The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Introduce yourself => Topic started by: Anke on January 09, 2010, 06:19:26 pm
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Hi, I have been reading the forum for a while now, and recently got round to register and reply yo a few topics.
We stay in the Scottish Borders, have a 9 acre holding and rent another 7 acre field next door for the sheep. We bought our land as a building plot with adjacent field and it took us two years to build the house. WE have now beeen going for three years. My OH works full time in Edinburgh, so I manage the holding and look after the children. We have three goats (two GG's and a BT type, two hopefully in kid), about 25 sheep (Shetlands, Bowmonts and a number of different crosses) and around 25 chickens (RiR, Lt Susx and Marans, and crosses thereof). In the summer we usually rear a few weaners. We have a large Polytunnel and are developing a vegetable/fruit garden. I also keep about three to five hives of bees, but am certain that they will not survive these harsh temperatures...
We got here from a "normal" life in Edinburgh, and it all started with HFW and the Rivercottage series, then led onto John Seymour... and hey presto 5 years later the smallholding is going well, very hard work and the best job I ever had... I have been reading the TAS diary and website for about 7 years or so, it sustained me through a few very unhappy months until i decided that i really didn't want to work 12 hour days (incl a two hour commute each way Mon-Fri) and decided to leave... It all came together in the end!
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Hi Anke,
welcome from North Lanarkshire. We're in similar circumstances to yourselves, keeping sheep & chickens on about 19 acres. I'm hoping to keep bees too, but failed to get a nuc last year. I also work in Edinburgh, although fortunately I'm home based much of the time.
Apart from the snow right now, it's a wonderful life.
John
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Hi Anke,
We have a very small smallholding- just over an acre between Falkirk and Livingston. I too work in Edinburgh, and we currently have 16 goats, plus dogs, cats, chickens and ducks.
Beth
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Hi Anke
am also in the Borders, you place sounds lovely :)
Nicola
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Living and working with and on the land is so rewarding, we just have a Garden with loads of chickens and now loads of doggies....Welcme from Clackmannan, "the Wee County"
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hi there from snowy fife. we have a 6 acre small holding, moved here 3 years ago and it has just got better and better each year! harder as well but like everyone else i wouldnt change it for the world. currently we have 4 shetland sheep (hopefully all in lamb); 11 chickens; 4 horses and a couple of pigs to come soon. also developing a vegetable garden and doing well with feeding the family for much of the year from it
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Hello from me in South Lanarkshire ;D
I'm living on my families semi-redundant farm and slowly trying to get it back to full production - but kids just seem to keep getting in the way of my grand plans ;)
Look forward to hearing more from you.
Karen
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Hi and welcome, interesting that you read Dan's diary I found it very inspirational too.
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Hi and welcome!
WHO'S diary, HM?
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Hi and welcome from another Scottish Borderer, I have Shetland sheep too, I did think of crossing them this year but decided against it,
would quite like a couple of goats too but I have to be careful and not get too ambitious with numbers as some of my land floods and if we have
too many animals it would cost a fortune to feed. Have been lucky this year and am renting an ajoining field till May, will just have to wait and
see if I can get it again next year, at the moment the horses and the ewes are in it as my own fields are very steep and icy.
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Hi Rosemary, sorry yours and Dan's diary.
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Hi Daisysmum, goats don't really need much grazing, but need lots of fairly good hay, so can be quite expensive if you have to all buy it in. And they need a house (my sheep are lucky if they get under cover for a day or two after they had their lambs - i am using my by then very empty hayshed for lambing pens), which also ups the intial cost/requirement. But I find the goats are very funny animals that you need to treat on an individual basis, much more than sheep (where I have a couple of INDIVIDUALS in my flock, but they are usually known for the wrong reasons!)
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Hello and welcome from Derbyshire
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Anke I would be promoted to the best Granny in the world if I got a goat as my Granddaughter is mad about them especially Gobo in Big Barn Farm ( she is only 2 1/2). May consider it in the summer before I order my hay for the winter but I would have to get 2 as I am sure that like most animals the will like to have company. Need to get a few lambs away as I have more than I want, I had 3 which were ordered and it fell through when the woman found that she was pregnant.This year i had 9 and 6 of them were girls when i really wanted boys, I always feel guilty sending the girls to the butchers
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Yes two goats is the minimum, and I found that when I only had two (goat number 3 arrrived a few weeks later) they were not really all that happy. However they are fine now, and BBC2 is on in the goatshed, which I find also calms them down quite a bit (well they like it, and I do get the traffic news when I'm there and am usually just pleased that I do not have to commute anymore!)
I kept all my female shetlands this year, although one is quite small and therefore might not be that good for breeding. But the crosses all (bar one, she would have been No 13 and that was just unlucky) went just before Xmas, when the local mart had a lightweight lamb sale on. I can't keep them longer, like to get my fields rested a bit. But the "runts" - two males that didn't get castrated by mistake are still in a separate field, and unfortunately the weather has meant I have not been able to get them done for our freezer yet...
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Hello there
This message may seem a bit out of the blue but I have just subscribed recently to this forum and I am interested in making contact with small holders in the Scottish Borders. My name is Nigel Gibb and I lecture in horticulture at the Borders College, Newtown St Boswells. My partner and I, have dreams to buy/lease a small holding in the Borders and are currently saving our pennies. We are in our early thirties and very enthusiastic to get started but finding the property search difficult. Perhaps you can offer us some advice in how you got started in your property search? I come from a farming background but unfortunately all my family who were farmers are no longer with us. I would be quite happy to lease some land first in order to run some sheep etc but of course it would be great to buy eventually.
Regards
Nigel
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Hi Nigel, welcome from me in Fife. :)
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We managed to get in fairly easy, as we sold our house in Edinburgh, but still had to buy a building plot with land. It took us two years to build the house, and by that time our children were in school/nursery, so I had a bit more time to actually get going. WE started from a bare field three years ago, and only now are getting somewhere near to where we want to be. Our mortgage is not that small either...
We have found it quite hard to find smaller holdings (with houses) for sale in the Borders, as we are still in the Edinburgh commuter belt (my OH goes up four days a week too) and horse owners are also very keen on these size holdings....
I would certainly recommend to rent a field to run some sheep on to start off, or you might find a cottage for rent with a field next door, which would allow you to develop a garden, get some hens and sheep. I know people who have a floating farm code, as they keep all their sheep on rented land. You could also look into byuing some land that is sold off/split from a large farm, and then try and build your house on the basis that you need to be on the land 24/7. I have seen that done too, but it would need a full economic justification for the planning permission (the farm has to be viable as main income...).
Hope this doesn't sound too disheartening, Anke.
PS: WE are just down the road from Newtown, near Longnewton.
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Hi and welcome from the east side of the Borders, I am in Reston, right in the middle of the village with 6 acres behind my house. We spent a long time looking for houses with land and had all but given up when we bought this house, it had no land and it took quite a while before we could persuade 2 ajoining farmers to part with 3 acres each.
As Anke suggested it may be worth looking for a farm cottage to rent along with some land, quite often arable farmers have small pockets of land which is of no use to them as they have no livestock, I have a friend who rents several fields like this for her ponies.