The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: missnearlyvintage on October 13, 2012, 05:41:08 pm
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Hi everyone,
I'm a newbie from the midlands, and an aspiring smallholder, but I'm struggling to work out how my family and I will ever be able to afford this lifestyle. I am a housewife with a young son, and my husband earns a decent wage, but this doesn't even seem to scratch the surface in terms the funds needed to rent or buy a smallholding, let alone run one. So, I'm wondering whether there is a secret so that the 'average' family might be able to afford this, or if I should give up on this dream if it isn't realistic.
I'd be really interested to hear other people's experiences with this and what your thoughts are.
My dream is to have a modest 2/3 bed house, with maybe 2 acres of land, so not massive, but still not seemingly attainable.
Thanks!
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Hello - welcome to TAS. I'm also midlands (Worcestershire)
I think you will hear a broad range of answers to your question! I would consider our family as fairly average apart from the fact we are an extended family with my disabled mum living with us. When we bought our holding (a very run down holding I should add!!) there was my husband who had a fairly good wage, myself a stay home mum and 4 small children.
Nearly everything needed sorting out before we could buy animals, grow veg etc. We've had to 'make do and mend' mainly. Nowadays I run a small business making goats milk soap but we are still far from rich!
We have found that the rewards of smallholding have been to make us well off in terms of health, happiness and satisfaction at what we can achieve with our hands/grow etc and cheesy as that sounds, we are much happier than before. The house is a long way from being renovated but now we have re-established the old veg patch, planted new fruit trees, had proper stock fencing put in around a couple of acres - still quite a few to do when we can afford to, added 2 livestock sheds and learnt how to make plum wine ;)
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you can still find properties to rent in wales and scotland that could be used for smallholding, you have to try and make everything atleast pay for itself, if not make profit.
hi from cornwall! :thumbsup: :tree:
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To buy one - I think the short answer is yes. Neither I nor my wife have ever earned over the average wage in this country (21K).
To rent..... it depends how you go about it. If you need the holding to be joined together then they do seem to be making a premium. However, you could rent some land near a/your house. I live on an arable farm and live in a semi, 2 bed with my wife and daughter, she works full time (PA) and I do the farming and mind my daughter. I now rent just shy of 200ac in various blocks of short-term grazings, with no SFP entitlements. on this, I run about 350 sheep. This makes me a part-time income and is a part-time job which suits me looking after the littleun, so it can work.
I don't know about pigs etc, might be harder to rent ground for them, but I know a feller who does a similar thing with cows and lives in the middle of town. We have poultry in the garden - farmers as landlords tend to be more relaxed about this than townies who have bought a place in the country and are waiting to retire into it, cos they seem to apply 'town rules'.
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Get your name down for an allotment while you search for your smallholding.
I don't think you need to be well off, you have to be persistant and lucky. Search and ask everyone everywhere. We were lucky to find our farm in Mid Wales. The house is small but it has all the buildings and land that we need.
Good Luck
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:wave: Hi
If you are able to re-locate then you may find you get more for your money. We moved from Midlands/Shropshire area to Mid-Wales about 3 years ago and have a bigger house than we could afford in that area, plus 2 acres and a small orchard. We are in a similar position in that we chose for me to give up work and stay at home once we started a family so only one wage coming in for many years now.
Like Plums, we have been doing things gradually and still have much to do inside and out. However, it is well worth it .... would never want to go back. A beautiful place to live and our farming neighbours are great. They help us out with experience we obviously lack and are really welcoming. Think it is possible if you don't long for material things ..... which we don't. A lot of farming stuff can be picked up at dispersal sales for good prices ..... just come back from one today with some goodies :excited:
Good luck
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Get your name down for an allotment while you search for your smallholding.
Depending on what part of the country you are in - you might well be dead three times over before your number comes up in that game! But you can always hope... Luck is definitely a part of it.
And at least you have one advantage: you are not alone. Single woman, middle-aged, no decent income - no chance in hell! I've been trying for many years to save up enough cash to buy something very small and rundown outright, as I know I'd never get a mortgage. Every time I have a few thousand in the bank (not through earning a lot, but through working like hell and spending next to nothing), I lose my job and have to live on my savings. But even I was lucky to get a council house with a little garden...
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In the main , for every person that replies here , you will get a different answer . What one person thinks is well off , another thinks it poverty . It is the classic " how long is a piece of string ?" .
Too many variables to answer off the cuff really .
Do you own your own home ?
Do you have experience with livestock ?
Do you 'both' really want a smallholders life ?
Can the wage earner still earn once you get a holding ?
Can the other one cope with all the work and the kids on the holding ?
I could go on forever !
If you own a reasonable house worth £300,000+ you may find a smallholding somewhere for a similar price , if you are lucky , but the variables come in again . Is the land any good ?
Can it cope with livestock ?
Depending on area , is the growing season long enough for all your veg crops ?
My reply is not intended to put you off in any way , just to say that ultimately , only you can answer the question , based on what you want out of life and your own perceptions .
Read as much as you can on tas though . The alternate view , ie without rose tinted specs , is on here , for those that want to see it anyway .
The best thing you can do though is what you have done , ask questions , and apply the answers to your situation .
Good luck anyway .
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Rustyme is right .... but ..... you don't need £300,000 :excited: :excited: :excited: . Think you have to search long and hard and some areas are more affordable than others and yes there will be compromises to make .... depends how much you want it.
My hubbie was lucky enough to get a job working from home and then we were off. If we had known we would have moved sooner and he would have commuted.
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You have to hold onto your dreams. It can be possible, but it means scouring property for sale, accepting that you will have to compromise on something, whether that is location, house condition, size of land etc.
Property is still more affordable the further "out" you go, Wales and Scotland are cheaper. In Scotland cheaper property is found in the south west, borders, highlands etc. of course, the trouble is that jobs are harder to find in those places, so it may depend on what your husband does for a living. Do you need to live within commuting distance of a big town for example.
Beth
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Thanks everyone, your replies are really interesting!
I don't think we could move to Scotland or Wales as my husband works for a big computing firm in the midlands and there isn't a lot of work like that out in the sticks I shouldn't think! But the thought of buying/renting a nice house, with a piece of land nearby sounds promising as an introduction to the lifestyle and something I hadn't really thought about before.
We won't be in a position to move somewhere new for about a year as we're tied into our current rental (nice enough end terrace, pretty back garden, but not allowed to create a veg patch/keep chickens and on the edge of a city), and with a very young son I won't be thinking about anything more than chickens and growing my own produce for a couple of years after that so a separate piece of land might be the way to go.
Wow, £300,000 is a lot of money! I don't think my husband is ever going to earn enough for us to afford that kind of money, it is good to have realistic answers though.
It's such a hard thing juggling my husband's commuting needs, with the ideal childhood I would like for my son, and ofcourse also keeping the finances in the black!
Thanks for all your ideas and advice, it's really good to talk to people who know about these things!
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I think it is a bit harsh to flatten my advice about putting your name down for an allotment. If you don't put your name down you will never get one!!!! :knit:
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getting an allotment would be a good way to start, allotment availability varies through the country, theres a few pivately run schemes down here in cornwall. worth lookng into.
its amazing how much food you can provide from pots and window boxes if youve only a bit of space.
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I am on a waiting list where I live for an and have been for a little while, but have been told that they don't think an allotment will become available for me before I leave this constituency next year. There are allotments about 5 minutes walk from me so I regularly go and peak through the gates to see what lovely things everyone is growing!
This probably isn't the place for this side-shoot of conversation, but I was also wondering what low maintainence, low budget plants I could grow too - we're trying really hard to save for a house deposit so living very frugally, but feel it would be nice to have a purpose in the garden, and maybe grow things that would be more expensive to buy in the shops too. I have a few big terracotta pots, and tools but little else, or any compost (garden soil is awful and contains a lot of rubble), and I can only start planting around Christmas when the little one get's a little more self sufficient. Any ideas please?
I was hoping to plant garlic about now, but really don't have the time at the moment with bub practically stuck to my hip. Any ideas where I can get good value seeds/plants/compost from as well? The area I live in doesn't have any good garden centres nearby so I think I would have to order things over the internet.
Sorry for getting sidetracked, and sorry for being a novice as well. I knew I should have listened to my mother (with her degree in horticulture) when I was younger!
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we moved to scotland specifically to afford land. it wasnt acheivable where we lived in hampshire. there are lots of people who rent fields to keep there livestock whilst they live in town etc.
farming comes in all disguises, we went to yorkshire once to collect some young birds from a breeder who advertised in a national magazine and found he lived in a busy town and literally had a 8x10 garden shed from which he sold young chicks. his broodies were kept on the allotment.
you can give yourself a good supply of meat from a couple 4 tier rabbit hutches. or keep quails in them for meat/eggs. most gardens can support a couple of hens.
we sometimes do a scheme where people can keep a pig at our farm and help with its care etc until d-day.
whatever u do, every "project" has to pay for itself or u cant expand.
a couple of weaners dont need much land at all, u might be able to find a tatty corner somewhere.
do have a garden? properly run u can grow alot from a veg patch, greenhouse and containers.
In the main , for every person that replies here , you will get a different answer . What one person thinks is well off , another thinks it poverty . It is the classic " how long is a piece of string ?" .
completely agree!
goodluck, and dont give up
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We live in mid-Wales and the train from our local village station goes directly to central Birmingham. First train is at 6.15am and gets into Birmingham at 8.30ish. The service is very good. I know of one commuter who commutes daily from Borth to Birmingham University!!!
Don't rule out commuting too quickly if you want access to cheaper properties in mid-wales.
It's good here..... just wet!!! :gloomy: :gloomy: :gloomy:
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It's like having kids, If you wait till you can afford them - then you'll never have them,
We rent privately and have access to around 8 acres all told , with tatty old buildings that were no good for our landlords purposes, If he can't get a tractor in the door then it's a redundant building. so that to us is 8 stables and 6 old pigsties , a four bedroom house that was falling apart , and all for £500 a month, yes there are drawbacks , but we can do what we want without interference, splendid isolation , and freedom. I can go from here and be at the M5/M6 JUNCTION in 1.5 hrs.
have a look at this http://jacydo.com/property/smallholding-temple-bar-felinfach/ (http://jacydo.com/property/smallholding-temple-bar-felinfach/)
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I know some people who could not afford to be smallholders in the UK so they sold up and moved to France. They have their smallholding and some work too - usually using their trades or doing odd jobs for other Brits who have retirred here.
We did not plan to be smallholders - it was an accident !
An accident because our house came with 2 large barns and a piggery and enough land to keep stock and grow veg etc.
Certainly there are very many old farmhouses with land for sale becuase it is cheaper to buy land and build a Lego house that to rennovate an old house. Many of these old farms have been with "estate agents" for years and are poorley advertised ( most not on the www) but if did French property web sites it is likeley that there are scant details and few photos. (UK estate agents who sell over here aim at the Brits and overprice stuff). We know people who bought their house and then discovered ( oh by the way - you also own another house or a shop or a wood down the lane).
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You certainly wouldn't need to spend as much as £300,000 for a place with a couple of acres up here in north Cumbria. And there are IT firms aplenty in Newcastle, or further down country around Manchester. Or, as others have suggested, looking at areas with good train links to where your OH works could bear fruit.
You'll probably think it sounds impractical with the wee'un, but if you can get yourself on a few WWOOFs you will find yourself lit up with all kinds of possibilities you'd not thought of before. Depending on which side of the Midlands you are (I'm from the Black Country myself, as it happens), you may not be so very far from Lower Shaw Farm on the outskirts of Swindon. I did my first WWOOF there and I can honestly say my life changed that weekend.
Good luck anyway :wave:
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£300 k gets you an entire village here.
Try £70 k for a house with outbuildings and land.
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We live surrounded by people who own a house and a paddock but have no use for the paddock, the largest of which is a hectare. So we farm on the land of six neighbours. We added one a year and have done lots of fencing but pay no rent
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I think Tiz hits on a very valid point there - the one about redundant buildings just because they don't fit one persons expectations but you can make of it what you can to your advantage.
Our land is steep in places and uneven. I am guessing that of the hundreds of viewers over the 3 vacant years, many were pony owners and the land was just not suitable for them. Others were put off that we live 2 miles from Long Lartin and 1 mile from a large traveller site - to us that just means lower crime rates in the local vicinity because of the higher police presence! The hilly land means its great for goats and native sheep (it also tones your legs up, all that walking up hills ;) ) It also meant that the house and land came in at a very affordable price....
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:wave: More and more computer firms are allowing people to work from home ...... ideal ;D .
Your OH could look out for a home-based job ..... allows you to search outside the commuter belt, in more affordable areas, unless of course you are tied to an area for other reasons.
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i started off growing one solitary lettuce on my last houses meagre patio, then i made a small pen and got 2 chickens.
get your big terracota pot and fill it with whatever you can get, compost, soil, some rubble at the bottom for drainage then when your next in tescos buy an extra bulb of garlic, split it into cloves, choose the biggest and plant them a few inches apart in your pot. they you go, your now a small smallholder!
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We are also in the midlands.. Live in a big old house with large garden we have chickens rabbits and ducks at the moment, hoping for some goats aswell.. Have raised beds for veg and a greenhouse. Not wealthy at all we both work and have 4 teenagers.. Have to work to pay the bills but still enjoying a part of the smallholders life.. Couldn't afford to buy a small holding so making the most of what we have. Looking for a small piece of land to rent for other animals but no luck so far .. It can be done if u have a litte space.. I was inspired by Kate fox.. and her micro holding.. Google it for some ideas, follow your dreams you'll get there in the end if u want it bad enough
Good luck in your search
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We live surrounded by people who own a house and a paddock but have no use for the paddock, the largest of which is a hectare. So we farm on the land of six neighbours. We added one a year and have done lots of fencing but pay no rent
Now that is true. My sister has moved in the last couple of months to her first smallholding. She was looking to buy in a very specific area, due to school catchment areas, unfortunately an expensive area to buy in! She managed by buying a converted farm steading, so the house is semi detached. There are 5 houses, and a 10 acre field was split, so that each house has a 2 acre paddock. NONE of the other house owners use their paddocks for anything! There quite a lot of conditions in the deeds, so they are going to have be careful not to annoy the neighbours- no cockerels for example! But, because the house is semi detached, it brought the property down into their price range.
Beth
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Noo,you do not have to be wealthy,just a bit insane ;D
I moved to my current location on the verge of bankruptcy,a small diminutive cottage but has just over the acre on the back ;) for the first year I did not do anything and it was all overgrown,6ft of nettles and thistles,basically a bit of waste land really.
It is now 6 yrs on and although it is really hard work,I love it,you would not regret it when you do find somewhere,the entire lifestyle is just so vastly different to that of the rat race so to speak,if I were you I would get :excited: and make your dream come true,go for it!! ;D :thumbsup:
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Hi, We 'only' have 2 (private)allotments but on them we have Chucks,Ducks,Geese,Pig's & two Pygmy Goat's and it only costs me £50 per year for the land.............but i'm always looking for some 'proper' land.
been to look at an 8 acre plot today........let's see what my moneyman say's.
Richard
Sheffield
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as an extension to the allotment idea; some councils have common land that can be rented for smallholding - Beccles common is suffolk is rented out this way.
I tried to apply (as there was a vacant 2 acres) but couldn't 'cos I lived just over the border in Bungay, and the bungay 'common' land was rented out entirely to one big farmer :( ; sadly this is quite a common occurrence, (Esp when the big farmer has a seat on the local council :rant: (don't actually know if this was the case in bungay, but it certainly was in another area I lived in)).
But certainly worth asking - just in case.
I retrained as a sparky so I could move to an area where I could afford to get some land in the end.
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You say that you are not allowed to grow veg or keep chooks where you are. Can you not find somewhere a bit more flexible? If you can get an older type council house they tend to have bigger gardens. That's what we have (in Telford) and keep three goats as well as growing fruit and veg.
If you want it enough, it will happen.
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I don't think you do have to be well off to get started. We had an old ex-council place with a long garden which got us started on chickens, ducks and veg. For our first lot of pigs we 'squated' an unused and very overgrown paddock and set up a 'pig club'. We had six families sharing three pigs, everyone paid £20 a month so we didn't need any capital to get going at all.
Our new place we got for less than half the £300k mentioned earlier and that's got 4 bed+6 acres and within an hour of London on the train. Of course, its got its share of problems but you've got to compromise on some things. We just about broke even in our first year and this year I get paid from the farm (just!).
Having a husband in IT sounds ideal - I still do some computer work part time and over half our members are in IT in one way or another. I'm thing we'd have struggled to run our community farm if we'd bought somewhere cheap in Wales or Scotland although I'd love to hear otherwise. In order to make money on selling the premium produce from a smallholding you need a good 'middle class' market who are willing to pay a premium as you're never going to compete on price.
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Noo,you do not have to be wealthy,just a bit insane ;D
I'd agree with that ;D ;D ;D
We are lucky that we live on the redundant 'family' farm so don't have rent or a mortgage to pay - if we did we definately would have a smaller house and less land (and be on an island somewhere waaaay north ;))
We have 4 kids, the last 2 born while we were actively smallholding - I chased pigs in pitch black, lashing rain and howling winds while 7 months pregnant (and OH was working) I've farrowed pigs while waiting to go into labour myself, the kids have (at times) had to delay their new boots/clothes while we buy x, y or z for the holding.
It's hard, it's dirty, smelly, cold and 'orrible at times but you know what...... seeing your kids running through long grassy fields, climbing trees, smiling with glee when they hold a piglet/chick, knowing you're feeding them with good quality food and giving them a freedom so many kids just don't get - that is what makes it worthwhile for me. Wouldn't change it for the world :thumbsup:
If you both want it bad enough (because with a young family it will take both of you) you'll find a way ;)
Good luck and keep us all posted
Karen
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Here's my opinion for what it's worth.
The main thing is not to give up and settle for a compromise.
If you do that it will most likely never happen for you in this lifetime, and chances are you will not be fit for it anyway. The spirit of the times is against smallfarming, as it so often has been throughout history.
The System wants consumers, TV watchers, 'stuff' buying workers, not self sufficient, frugal, thrifty types who don't want to join in and fuel the consumer economy.
I notice this in Canadian farming. The govt has no time for small players. Farmers are encouraged to think of themselves as Commodity Producers, to get bigger or get out. To farm more and more land in order to justify purchasing bigger and more expensive machinery.
Let's be honest, self sufficiency is selfish. A farmer who is feeding 800 people a year with his wheat crop is far more valuable to the system and humanity? than a smallholder who is just feeding himself and being smug when the power goes off!
In my own case I bought a 4 acre smallholding in Ireland for very little money, about the cost of a new car at the time, cash only, no one would have given a mortgage on it, at a time when being English was not a cool thing to be in that location. Worked it up, made a business selling herbs and vegetables, rode the Celtic Tiger, and sold it for 5 times what I paid for it.
Wishing to own more land I moved to Canada, did exactly the same thing again. Bought 22 acres in BC from a bank, it was a bankruptcy sale and I had to go to court to buy it. Again, after working and building, sold it for 3 times what I paid for it and moved to the prairies, just before prices started going crazy here too.
The Chinese are buying up Saskatchewan farmland for gawds sakes! What does that tell us?
So now I own outright about 200 acres, no debt. As a smallholder out of debt is out of danger, debt just sucks you back into the system. This is considered a very small holding here, just shows the meaning of relativity!
Several times along the way I was tempted to give up and get a job. This might have been a wise thing to do in hindsight, who knows? I have worked part time jobs along the way, but only in order to fuel my main project. But as I say, you have to fix your mind on your goal and just keep on.
Not easy, but then it never was...
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yes you need to be rich in spirit and self belief, the very best of luck to you and your family.
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It's worth updating this thread rather than start agin - there's no avoiding the property value differences and fluctuations - so if anyone wants to make this compromise more bearable by some visiting/when available help, I can pass on some useful experience/knowledge while slowly and progressively making it viable. http://gvproperties.com/houses/muckinish1903/muckinish1903.html (http://gvproperties.com/houses/muckinish1903/muckinish1903.html)
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After 30 years we finally have our own land. I have ponies and I have rented land in patches which is not cheap but it has allowed me to make mistakes in private, I have watched others make expensive mistakes.
If you children of school age I would look for an ex council house in a decent area with a large garden and work up. Never underestimate the amount of time and money it takes getting to and from the shops and school, if your kids are miserable because they can not easily get out they will make your life hells so I think semi rural is better than isolated . I have seen retired couples with a descent amount of money buy the Good Life only to find out it takes a lot more time and money than they thought.If are you are used to the convenience of town finding out that your local surgery is miles away is a shock and forget choice. I have had someone with me over the summer who thought it was all lovely but I dread to think how she would have coped with 3ft of mud and driving rain over the winter.
So my advice is dip your toe, you can not live in a field and being miserable and cold at home is awful. Do not take on anything you can not manage on your own as you will soon get fed up when nobody wants to help and you are struggling and be patient.
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yes but then again what is well off, see I have kids and 3 grandchildren so even if we had 5 million we wouldn't feel well off, if you live in Wales or Scotland you can buy somewhere for 100k in Devon same thing would cost 400. at least whilst your trying your working harder like another said get an allotment make things, grow things, collect things, have working holidays, cover for others so they can go on holiday, cover for us, you can stay in a oak log cabin with log burner & hot tub, down in sunny Devon. (not this week its :raining: it down)
In fact if you want to cut trees down, plant trees, cut up trees your welcome to come to us mid November as that's what we will be doing.
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The other thing is that if you are prepared to slog it for a while you can achieve the dream without having huge resources. People from our village come to our house on the hill and say they are really jealous and they would love something like this but could never afford it.
I then point out to them that their ordinary house in the village cost MORE than our derelict house and land and the work we had done to make it habitable, the difference being I had to live in a static caravan for a year and the place (the land and animals)eats income to keep it up) so we don't have sky and new cars And street lights and bin collection that isn't a mile down the track - so it isn't that we are lucky, it's that we made a choice and were prepared to slog through it.
So more things are possible than you imagine, but it will take sacrifice, compromise and Vision, but you sound like you just might have it!
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We are in a similar situation to you, I am a housewife (although, trying to start up a very small home business) and my husband works, we have three young children. We live in the midlands at the moment. We are in a situation where, ideally we would live to get a place in Anglesey but we are also considering Orkney, we can get so much more for our money there as well as it being a hard but rewarding place.
At the moment we live in rented military accomodation with a really small backgarden but we still managed to keep quail and breed rabbits for meat, not on any great scale but enough for us to get a little bit of experience in animal husbandry and the different aspects of raising food!
I grow a little bit of produce but don't really have room for much and as it isn't our house, everything I grow is in pots. I have a blueberry bush in one big plant which does really well, you can also grow apples in large pots. Herbs are also a good investment, there are many which will come back year after year and it is much cheaper than buying from the supermarket. I've also grown tomatoes, cucmbers, beans, beetroot, radishes and loads of other things successfully in pots. If you wanted to over winter something, maybe broad beans? Or if think you can get lettuce to overwinter? Use plastic bottles cut in half to place over small plants to protect from frost.
Lastly, i guess, don't give up! We found a house in anglesey in may last year which had kept being reduced in price over the previous 6 months and we finally decided to go for it. We thought we were in a good position financially as we had only one financial commitment which was a bank loan, unfortunately when we got to the bank we were told that as first time buyers, with one income and that darn bank loan theres no way we could borrow what we needed. So, since May we have been saving every penny so that we can pay the loan off early, now we should be debt free by Jan. It, may seem like a long way off, but save all you can to get yourself in a good finanicial position.
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We were just about to buy a small farm in Orkney (house, steading and 28 acres with a agreement to contract farm 150 acres) when I found I was pregnant with our first son, and I wimped out of being that far from family. My observations from our visits, made autumn/winter were that yes, it is very windy, but the services are amazing - everything within 45 minutes on mainland, where we would have to make a 2 hour trip to Newcastle or Edinburgh from where we are now, so excellent value property, isolated in some ways, but not in others. There is no way we could have afforded any thing similar in the borders, so we keep on renting, and hoping our tenancy will be renewed!
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:wave: miss NV
you need to ask yourself and OH what you want out of life... i once thought my job was all and end all, it wasn't.
its just a job that brings in the money... so you end up working just to exist... thats a waste of life ..
there are bargains still to be had, me and my dear wife are just about to give up a 3 bedroom house to go and live in a static caravan for a couple of years , we will build our little barn up and start living the life we have dreamt about..
we know its not going to be easy, we will expect problems, and we will have problems..but we will be living our dream, as said above..you only have one life......live it...
How much...well we fell in love with a few, but couldn't get a mortgage, but they would give us a mortgage once we bought :roflanim: we managed to find our place for less than £85K , we will spend in the region of £60K on doing the barn up.. so a total cost in the region of £145K the price of a Ex council house down here ..
to get property in this price range, you will need to sacrifice a few luxuries ...a small price to pay for the end result
john
PS....Never give up on a dream
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WOW! I am SO happy to find this thread. It shows I'm not as crazy as I thought. As the OP said, we're not very well off, I'm a stay at home mum on a break from the paid working world, and my husband earns well under the national average, but we would love to have a smallholding.
I'm looking for courses that will give me some idea of how to look after livestock and make a business thrive. I'm accumulating secondhand books or reading from the library to learn more, and reading articles and websites like this. We have an allotment we've just rented from the council and are clearing it for spring planting.
I can only say what everyone else has, do whatever you possibly can and don't give up! I don't care that it seems impossible, I have no intention of folding.
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I'm glad someone resurected this thread as I have an update!
We still only have one income but now, rather than put money in saving we used it to pay off all our debt. We cancelled any contracts we didn't need, prime example being my phone contract, I was paying £20 a month but since cancelling it I still have the original £10 top up on pay as you go, this was 3 months ago!
So, with no debt, the last coupldeof months we have been able to put in the bank the evquilvalent of a monthly mortgage payment and yesterday the nice people at halifax gave us an offer in principle on the new help to buy scheme for 130k.
I know this still isn't very much but we have seen a place in Orkney which I am flying over to view next week. We are sacrificing location (in some ways, not in others!) for the opportunity to buy somewhere we can start living our dream.
If you focus your efforts, it can be done! :)
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I know this still isn't very much but we have seen a place in Orkney which I am flying over to view next week. We are sacrificing location (in some ways, not in others!) for the opportunity to buy somewhere we can start living our dream.
That's brilliant, I hope it goes well and it's just what you want. :fc:
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I know this still isn't very much but we have seen a place in Orkney which I am flying over to view next week. We are sacrificing location (in some ways, not in others!) for the opportunity to buy somewhere we can start living our dream.
If you focus your efforts, it can be done! :)
Wow, well done you and OH - :thumbsup: . :fc: that it all works out :excited:
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:fc: for you :thumbsup:
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Well done you :thumbsup: that's brilliant!! If you want something enough than its surprising how you can make it work.
Good luck :hshoe:
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I think you have to see the big picture the croft that dad has costs 500 a month 50 to 60 ace rs 2009 he was nearly bank rupt .I gave my job up and came to Scotland for a new life i had a hotel in paignton Devon sea front no debt .I do all the selling and stock on the croft in that time i naw owe fore thousand pounds i have given it all naw i just dint no .We have 200 sheep chickins geese etc .The other half will have no think to do with it as she has said its done move on . Dad has Parkinson's naw so i keep going for him .In my own right i can make a living not on the croft as i can do metal and wood work 2 or 3 days a week it would give me a good living . Iv said this before you have to have a good plan the chickins i hatch and breed they made no money again .The turkeys geese Christmas 2010 made good money feed costs cost us long winter. 2013 spring 80 lambs to sell Easter deep snow 60 sheep killed prophet gone .Grass 2013 very low no think to sell .The bees 12 hives only 4 lived spent over a thousand to put right .Naw going for 40 to 50 hives the next big thing naw building the new hives just naw . Just remember Whit you are getting into .The estate that owns the croft are very good but its hard with the maintenance that you have to do as a tenant crofta in Scotland . The hobbey could split you up if you dont separate youre self from it .The other half pays the feed bills and says i need help keeping this going and naw christmas a nother wast of cash .
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For us it was deciding exactly what you wanted out of the property... a business to give you an income, to be self sufficient or just to keep a few animals. We fall into the last category but thought we would need a couple of acres. It wasnt until we visited a friends house ( known him for 10 years plus but always met at shows etc ) and realised he was doing what we wanted to do but on less ground.... changed search parameters and within 3 weeks( very lucky) found our place... 1/2 acre of paddock with it so plenty for chickens, pigs growing on and veg plot .
Also how much work are you willing to do/mess willing to put up with? our house was more than some would take on... we like rough camping and for the first few months( at start of winter :gloomy: ) it wasnt much different being in the house.
If you are in no hurry, search and keep searching, places come up all the time, you just have to be persistent or lucky or both
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No - but you may need to make changes to make it happen. The question/answer is really a very personal one and relates to your life goals and how living the life of a smallholder fits with those.
This is now our fourth year and it has been a brilliant thing to do. We couldn't afford to do it - but have made it happen by moving to an area that has cheaper land prices and bought a derelict hovel and had a great deal of change/uncertainty/work to deal with. Do we regret it - not for a minute. I sometimes wish that we had made it happen sooner - however it is was a huge transition to make. Many people rent smallholdings and make things work and they are very happy too.
One of the real difficulties that many smallholders have is making the smallholding pay for itself - creating a sustainable business! that is our challenge. At present we can only live this life because we have other employment. We look forward to the day when the smallholding supports us rather than the other way round. The amount of work that is needed to get there shouldn't be underestimated. The issue of financial sustainability is also connected to your question. I think I am starting to wander from your question so shall leave it here, but wish you the very best with your dreams. Ray