crazy to be attempting something like this?
Absolutely and utterly.

Has anyone here been through a similar experience, and how did you manage financially?
Yup, we have. We’re broke.

We don’t want to be the cliched townies making a hash of things in the country.
You will be – just like us.

We want to be sure that it’s a viable plan.
Yeah – we tried that too.

Any advice greatly appreciated.
Have a sense of humour.
Be prepared to ask favours – a lot of them.
Be prepared to send yourselves up and have the p*ss mercilessly taken out of you.
It’s back-breakingly hard work.
You will lose money hand over fist.
You will make a complete balls up many times over.
You will have to change your plans at least 6 times in the first two years.
You will row with each other in the middle of a field several times and everyone for a 5 mile radius will hear you.
You will lay in bed, worn out, exhausted and wonder why anyone ever said to you that downsizing was for quality of life.
You will develop aches and pains.
You will become obsessed with the weather.
You will talk about nothing except feed prices, land management and livestock.
The social highlight of your year will be the village hall New Year’s Eve party.
The social highlight of your weekends will be moaning and groaning on Downsizer about your spuds/beans/fruit bushes etc.
You will be constantly asked by your friends from your ‘previous life’ why you were so insane to do it in the first place.
Sometimes you will wonder yourself why you did it…

Then one morning, as you’re tramping across your few acres just as the sun is coming up, and you breathe in the fresh air, smell the grass and lean on the fence and watch your sheep, or chooks, or ducks, or pigs, or just the early birds…you’ll know why. And you’ll know that you can never, ever go back to how you were before.

I wish you luck. You’ll need it.

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We’re at it again!

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With the best summer weather any of us can remember this year, instead of relaxing and enjoying it, we’re in full construction mode in the garden.

Earlier in the year the new shed was a major project. Last weekend we re-fenced the chicken pen – in a new configuration which makes our garden look less like a rambling farm.
And this weekend we started on the next big thing: a new deck at the bottom of the garden.

The result should be a 2.5m x 2.5m area which catches the last rays of the sun in the garden and gives a good view back to proudly gaze at the house with a glass of wine.
That’s the theory anyway.

At the moment, it’s all dig, dig, dig, concreting posts into the ground and screwing big bits of heavy wood together with massive bolts. Hard work.

Hope it’s worth it. Photos to follow

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Sprung

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Yes, Spring has sprung. After what seems like a very long, cold, damp winter in the UK the spring has finally arrived.

I’d almost forgotten what it is like – watering the plants in the evenings after work, cycling home when it’s light, watching the chickens happily bathing in the sunlight and drying out and cleaning up their feathers (harder in the winter). The difference in the garden in just a few weeks is incredible – shoots and green things arriving everywhere you look.

We came through the winter a little worse for wear – poor old Shilpa, the last remaining ginger chicken, carked it from some mystery disease which we think might have been peritonitis. So we’re down to three: Chicken Bhuna, Chicken Madras and Kulfi and have a 50% success rate so far.

Now our plans turn to a proper garden redesign and we’ve ordered a new shed as a starter for that. Lots more planning to do.

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No planes!

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I use London’s airports regularly and frequently and despite trying my best to be environmentally friendly I normally have to side in favour of plans to increase capacity for planes in the future – otherwise I’d be being hypocritical.

I also live under the Heathrow flight path and similarly prefer not to hypocritically condemn the flight noise when I know I use those noisy services myself…

…but the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano eruption which is currently preventing all air traffic in the UK today and possibly for the next week or so and it’s resulting silence in the garden is surprisingly nice – like it’s “so quiet” you can hear the birds.
Since I don’t need to travel anywhere any time soon, I’m enjoying the treat.

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GranTourismo!

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Check this out for a cushy job: Two travel writers get paid to travel around the world for the next year, staying in holiday rentals of their choice, writing about their various experiences whilst also writing their own books and taking other travel commissions.

They’re writing about their adventures at http://grantourismotravels.com/

The idea sounds very glamourous – especially since Lara and Terence have been “on the road” as travel journalists for the last 4 or 5 years and probably deserve an end to the endless hotels. Even though they’ll be staying in a different holiday rental every two weeks or so, at least they get a place of their own to call home and can cook in their own kitchen.

It’s an interesting way to make a living whilst travelling anyway – although it’s no cakewalk either – they have to do a lot of writing and clearly carry a lot of gear too.

What I like about Lara and Terence is how they’ve written about how they go about organising themselves as well as their experiences and what it’s like to be doing the project.

[Disclosure: I work for the company which commissioned these writers. And I’m secretly envious of their gig.]

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