[john and helen]

since reading this thread, i have found out a little bit about my grandparents on mums side, they came from a small village in east devon, where grand dad was a stone mason and nan would have grown all the veg and kept pigs 
i was told it was the norm…

the one thing i didn't like with the opening post was…the phrase ,playing at being farmer, smallholding is different in many ways to farming

just the other day, i popped down to cornwall, as i passed through the south devon bit of the A 38 there where plenty of farming fields, full of cattle and sheep..once in cornwall, you could spot more smallholdings, and the great thing was…there was so much more variety ..different types of sheep, chickens everywhere….i think smallholders should hold their heads up high….whether doing it as a hobby or business, they are still adding to the countryside.

now the last line of the op was, its sad to see the farms dying..and yes i agree, but its also sad to see the shipyards, the motor factories, and many more things die….

[in the hills]

I think you are right J&H. The bigger farms around us are maybe ' feeding the nation' as it is today. Of course we need that. They don't necessarily feed themselves and their families(directly that is!) though. In fact one of the younger farmers wifes said she didn't know how we could eat the sheep we've raised .... they couldn't possibly face eating theirs and why on earth did I grow veg. .... much easier to buy from Tesco. Why did I buy from the local butcher .... cheaper in Tesco. Hardly any of the bigger farmers keep hens ... some of older farmers have said that it's lovely to hear ours because years ago everyone had them but not anymore. Not the case of all big farms I know but just things that have been said to me here and possibly highlight changing attitudes. Smallholding is maybe more like the small family farms of years ago in some ways ... that now are not viable as businesses. Lots of reasons I think for changing countryside.

The buy land and have horses doesn't seem to happen here though I know it maybe a problem of sorts in some places.

 

[Ideation]

Hey,

Just a quick apology, when I said 'playing at it' I didn't mean to infer that all small holders are some how playing at being big farmers. . . . .

I'll give you an example, there are three small farms that border where I live/work. Their previous owners were small scale farmers, nothing major, the farms are around 40-50 acres each.

Now they went up for auction, and I live in an area which is quite popular at the moment for folk who work in a city to live the good life, and move to the country, while still commuting to work.

So. . . . the auction came, and there were a few folk there with ideas of taking over one of these farms, and farming it, mostly local, or relatively local people. However, there were also others. All three farms, went for ridiculous sums of money, none of them to be farmed, just to provide a pretty back drop to someones life. . . . .

The one, where we used to run sheep, ripped most of the fences out, and said no to the sheep, because they did not want their children 'standing in sheep s**t'. . . . . they now just get the grass cut by someone (and not used for hay) and left in the field. The other has a couple of horses. The third, fenced the lot in. . . . . with deer fence. . . . but only after the 12 dogs they rescued for their country idyll had killed several sheep locally.

The three lots of owners are - two pairs of doctors and one pair of solicitors, who work in the city, sold their big town house, and used the cash to buy a pretty chunk of the countryside.

I probably sound a bit bitter haha, and maybe i've just seen some bad example. I wash;t attempting a dig at the folk on here in any way! I was just interested to see what the backgrounds of those that are 'farming' on a small scale.

There are not really any small holdings around here, just one big estate, and a few small farms as mentioned above.

Interestingly, I also do a lot of pest (mostly rabbit) control in the south of england, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire etc etc.
A lot of the places we do are big estates and farms, that are actually owned by random celebrities, such as Jeremy Clarkson, Kate Moss, Angelina Jolie, etc all kinds of odd folk. They buy up big chunks of land, usually 2000-5000 acres. . . . . but don't want to do anything with it at all, just want it to look at out of the window. Anyway, I have a friend who works as a contract shepherd, they run around 7000 ewes, and don't own an acre. They just put sheep in rich peoples fields lol.

The countryside is a funny place.

[in the hills]

Move to Powys, Ideation  . Don't think I know anywhere like that for miles around. Everyone seems of a similar type. There are bigger family farms as I say but the smaller plots from 1-50 acres are all people doing what they can on their bit of land.

[NicandChic]

Middle class english townie meets semi rural scottish townie dream of bring up 2 children in a house in the country...roll on 8 years....6 months ago we bought a farm with 9 acres, barns & various out buildings. Hubby works from home (IT) & I'm a housewife, 2 kids 8yrs & 5ys living the dream so far!
We're far from being small holders but have added a couple of ducks and hatched our first chickens, lots of renovating, roof fixing, building warrants & planning permissions through, grant through to plant a woodland come 2015.
It's our dream come true & a very pretty chunk of the scottish countryside

[Somewhere_by_the_river]

It's not a simple case of town or country when it comes to how your blood or your heart speaks to you. I played the game for a while (I had to, we can't get by without money in this world), teaching during the week and fitting my artwork and tutoring in outdoor education (voluntarily) in at weekends and holidays. It didn't make me happy, it certainly didn't make me rich, health or wealth wise.

OH and I rented in rural West Berkshire for years (where he grew up), fenced in and priced out by true townies with their castles in the country and not a spot of mud on their shiny 4x4s. It's not about the family you were born into, but the life you need to lead. At the age of six I told Mum my farming plans for when I was 'grown up' only to have her laugh at my naivety... I grew up on the south coast (Dad was in the navy, it's where we ended up), a short walk from what was then the last farm in the area; oh how I loved that farm. Unlike my peers, I spent every available moment camping out in the countryside and mucking out rhinos at the local zoo with my keeper friends and helping with the veggie patch or cooking at home. If you sat just in the right spot in our large (for a town) garden in the middle of spring with the apple tree in full leaf, growing things all around and birds singing you could pretend you were in the country. I hated crowds and concrete, still do. I envied my Nan her chooks. I belong where I am - out on the land, knee deep in muck with life growing all around me. It's not a life choice or a change, it's simply me, I truly love the land.

We've not often got a lot of cash to spare, but we lead healthy, happy and fullfilled lives, growing our veggies, raising chooks and pheasants, cooking good, real food and creating artwork to make ends meet. Bees are next with sheep soon to follow. Turns out there is a farming background on my Mum's side, so I guess I'm a throwback. If I could go the whole hog (so to speak) I would, but I'm only one woman and we are neither of us very good at taking time out when there is so much we want to do and so much fun to be had out there on the land. The rest of the family think I'm nuts for what I do now; they might have a point but I wouldn't trade my life for theirs, not even for the regular wage.

I was born in a town, it was where my parents lived, but I never saw it as my home long-term and I'm no townie. I have always been a country girl - I've come home.

[Fleecewife]

Lovely reply somewhere_by_the_river.

[SallyintNorth]

Lovely reply somewhere_by_the_river.

Seconded

[john and helen]

Ideation, i know exactly what you are saying, i have done many jobs for celebs who have wanted the country life,
and many are against country ways..i can understand that as being annoying

[Somewhere_by_the_river]

Thank you Fleecewife and SallyintNorth, it was certainly from the heart and, I suspect, true, at least in essence, of quite a few of us. I often think of that farm I mentioned and it still makes me sad to think that it's now a housing estate and, last I saw, the lovely old barn had become a brewers fayre, or similar. Not the same.

I've always believed that home is the place you find, not are born in, and sometimes it finds you, almost by accident. My spiritual home, as you might call it, is in the north and it sings to me often. I may not be able to resist forever, but all the same, I'm home now, here in Wales where the sun, when it shines, is golden, the river birds call and the otter swims free. 

As for those celebs... I guess the only up side is that there are those who in buying up their fenced-in idyll prevent yet another old pile from becoming luxury apartments and they do at least seem to want to keep it green, if not quite growing in the way it should...

[Coeur de Chene]

Really related to your message, somewhere_by_the_river. I grew up in a new house on a new estate, but the last road before the countryside. Holidays were spent making dens in the bracken and we walked through the fields for the shortcut to school.
My grandfather and uncle were market gardeners, but my dad went for a job in a uniform and still likes stuff new, symmetrical and very clean, and that's how we were brought up.
I do wonder if its something in the DNA though. Today, kneeling in the soil and weeding, the cat watching me, pigs grunting away, the dog sunbathing, I just couldn't have been happier. I am exactly where I'm meant to be. Unfortunately my husband has to keep his job in the corporate world for us to do this.
We live in a very rural area of France and are surrounded by smallholdings, lived in by country people. We seem to have been accepted instantly, and have easily integrated. I feel that we have friends here although we only moved in last July. Maybe its a positive case of companion planting!

[lord flynn]

I lived with an Aussie large animal vet for about a decade. he grew up in the outback-50 acres needed to support a single cow, a brahman crosses. anyway, his dad had pipe dreams of making a 600 acre block support his family-it never did, they were pretty poverty stricken. he was gobsmacked (early 90s) at how small the farms were here, how boyed up by subsidies they were. he thought that taking 6-10 lambs to market was a waste of everyone's time and inefficient and the thought of taking a ewe to a vet was a hoot. there's no farming subsidies in Aus, you either make a living or you don't.
I don't necessarily agree with him.


our local farmer sold 2.5K acres to a developer for a song apparently. maybe they knew they'd not get planning for the new town, maybe they just didn't care. maybe they thought the new town next door would be a good thing and they were being altruistic. maybe the land just wouldn't pay so they picked up the subsidies for the planting of woodland and sold. maybe the sale set her and her elderly mother up and enables her farm to keep going.


I do think it a shame that every rural building in Essex/Suffolk these days is a conversion-I would kill for barns like that to keep my horses in.