[spottydogs]

Hi,

we are a 50+ couple who have been expats in the Middle East for almost 20 years, we currently live in Abu Dhabi (UAE).  We haven't lived or owned anything in the UK since the mid-90's and needed a place to settle/retire - so we have ended up buying a small place in Bulgaria in the little village of Alekovo.  We have about 5,000 sqm of land, a large house and barn which we are renovating as our living accommodation and a second smaller house on the property which is pretty much derelict.

We have a great builder/renovator working for us on the house (Nigel Newman, www.villagebulgaria.com) and visit regularly to help build local relationships and stay in touch with the renovation.

Our goal is, as far as possible, to implement permaculture principles and raise a few livestock (pigs, goats, chickens) and

We are probably about a year away from relocating/retiring to BG, so we are heavily into the research mode! Gathering information and ideas from wonderful resources like TAS, planning the land usage and preparing ourselves (physically and mentally) for the big move.

[Bionic]

Welcome to TAS  . Your project sounds interesting., I am sure you will find this a great source of information. 
Sally

[Possum]

Gosh! What an adventure.


Welcome to TAS


Do you speak Bulgarian, and do you have spottydogs?

[Rosemary]

Hello and welcome Good luck with your plans - sounds really interesting 

[happygolucky]

Brilliant and why not? sounds something I would love to do but daren't,  if you do not try you do not know and you live the rest of your life with regrets...Hope to see your progress in 2013

[Fowgill Farm]

Wow brave move!
Sounds like you are going about it the right way, the 2nd property done up could be used as a holiday let to give you an income in your retirement which i'm sure you've already thought of.
Watched a tv programme last night called trouble abroad about Brits living abroad for whom it had gone pear shaped and what puzzled me was none of them had a Plan B back up, they'd all burn't their bridges and sunk every penny into going abroad and now because of one unforseen calamity they were all stuck so make sure you have a plan B.
Keep us posted on your progress it will be very interesting to follow.
best of luck
Mandy
North Yorkshire

[Lesley Silvester]

    HI and welcome from sunny (ish) Shropshire.

Good luck with your project and don't forget to put some piccies on here.  We love to see what other folk are up to.

[MAK]

Sounds exciting and I hope that all goes well for you.
Can you tell us about the climate there - winter and summer temperatures?
All the best from the Limousin,France.

[darkbrowneggs]

Hi there from Worcestshire - it really does sound exciting.  Good luck with it all 

[spottydogs]

Many thanks all for the encouraging welcomes!

Yes BIONIC we do have spottydogs (have had dalmatians - various numbers at any time - in UK, Egypt and here in UAE since we got married in 1981) - currently have an elderly lady dally (she's almost 12) and a rumbunctious but thankfully well trained rotty girl we rescued just over a year ago.  We will see what there is when we get to BG but will probably look for largeish pups to bring up as "property management assistants" :-).

We're learning Bulgarian with tapes, videos and have a long-standing friend here who is Bulgarian and she is helping us - but like Arabic, if you live in it a new language is much easier to learn simply because you have to.

For MAD GOATWOMAN there's good weather info here: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/climate/Bulgaria.htm but from our limited experience they have a lot of sunshine and where we are in Northern BG quite high summer temps at 35+ degrees last year - but of course deep snow there!  We are looking forward to 4 real seasons though after 18+ years in the Middle East.

I've attached a couple of pics to finish our intro - first is a montage of two pictures to show the front of the house (currently house+barn+outbuildings) - the second is my poor "artist impression" of what the house will look like when finished. Nobody has lived there for 10+ years, We have a variety of mature fruit trees (apple, pear, plum, cherry), a walnut tree, some hedges have very mature berry bushes - and we must have the only place in BG with no old vines! Our village is in the middle of very agricultural land and there are cooperatives for sunflowers, wheat and corn (on the cob) as far as we know.  The village also has a goatherd and cowherd and there is communal grazing available too, as many people keep animals to survive.

Anyway, again thanks for the welcome - I won't bore people with the house renovations in this forum, but will probably have loads of questions when we do some clearing and planting later this year.  We are looking forward to learning a lot from the forums.

Nick

[sokel]

Welcome to TAS   
Our Friends Daughter and her family live in Abu Dhabi infact he is out visiting them for the winter