[little blue]

A comment in Jackie's NK thread got me thinking....

why and how did we all get into smallholding?
post below   

[farmershort]

town boy born and raised... spent the odd few hours in my youth visiting petting zoo / attraction type places, but had never been on a real farm really. Always interested in animals though, YOC, staffs wildlife trust - not a very cool kid!

anyway, I went to uni to do software engineering in 2000, and as part of that degree, I had to do a year in industry. so 2002/03 I worked at a high school in brecon - next to a lady who owned a farm with her husband. She found out that I'd never really been on a farm before, so invited me over for the weekend. That was it - I was hooked! I went back every weekend and summer hols there after, during uni. I helps with the horses (equine retirement), and with the sheep - also go in with the local YFC (man, that was fun!!).

so, in 2004, I graduated and got a proper job in leicestershire, and a few months in, I met a women who had a couple of fields she wasn't using - 8 acres to be precise. I rented them off her, fenced them, and then bought my first 8 pedigree texels also bought a few other sheep that year, and ended up with about 20 or so - havent looked back since - just wish I could be full time self-sufficient.... soon I hope

Adam

[Brucklay]

Village raised, berry picking, tattie picking etc but folks not too fond of pets/animals and I was always animal mad - lived in Perthshire all my life till 3/4 years ago and garden was bursting with avairies (birds of prey) chicken shed, 3 dogs, 3 cats - when we sold up and move to Aberdeenshire now filling this place up - luckly I have a very understanding or patient OH and as a joiner he's very useful!!!

[Hermit]

We have forever had animals, my OHs family had chooks and horses and we had horses. When we got together we had a rented field with the usual pigs, chooks, rabbits etc. Then we lost the land cause of building and stopped with animals for a while. Then when we got a shoot and raised our own game to release, learned how to train gundogs etc we got the bug again. I had a five acre field for my two horses but could not keep anything else on it. After many a holiday on crofts we decided to go for one of our own and when a couple from London knocked on our door willing to pay over the odds for our house(even though it wasnt for sale) we thought all our holidays had come at once and sold the house and bought this croft.....and never looked back.

[katie]

I come from country folk who've always had chickens and rabbits for meat and who grew their own vegetables as a matter of course. My parents were re-inspired by John Seymour etc in the Seventies and we've gone on from there. With Peak Oil on the horizon . a large population and global warming, it makes sense to be as self-sufficient as possible. We started with goats and chickens, have gone onto sheep and it'll be pigs next. We also grow a land of veg and have a large orchard.One of our 4 children shows signs of keeping on the tradition...

[knightquest]

Not a smallholder I'm afraid and suspect I never will be but I now have chickens and veg patches in a fairly small Birmingham back garden. I also have four dogs.

I used to spend all my school holidays from the age of about four at my Aunts' house in Evesham. It was a tied cottage set in about 50 acres of orchard. It was heaven! I used to drive the tractor for my uncle (age 12 onwards) and my aunt and uncle kept chickens, ducks and rabbits. I've only recently realised that the rabbits weren't pets   

We went shooting rabbits and hares and I would dearly love to live that life for myself again. Happy days!

Ian

[Fleecewife]

I'm a farmers daughter - but my brother got the farm    Anyway, smallholding suits me better 

[ellied]

Born and brought up in a tiny farming village, my dad was the minister so we had a large house and garden but no money and mum used to grow fruit and veg, make jams, pickles, chutneys, cakes, rugs, knit, crochet, you name it she did it and tried to teach me a few things tho I've never been talented on the domestic side  

We grew up picking berries, tattie harvesting, bale stacking and around animals and one neighbour kept ponies he bought at Appleby for his kids, so I got a few rides if I was in the good books, and they used to use our garden to graze too.  My brother became a farm contractor, loved his tractors and machinery, was a pig man for a while and bought himself hens.  Another neighbour gave me and my sister a couple of Aylesbury ducklings which I adored but my sister wasn't fussed.  We had cats, a dog, chickens, geese, ducks, ponies, hand milked cattle next door, idyllic in many ways tho quite hard in others..

After dad died when I was 11, we moved to a town and I was lost, but found animals everywhere I could, from gundogs to exercise, donkeys to muck out, to dating a falconer

Eventually found my way back into the ponies and once I was working I bought my own, starting 20+ years of breeding them and with numbers growing I started to rent land rather than use liveries, bought a field, sold that and bought this place which is a 10 acre smallholding just to accommodate the ponies and cats   Discovered I had a mature fruit orchard, started to put in veg beds, buy fruit bushes and try and remember what mum had taught me.  She came a few times to show/help me with jams and chutneys again before sadly getting cancer and dying last year - one of the key moments where I opted to change my life and live the dream before it was too late, so jacked in the day job and am now trying to make a living self employed and do more wiht the garden/orchard than I could when working full time..

I keep looking at other animals (sheep, chickens etc) but with things rather dicey financially it seems wrong to take on more lives to be responsible for but I'm already looking for more land where I might move to a caravan and prove myself as a business to get a house on it

[northfifeduckling]

I've always been into self-sufficiency, even as a student grew my own "produce" on the balcony. Coming here with an enormous garden gave me a taste of the real thing and then OH came across with over a dozen ducks which needed a new home. Then came the chooks. I failed at "growing" meat, just can't kill anything bigger than a moscito...

[Gordon M]

I remember this article from the Smallholder some time ago, it seems that smallholding (self sufficiency) is not just restricted to the countryside. I wonder how long it will take for the whole country to embrace this and not be dependant on supermarkets for everything.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/Green/3108456/Todmorden-lays-a-claim-to-be-Britains-greenest-town.html

[Sylvia]

I, too am a farmer's daughter and wouldn't know what to do without a few animals in my life.

[egglady]

i think we are definately accidental smallholders as we both come from townie/city backgrounds. 

i've always had horses and when we got married, husband used to say "when we win the lottery I'll buy you your own stables"!  both thinking it would never happen of course!

well it didnt but we saved really hard for lots of years and came across our 'jewel' quite by chance about 4 years ago.  house was falling down; no veggie garden; no stables; no fencing; no arena....nothing that you could ever fit under 'smallholding' i guess.  but we've worked our socks off - made a million mistakes and had the steepest learning curve ever and now have, horses (of course!); stables; arena; shetland sheep (and our own lambs in the freezer); had pigs (also in the freezer) and the new ones are in their wee paddock as i type; ducks (and some in the freezer!); table birds (yup you've guess it, some in the freezer!) and layers.  Also have bees and the plan is to get goats in the spring.

we, we me actually, have learned how to grow veggies and for most of the year we dont have to buy any from the supermarket i'm proud to say and i make all our own jams, chutneys, jellies, etc, etc, etc.

Havent bought meat in months (and wont ever again); haven't bought a cake, biscuit or bread for about 4 years now and supermarket eggs are a thing of the past.

cant quite believe that we are the same people we were a few years ago and havent had a business suit on for 3 years!  in fact, i dont even think i own one anymore.

like everyone else says, it is a great life - definately much harder than we could ever have imagined, but wouldnt change it for the world.

so it all started really from hubby saying "when we win the lottery I'll buy you your own stables" all those years ago....dreams really do come true (if you work hard enough!)

great thread btw!

[HappyHippy]

My Dad was a farmer (Beef and arable) up until I was about 12, they diversified into elderly care, but kept our 'pet' sheep, goat (the one that used to wear cardigans when it was cold ) and shetland ponies.
Growing up, I wanted to distance myself from the 'green wellie brigade' probably thinking myself far to cool and sophisticated to be involved in farming. (I had arty farty ideas back then !) But after living in a very built up area in Westhill, Aberdeen(for all of a fortnight) I decided that country life was for me after all  Once the kids arrived, and especially once I moved back home (the care home was still running) I knew I had to return to farming. The loss of my granny a few years ago made me even more determined (she had a very good reputation as a stockperson apparently) and I hope to continue her legacy of farming at Yonderton.
It's a long process and it's not always easy, but I love it ! 

[woodlandproductsfife]

Fishing village boy here, always loved the thought off farming and dad grew all sorts in the garden, peas tatties sweet corn beetroot turnip purple tops mmm brocoli cauliflower cabage carrots strawberries rasps goosberries grapes tomatoes cucumber we never ever bought veg, the taste is far from a super market where shape and size is what counts. feed the wild birds from a very early age and had my first aviary at 12, Ive breed all sorts and now have hens, I plan to expand my business where I will grow fruit n veg just like dads. with the hens and some sheep and pigs etc, god it turns me on lol. anyway all that from a fisher man hahahah

[doganjo]

I'm a fake!  I kid on I'm a smallholder so I'm even more accidental than most.  My background is Aberdeen city centre town house, business grandparents(cousins took over the business when Grandma died and ran it into the ground otherwise you'd all have got a 'cappie' - Donald's Ice Cream),  but always daft about animals and particularly horses - used to go and see Mary, an old carthorse on a farm near our primary school every day before walking the 4 miles home. (that farm is now Aberdeen Royal Infirmary)  After marrying and living in Aberdeen till the kids were sort of independent, hubby and I moved to the country, where we grew veg and fruit, although both of us were working then.  When Sandy was killed and I met John a  couple of years later we moved to the other side of Aberdeen, again in the country, buying a run down croft needing massive renovations both in the house and the land.  We again were both working and although John was a great gardener he wasn't a stockman so we let the field out to a neighbour for cattle and sheep, and just lent a hand when needed.  He was made redundant too late in life to be able to get another job in the oil industry so he started a project growing day old chicks to 13 weeks free range - chose the wrong time of year to start and it was a disaster!  When he died, I sold the croft and some of the land, built a house on the remainder, and again grew things, but also branched out into ducks and chickens for eggs.  Then the kids wanted me to move to a warmer climate and nearer them - warmer huh! my foot!  But definitely near enough to see them regularly which is the best bit.  Still have dooks n chooks, as well as all my dogs, and my son built me a fruit and veg cage, and a nice ornamental garden, and is keen to set up a polytunnel, and a canopy over the chicken run.  Although a city lad, he obviously still enjoys coming over to my 'smallholding in the city', (well village really)  So as I said, I am a fake accidental smallholder!