Hi everyone, I've been a long time lurker, mainly due to the fact that we didn't have any land so would have felt like a fraud posting on a smallholders website. We have lived in a farmhouse for over 15 years but only had enough adjacent land for a small vegetable plot and some small fruit trees.
Well all that has changed. The farmer who owned the land that surrounds our house, a very eccentric old lady in her late seventies, sadly died about four years ago and the land passed to her only surviving relative who really had no interest in keeping it. Cut a VERY long and complicated story short, after three years and a couple of failed attempts to buy the small cottage and a 3 acre field next to our house, we gave up all hope of ever having a smallholding. Early last year we found out that a developer was trying to buy the steading to build houses on it. Couldn't let that happen, so we resurrected our attempt to buy the small cottage and the field.
The sellers refused to sell the land in lots, so before we knew where we were, we somehow found ourselves agreeing to buy the whole blooming lot. So, waking up this morning, we find ourselves the proud (terrified and significantly poorer) owners of some (mostly derelict and collapsing) steadings, a (properly collapsed) piggery, a stockman's cottage, a Dutch barn and 41 acres of land. Just typing that sends shivers down my spine.
Just so you get the full picture, when I say 41 acres of land, what we currently have is approximately 5 acres of actual grass, 15 acres of thistles, 10 acres of ragwort and associated weedery, and 11 acres of nettles. Someone we met a few weeks ago pointed out that nettles only grow in really fertile soul. That cheered us up no end
Add into that mix a collapsed culvert which, given the recent weather, has resulted in a build up of standing water of biblical proportions, we appear to have an interesting few weeks and months ahead. On the upside, we are providing free meals to about eight deer each day, loads of wild ducks, a few buzzards, a couple of sparrow hawks and one beautiful barn owl.
This is probably a good point to mention that we have absolutely no experience whatsoever of matters agricultural. It's not all bad news though as both of us do reasonably well on little or no sleep, don't mind being cold and wet, quite enjoy hard work and don't mind being perpetually poor
Sorry for the long first post.
Topic: Hello from Angus, Scotland (Read 3612 times)
