[London Farmer]

I'm new on this forum.
Grew up in the country, moved to the smoke, had a family, wife & two young daughters...now planning on leaving that there London & buying a place in the country to do proper work with dirty fingernails.

Any tips, advice & pointers very welcome indeed.
Thank you. X

[Possum]

We had a similar journey (although without the children) The three things that we found most useful were
a) research - there are lots of books and magazines (e.g Country Smallholder) that provide lots of info about setting up smallhodings
b) if you are not already doing so, start growing fruit and veg now so that you develop some skill and experience. A garden or allotment is always a good start
c) when Covid allows, spend some time on WWOOF farms and smallholdings (there is a good website). That helps you to know whether the smallholding life is one that you will all enjoy.

[sabrina]

Hello and welcome. Take your time, choose where you hope to moved to and check out everything. Land, type of soil, what has been on it. Grazing. does it flood. Any problems with neighbours. The list could be endless but make a plan. What do you want to aim for. We have chickens, rear lambs and pigs for the freezer. Veg plot and pollytunnel. All for our own use. OH has a job as we do not have enough land to make our smallholding pay. It is a good life if you work hard and do not mind being out in all weathers. And I mean all weathers, wind, rain, hail and snow.

[London Farmer]

Hi there,
thanks for the response. I grew up in the countryside & enjoy growing fruit and veg in our small garden; my current employment is running a specialist drainage company in London which sees me working 24/7 so the hardwork aspect shouldn't really be too much of a challenge. Our main issue is the process of understanding the whole planning side of being able to get permission to have a dwelling on farmland. I shall be looking for about 30 acres, the plan being to have livestock on it (rare breed pigs) as the reason to be on site permanently and then augment income with things such as christmas trees; lavender; elderflower; garlic; honey and the like.
It's quite a project and rather exciting as well as daunting..

[arobwk]

Hi [member=202014]London Farmer[/member] & welcome to the forum.


Please do not take this the wrong way, but why are you (as are so many other new members to TAS) so focused on being able to build a new dwelling on your land.  It's not easy to gain such planning permission as you almost certainly appreciate already:  depending on where you buy land, it could be almost as cost effective to buy a house in the nearby village as to build one!  I know that might not be quite the same as being woken up by your cockerels or the hungry honking of your pigs each morning, but ....

My thought is that prospective small-holders, who cannot afford to buy the complete thing (home with land), should, to start with, be focusing on buying/renting land in a location that offers opportunity to buy/rent a dwelling in a very nearby village etc.  If the rural enterprise is successful and REALLY requires it, then maybe - repeat, maybe - consider sticking more "bricks & mortar" in the open country-side eventually.

[And I should mention that I also like the 'idea' of building a new micro-home on my own land and believe that planning rules are generally missing the point when it comes to self-sufficient or (preferably) profitable rural enterprises; however, I won't be seeking to do so.  Part of the reason I plonked for my own holding of agri' land is that it is within reasonable walking distance of several hamlets and a decent sized village for when I eventually choose to sell my present dwelling and buy a house closer to my land.]

[Possum]

Arobwk is right, I'm afraid. It is really difficult to build a new home on productive land. See the Planning section of this forum for lots of sorry tales.


There is a book called Successful Smallholding by Hobson and Rant which is about planning and starting a smallholding. Might be worth reading it to get some ideas.