The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Ideation on April 08, 2014, 10:48:13 am
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I've been musing on this for a while. . . . so thought I would ask. I really hope it doesn't get any ones back up!
So. . . out of interest, how many of the smallholders on here, come from the countryside originally?
And how many are originally town dwellers who wanted to 'get back to the land', for whatever reason, i.e retirement, health, buisness, or being swayed by numerous t.v programmes and fashion changes?
I only ask, because I live (and grew up) in a very rural setting, and have always been around farming / the countryside. For the most part of my youth, all the land was worked by people from the local area, and that is how they made their living. Now pretty much everyone there, is from somewhere else originally.
9 times out of 10 . . . . they had a well paid 'corporate' job and decided to sell their expensive house in the city and use that money (and their salary) to buy up some land and move to the country. Now. that's great, it's a good thing that more people are finding a connection with the land. . . .
However, in the area where I grew up, there are now, no productive farms. It's all people playing at it, or having lifestyle properties. The price of land has also gone through the roof, as people can afford to throw vast amounts of money at small pieces of land, to keep horses on etc, with no need for it to be commercially viable.
As such, no one from the area can afford to buy land or work the land anymore, and if they could, the price would be so high, and the parcels split up into such small bits, that it would be impossible to support a family on it as a viable income. . . . .
When I look out of the window, it seems that the familly farm has died a death. Now all I see is lifestyle properties and major agri buisnesses. . . . which is pretty sad really.
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I am a country girl born and bred on a smallholding!
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Born & bred Yorkshire country girl, Dad's family all farmers except Dad who decided to go into pharmeceuticals! Mum a townie. We and they do still live in small villages.
Mandy :pig:
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Both of us from farming background, hubby brought up in farming, my grandparents farmers. Must say farming is in andrews blood. I married into it, love every day even in the rain lol
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Thanks for the replies. . . .
Cwm - haha I know how it goes. My girlfriend is from London way originally, but she has taken well to stomping through mud in the rain, putting up fences in the rain, herding pigs in the rain. . . . . . and worrying about pheasants in the rain.
It must be in her blood to. I'm sure most women would have run a mile by now. I have her a cuddle this morning. . . . and she remarked (with surprise) that I didn't smell like animal s**t.. . . . . . . . I pointed out that her jumper was covered in mud and she had some straw in her hair. . . . haha.
Did I mention it rains a lot here?
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Brought up in the town. My father grew veg, kept hens and ducks and trained and worked gundogs. So I suppose a townie but did spend a lot of time outdoors and often on farms/estates with dad working dogs.
Around us are working farms/ smallholdings of various sizes. From what they have said locals were a bit anxious about 'townies' moving in and being a tight, very rural community I have been told that incomers aren't always thought highly of. However local farmer has told me that I am thought of as a proper country lady and that my children are more country children in their ways than his ever were. Family that lived here before were 'local' but did nothing with the land. I've been told by one farmer that it's great to see the land now being used. Phew :relief:
So townie if you like. ;D But maybe it's not good to put people in boxes.
Also, according to our closest farmer, it's very difficult for small family farms to keep going around here anyway. His farm, been in the family for generations, did used to be able to support a family but by the time he came to farm a lot of farms were getting bigger and bigger. Times changed. He got a job to bring in the income needed by his family. So even he had to have a job to support his farming. ;)
I have been told about many small farms that have gradually been eaten up by ever growing nearby farms. Farms that had been there for generations. I think in this area it is more to do with changes in farming than 'townies' moving in. Said the 'townie'. :eyelashes: ;D
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Haha. . . . great reply! And I really wasn't trying to give off some 'holier than though' attitude with regards to country folk vs town folk.
Although I probably do have a wee bit of bitterness when I see folk from the city moving here and bidding on land, driving the price through the roof. . . . . . . and then sticking their horses on it lol. When I look at that land, and think . . . . . that could support me and feed my family haha. But that's life!
As you say, just as much land is eaten up by big agri buisness - we've had a load of local land bought up by a big farm, to grow maize. The farm was a really productive 100 acres of mixed farm . . . . now all of the gates and most of the hedges have been pulled out and the whole thing is planted for maize, never visited apart from by contractors to drill it, spray it and then harvest it. The quality of the land / farm is rapidly getting eroded!
We have had a few amusing incidents with city folk moving here for 'the good life'. My favourites include. . . . . one lot moving in nearby and seeing us doing a bit of ferreting and deciding that we were teriible, cruel people that they hated because we killed animals? Another lot tried to lobby the local council and kicked up a hell of a fuss about the muck spreading haha.
My only other moan (I do sound like a farmer now) is the horrible trend for buying up say 20/30 acres . . . . . with one house on it. . . . and a couple of barns. . . . . and then selling of bits of the land and the old buildings for conversion or building, because the original 20/30 acres is too big for them to manage. What you end up with is 4 lots of people living on the 30 acres, rather than one lot, with the added traffic, conflicts of interest etc.
It's just something I find interesting to watch, it's not meant to be a dig at anyone and I apologise if it comes across that way!
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I grew up next to Northolt airport , on the edge of London then , now swallowed up in the sprawl of it . Although a townie i used to go 'wild' , living in camps in the local woodland and living off the land , and whatever i could nick off the milkman , eggs , bacon , milk , cheese etc , i was very streetwise too , lol .
I had 2 allotments , between 11 and 17 , that supplied all the veg for the whole family , 9 in total .
Then went to work in a factory , doing the system thing .
Moved to Wales when i was 20 . Kept hundreds of chickens , ducks , geese , guinea fowl , pheasants ,as well as working on sheep farms , pig and cattle farms .
Did my survival thing , building a stone house , (10'x10' lol) , in the woods and living off the land .
Worked in an abatoir , tannery , knitting factory ( don't know what that was about ?) .
All the time i was learning old skills , stone work , making cart wheels , blacksmithing , basket making , anything i could learn about old crafts etc .
Then had a car smash and it all went wrong .
At 26 i was buggered . Every bone busted , massive head injuries , a mental and physical wreck . It took me 10 years + to get over it and learn to do everything again , albeit in a very different way this time .
Now i am 56 and i am living the life i want , soon to go offgrid completely . I have my dogs and horses , will be getting sheep , cattle , goats , poultry once i have the house up .
Townie ? , countryman ? Weirdo ? Whatever , i am me , doing my thing and watching the world go to ruin in it's quest for money and power , always more , more , more .
I don't follow the main road , i tend to make my own track , but could never go back to a town life , not under any circumstances . Whatever time i have left will be lived my way right or wrong .
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born and bred country girl, working the same croft my parents did and bringing up my kids in the same house I was.
Though there was a spell of about 6 years when I lived abroad and my parents never thought I'd come to this but much to their amazement I did :thumbsup:
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Born in London to a father who raised his own chickens, grew veg and lived self sufficiently (due to how his parents had coped during/post WW2). Moved to countryside aged 8. Then bought our own smallholding 5 years ago. Looking to buy some of the neighbouring land to prevent ruddy David Wilson building more little boxes and turning our village into a town.
We do all we can to live off of the land, I'm permanently covered in hay and mud. Dislike some of the neighbours who were born and bred round these rural parts but complain about cockerel noises and the stench of animal sh*te when fields are sprayed - they are more like townies than we are...and I was born in London ;D
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Born and bred farmers daughter, but as my brother is taking over the parents farm, the rest of us (4 girls have had to make our own way) My oldest sister went into partnership with my parents on a small farm of her own. My other sisters are a doctor and a bibliographer and I am a manager in an office who has finally maanged to get back to the country albeit in a very small way. We have an acre and a half.
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I was brought up in the farming town of Biggar . There used to be a weekly market for sheep and cattle. No longer there now. We had loads of freedom. just a great life for kids. Now it is full of old people who retire there.
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Now I see where you get your name ideation - too much thinking :thinking: ;D Good topic though
Born and bred farmers daughter, but as my brother is taking over the parents farm, the rest of us (4 girls have had to make our own way) My oldest sister went into partnership with my parents on a small farm of her own. My other sisters are a doctor and a bibliographer and I am a manager in an office who has finally maanged to get back to the country albeit in a very small way. We have an acre and a half.
As Lilfeeb, I am a born and bred farmer's daughter, my OH is from Crofting stock. My brother, also clearly from a long line of peasant farmers, got the farm then promptly proceeded to convert everything he could to housing and does no farming whatsoever. Meantime my OH and the family came into smallholding, very much the poor relation.
However, if you look back far enough, including in other countries, the standard solution to what to do with the farm has mostly been to hand it on to the eldest son, bypassing any females, and the rest of the children make their own way in the cities or the services. In France they tried a different way I believe, and the farm was divided equally amongst the sons, so parcels of land became ever smaller and smaller and less able to provide anything more than a subsistence level of income.
Round here too (south of Scotland) the family farm is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Either small farms are amalgamated into monsters, often owned by overseas businessmen or corporations, or they are divided into smaller portions, with a house on each part and sold to 'incomers'. If those incomers are going to farm the land then that has to be a step forward to my mind. Family farms are no longer big enough to support a whole family so only survive by the skin of their teeth, with all or most of the family working outside the farm. Even if smallholders produce only enough to feed their families with small sales at the gate, then that is one less family relying on those scary imports.
However, even here far from the city, people have bought up land for horse grazing and a bit of country life. I am in two minds about this. On the one hand, isn't it great knowing how many folk who are stuck in city life are desperate to get out and into the countryside. On the other hand, the land could be put to productive use. However, times they are a-changing and government policy supports the reduction in food production from our rural areas, relying on imports (That's the scary bit :tired: :tired: :tired:) to feed our ever growing population. However, land which remains unbuilt-on as grazing for horses can readily be ploughed up and returned to production, whereas land which is given over to housing and urban sprawl, has had its chips for food production. :farmer: Hereabouts many famers are selling their land for forestry, which is almost as difficult to return to arable land as is housing. They do it for the cash, which is good, but it's so often prime agricultural land :(
Sabrina - lots of those old people who live in Biggar are in fact retired from their farms, to allow a younger son to take over. There has been lots of new housing built so also plenty of commuters. Countryside v housing....housing v countryside, the perennial problem as both are so important. It's still a great wee town though :thumbsup:
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Born and raised in 'the smoke' but have ALWAYS felt I belonged in the country. OH and I managed to buy a 4 acre smallholding down here in Cornwall, building our house on the ruins of the old cottage that was once in the corner of this field.
Our neighbour is born and bred Cornish - his family have been farming here since the late 1800's. Neighbour started with 40 acres from his father, gradually built it up to 100 acres, was a classic mixed farm (cattle, pigs, arable and veg). He as 3 children - 2 daughters who have both married farmers, and a son. The son now works as the Logistics manager for one of the bug veg producers down here. One daughter's husband does farm his own land - cattle, sheep and veg (120 acre farm). However neighbour and other son in law have both done the sme thing which is keep their land, but not farm it - renting it out to the big veg producers. This seems to be very common - the smaller farms cannot compete commercially so the farmers rent out the land to the big producers and then do something else with their time - neighbour contract ploughs and his son in law runs a mixed bag of holiday lets, car restoration and agric machinery restoration.
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Born centre of Aberdeen 70 years ago, lived in town with Grandparents, Mum, Dad and my sister till 16 years after I got married, then persuaded husband and two teenagers move out to Ellon - large house on third of an acre. Grew veg and fruit, but no livestock except dogs and cat.
Always played outside as a child, preferably near horses, but never managed to have one of my own.
Then after 1st husband was killed moved to Old Rayne with second husband to 24 acres, 2 barns - sheep, cattle, hens and ducks - and more dogs :innocent: as he was into shooting and fishing.
When he was killed I downsized to one acre, so now only have 4 dogs and 1 cat, 6 hens, 5 ducks, 3 quail. Feels like I'm a smallholder so I don't really care what anyone else thinks I am.
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I was born and raised in Hampstead NW London so definitely a townie.
The family went on holiday to a farm called Skilgate I think in Devon when I was about 8 years old. I fell in love with whole farming lifestyle there and then.
It took me a further 44 years to get my own farm and another 6 years to get it to actually produce something.
It was worth the wait 8)
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I live on the edge of town, i have 5 chickens...
I grew up spending every minute i could outside and am the same now, eventually I will find a piece of land i can afford and keep more animals, grow more veg.
For me it would be a lifestyle choice but it would have to break even...
I make up for it by knowing a lot of smallholders and working on various holdings mainly installing fencing, but other jobs as required...
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i am a townie who lived on the edge of town and countryside, we would pass brick and mortar to go to school, yet play in fields after school, the area has been taken over now by buildings,
i guess with the development of bigger faster tractors and farm equipment, the death of the farm was always going to happen, 1 machine can do what 10 workers did
as for people moving to the countryside, well , i guess they do have as much right as country folk moving to the towns,
money has always been a factor, not everyone in the towns can afford to buy a house, what with faster trains etc etc
we have many a person who works in london during the week and comes down to their house by the sea at weekends…. the small towns have all gone too…most have out of town shops killing the high streets
so its not just the small farms that have died,,,its the whole way of life that has changed ..
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Some excellent and very interesting replies. . . thanks!
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Townie I am affraid - East london then NW London before moving out to the sticks. Dad then got me into gardening and in later years I was obliged to preserve the nice garden for the ex so I had to get an allotement to grow my veg and fruit.
After seperating from my wife of many years I lived alone in the centre of town, no garden, no concerns about what I ate or where it came from and too much money to need to learn basic skills that are needed on a smallholdong.
I woke up one day and changed my life. I sold everything I had except one black suit ( just in case), bought clothes suitable for the outdoors from charity shops and bought a place in France with my new partner.
We are fortunate that we do not need to work and accidentally we became smallholders. Unlike some townies moving to the countryside we live a basic life, work our socks off, are often cold, wet or too hot with the obligatory cuts, grazes, muscle aches and pains. We love it - but if I am honest we can live what we think is a simple life becuase we can afford it. But we are certainly not townies playing at the countrylife.
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not sure where I fit: rather middle class family living on a new (middle class) estate, and I did go down the uni degree / career route, but our house was on the edge of that estate and my best mate was the grandson of the farmer who owned the fields and woods behind my house - so my childhood memories were of haymaking, potato picking (by hand) and 'sacking up' grain on the back of the MF788 combine harvester, the air thick with dust, diesel exhaust and the smell of the transmission belt smouldering as the combine crawled up the side of the hill.
I 'farm' never left me even when I was working in surburbia - so I decided to come home as it were.
I can certainly understand why anyone who can afford it chooses to live in the countryside, but as a closet environmentalist I get a bit irritated by the fact that we are developing the crazy system in places where the high earners who work in town live in the countryside and the farmworkers can only afford to live in suburbia - so the roads are packed with cars commuting both way every morning and eve :rant: . I think they call it economics.
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I'm also a townie by background but won't apologise for that, no choice in where I was born and bred. My grandparents retired to a smallholding with a few sheep which is where I learnt to love the countryside, animals and growing.
Not being born to a rural way of life but knowing that's what I wanted I had to do it the other route so I worked hard, got a good, well paying job that luckily I love and managed to buy a place with a couple of acres. We (my OH is even more of a townie than me) now have a productive veg patch, ducks and geese for eggs and meat, sheep and bees and the pigs arrive next week.
Our smallholding is never going to be self sufficient and I am going to have to continue to work to pay the mortgage etc but my job also means I am part of my community.
Our neighbours round here are predominately 3rd generation farmers at least but most of them also have other strings to their bows to keep themselves afloat as small scale farming rarely pays well enough. They are very accepting and welcoming of us and I haven't noticed any resentment. Then again our predecessor in this house was a Townie with a capital T and literally a used car salesman. He was regarded as an outsider for the whole of the 20 years he was here so think the neighbours think we are great in comparison!
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Born in London, grew up in a seaside town but right on the outskirts and loved to get out into the woods and fields. Got to know a couple who lived the good life from before it became popular and visited every weekend, helping with the work on the land. I lived for 11 years on Isle of Arran just outside a village of less than 200 people. I now live in a town but would rather be in a rural area.
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Lived in Manchester city centre all my school life, no farming connections, worked on a caravan site part time from the age of 9, we can't warrant/afford to farm so we play at it as a hobby/lifestyle
I've never had a good job, as a family we have all been blessed by having an extra portion of elbow grease, this alone has contributed to us being able to afford the things we choose to do.
On that note it does seem like a lot of modern adults haven't collected their quota of elbow grease :roflanim:
:thinking: those other people are better off than us :huff: may as well give up then :roflanim:
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I'm between Lanark and Biggar-all of the farms surrounding me are family farms. there are weekly auctions of livestock at Lanark. Its not easy land to farm. Seems to take a lot of space for relatively few animals. I did live in East Lothian-more arable-and there were plenty of family farms there as well but most of them had to diversify to make a decent living.
I am the pits going by the original post-not only was I born on a council estate in the Home Counties, I moved to rural Scotland and keep horses :p I don't own enough land to support a family though so not taking anyone's livelihood. ;D
I was born in Epsom, family moved to rural Suffolk when I was wee. We kept pretty much everything animal wise but we were not gardeners. I spent 15 years working with horses after I left school before deciding I wanted my own instead of shovelling poop for other people for less than minimum wage. Put myself through uni both undergrad and postgrad and have been gradually moving further out to the country ever since. I currently work a 37 hour week in 4 days as a researcher in veterinary science (sheep) and approx 10 hours per week on top of that as a lecturer for the OU. I prefer physical work tbh, but it doesn't pay and takes a toll on you when you get older! OH was born in Drumchapel and have never so much as kept a fish before he met me. He now loves living in the sticks and the animals-even the chickens. Even with good jobs we are mortgaged up to the hilt for a modest property and (I) have to work these hours so I can afford my luxury hobby-I don't get holidays away, new clothes and my car (a clio) is a wreck which will be kept until it dies.
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I was born and brought up in a tiny rural village in what was then North Yorkshire, but of parents who were both born in towns. A generation or two further back they had been farming stock that had moved to find work when either younger sons or farms became unprofitable in the 19th century so it's been going on a long time ;) My mum was also brought up in wartime so knew a lot about getting by, making and mending, growing her own and so on, and I'm pretty sure her agri roots came good there :) cos she had a huge garden/orchard and was forever knitting and crocheting and sewing and baking and preserving out of sheer poverty/need to keep a large tied house in fuel bills and a husband and 3 kids fed and clothed.. She was out in the garden at every opportunity as an escape from the kids I imagine..
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Interesting thread this....
I grew up in the country, though more on the veg side, than farming per se, as my dad had his own nursery/ green grocers etc. We kept animals too, but that wasn't for the business but more for lifestyle/smallholding. However, we grew up in a very rural environment, kept goats, sheep, reared lambs, calves, kept chickens and ducks, made our own hay etc. My uncle also had a small farm only about 8 Miles's away.
One of the best smells in the world for me is a "proper" green grocers, because it just takes me right back. My older siblings were used as child labour, but I came along so much later than I wasn't put to work quite as much.
I think it is really hard for people to get onto the smallholding ladder, I wouldn't be able to afford a place with land even now, had I not bought a house jointly with my mum. Even though I have a good salary, from working full time, there are very few properties with land I would be able to afford.
At that, we only have about an acre here, hindsight is a wonderful thing, we moved away from having 2.5 acres of field and an acre of garden, and I do regret it now. The land was built on, and our house was replaced with four houses and gardens. A so-called "steading development"- but it wasn't, because there was no steading in the first place! Just an old house built out of corrugated iron, which no one would have wanted to live in once we moved out. And I drive past it, and look at the 1.5 acres of field, which is just sitting there going to ruin, as they didn't sell it with any of houses!
And I look at my nieces, who are aged 10- 16, and I can't see any way that they will be able to buy a farm or a smallholding ???
I do know many family farms, but are there maybe more in Scotland? I don't know. But certainly there are farms that go up for sale round here, with a massive price tag, all because the agents think they'll get more for it as a "development opportunity".
Beth
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Born from town folk, my parents always lived on the edges of small towns.
Dad is the person people have always brought stray, sick, lost or otherwise 'in need of care' animals to, and who always knew how to handle them and make them better. We always had a huge and varied assortment of animals in the house and outside, but only the poultry were really 'farm' animals. Mum is also into animals, and very tolerant!
Then about 20 years ago, as my brothers and sisters and I moved out, my parents fostered a family of 5 additional children (there were 4 of us originally) and moved to the country. In the process, they acquired a few acres and some sheep, and Dad's 'animal habit' extended, including pheasants, quail, geese, ducks, hens, rabbits, donkeys as well as the sheep!
In the meantime I got a job and seemed to become the person people brought stray, sick, lost or otherwise 'in need of care' animals to........and I also seem to know what to do with them - partly I just did, and no doubt in a large part learned from Dad.
Then 7 years ago, I got a new job, married now, we moved to the country and acquired a few acres......and some sheep. My then OH decided, after a couple of years, that he didn't like here, he didn't like farming and he didn't like me! Oh well. So now there's just me. And the sheep, and the goats, and the ducks and the hens and the geese and the cats and the dogs. Have rescued/rehomed 6 animals (2 pygmy goats, 3 feral-now-barn cats and one Golden Retriever) in the past year. But we really are full for now.
I still have the full-time job, it's the only way I can afford my little run-down place.
The neighbours are all 'proper' farmers, big family farms. They are tolerant and helpful towards me, really pitching in with the heavy jobs, to help me be able to stay when the ex left - they cheer me on and I am immensely grateful to them.
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Townie born and bred, townie on both sides right back as far as we've done the family history.
But from before I could even speak I have always wanted to be with animals, always wanted to be outside - and in the woods and fields, not the streets ;), always been the person people bring problem animals and animal problems to, always knew where the badger sett was and could find wildlife and sign of wildlife in the woods.
On holidays on farms as a youngster, I'd be up and out at 6am, helping the farmer in the byres for hours before the rest of the family rose. Always wanting to stay and work on the farm, not join the family on a trip to the beach or whatever.
We all assumed I'd be a vet, and I trained for it, which included doing farm practise in my late teens. Loved that ;D
Book larnin' turned out not to be me - not good at remembering facts - so me and the vet course gave each other notice to quit.
Got a summer job on one of the farms I'd done farm practise on. Loved that ;D Good at it, too.
But, failed to get a permanent job in farming, needed to be earning a living, got a job in computing.
20 years on, divorced and redundant, decided to go back to that crossroads and take the other turn.
I often wonder how things would have turned out if I had got the job on the pig farm in the first place. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I should always have been a stockperson. Growing up, a townie child of townie parents in a townie school, I didn't know you could be, thought you had to be born a farmer to do that, I guess. (And maybe you do.) And I seemed to be clever academically, so being a vet seemed the logical path. Not right for me though.
Doing what I do now feels like coming home :)
BH is the son of a farmer, and the grandson of a farmer. Luckily for him, neither of his siblings wanted to farm, and even more luckily for him, neither of them thought they ought to get a share of the farm since BH had always worked on it and they hadn't. :relief: We see a fair few farms locally being sold by the offspring of the deceased farmer, all parties wanting as much money as possible, hence going along with the agent's advice to sell it in lots to incoming horse-owners etc ;). The son-who-farms is sometimes near suicidal at this, seeing the entity his father and he have nurtured over the decades disintegrated for mammon, but sometimes even the farming sibling goes along with the sell-for-the-most-money approach, as his/her share will only make a contribution to buying a farm for him and his family. Such a shame.
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im a townie but both parents came from the country and one grandfather was a gamekeeper, the other a farm worker. Married a farmer, he knew I was a keeper while on a date I was left in a field with a prolapsed sheep while he went to get a needle and thread! I now have my smallholding of kune kune sheep, hens, chicks, wee flock of oxford downs, a rabbit, a bassett hound and a new pony on husbands farm!
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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 ;D
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….
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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.
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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.
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Move to Powys, Ideation ;D. 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.
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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 :excited:
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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.
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Lovely reply somewhere_by_the_river.
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Lovely reply somewhere_by_the_river.
Seconded
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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
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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. :farmer:
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...
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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!
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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.