[Brijjy]

  Hello and welcome. I reckon the best piece of advice I can give is go and make friends with all your neighbours. They are generally a font of knowledge, will return lost livestock/children and will help out with all the jobs you've got coming up. My farmer neighbour is fantastic. He lets me graze my ponies in his fields in the summer, he fetches the odd big bale for me and he also helped my OH move my beloved welsh cob that had died in the far corner of a snow covered field and the knacker man couldn't get to. A horrible job that not many people would have done. If it's a small community you will be talked about and judgments will be made but as long as you are friendly you will be fine. It also helped when I let slip that my OH was an electrician, it was amazing how many neighbours had been living in near darkness for years  Enjoy your new venture.

[Lesley Silvester]

   Hi and welcome from snowy Shropshire.  I envy you your four acres.  Would love to do that myself but lack of funds together with my OH being and out and out townie, I'm restricted to a large garden.  Still manage fruit trees, veggies and three (soon to become two) goats.

I echo what has already been written here.  Don't rush into anything in your garden until you know what you already have.

I did once have about a quarter acre, with my previous OH, and three young children (youngest 9 months when we moved there) and chooks are very little trouble and gets you into the smallholder mindset, not to mention lovely eggs.

Having lived just outside a village, I agree that people will talk about you but you will always know where your children are and what they get up to (my 15 year old nephew on a visit from a large town couldn't work out how I knew he'd been smoking and trying to buy from the local shop) and I found people were willing to help each other.

Looking forward to hearing more about your adventure.

[plumseverywhere]

Having them all so close together & rearing them as naturally as possible has put me off rushing into acquiring livestock though, as I know how work intensive & all consuming it can be

Wise move!!!  Having juggled school run time (breakfast, getting 4 girls dressed etc) along with a VERY poorly goat with phonecalls coming left right and centre from the vet as I scrubbed the 2 yr olds teeth - I can resonate with this!!

This year I am juggling kidding my gorgeous goat, buying in bottle lambs whilst managing to be mum to 4 children, carer to my own mum and running a soap business but...I'd not change a thing. I love the busy-ness of it all and the kids thrive on the outdoors.   Our 4 are hardly ever off school with a cold - unlike their x-box playing peers 

[Bionic]

Hi,
We are in the process of buying a place in Camarthenshire and will be moving soon (I hope).  We will have 2.25 acres and I'm not sure what to do with them either.

Ours comes complete with two resident geese and two ducks.  I have no idea what breeds.

We are lucky in that the house doesn't need anything doing to it, other than change the decor to our taste. so I will have more opportunity to concentrate on the outside.

I think a small orchard is the first on my list.  I have seen some nurseries specialising in local trees so this will probably be my first stop.

Enjoy your new life.
Sally

[TheBurkers]

Hello you all. You are a friendly lot. I feel very at home here. Thanks!

Good advice about the neighbours. They're all lovely, and, yes, I'm sure there will be some "villageyness" about it, everyone is a lot more enquiring (or we could say nosey!  ; ) than strangers might be in the city, but I like it. It's how you get to know your community members. We hope we will be a positive addition. Our DS is already speaking Welsh in the Welsh mediul school and his 21 month old sisters can tell each other off in Welsh already and they've not been speaking English long!

Where are you buying in Carmarthenshire, Bionic? We looked down there, as I do love an estuary and Laurghn (which I can never spell) is very romatic, but I'd fallen in love with Pembrokeshire. You can just about see Cardigan Bay from our bungalow.

LAUGHARNE 

We're very happy to have a few acres, although I think we'll be limited by the heavy clay soil. Still, we don't anticipate or delude ourselves that we'll be self sufficient. As long as we can have a reasonably regular supply of some fresh veggies and fruit and perhaps some poultry, I think that might do us.

What I realised as we searched and searched for the right property is ow complicated it is, as you never get exactly what you set out to buy. Nonetheless, we are incredibly pleased with what we ended up with and I often have to pinch myself that we actually live here - and that's before the house is done up or we've moved in. We are about to go "on holiday", prearranged with a group of friends, to North Wales and we're actually feeling a little down hearted about leaving our house as it's much nicer here than there! Still, that was part of the plan: to live somewhere that people choose to go on holiday to.

[Bionic]

TheBurkers,
We looked at many places from Pembrokeshire, Camarthenshire and Ceredigion.  If I had been prepared to buy somewhere that needed a lot of work then we may have bought elsewhere but for me a big consideration was that the property was ready to move into. I'm hoping to exchange contracts this week and am keeping quiet on the exact location at the moment so as not to put the mockers on it. 

My selling/buying has been a bit disasterous and I posted a topic on here some time ago with the subject Will we ever move?

I will post again once its all been settled

Sally

[TheBurkers]

I know where you're coming from, Bionic. I'm looking forward to you being able to let the cat out of the bag.

I hope it all goes to plan. It's stressful - one of the reasons we bought at auction

[Rosemary]

Having them all so close together & rearing them as naturally as possible has put me off rushing into acquiring livestock though, as I know how work intensive & all consuming it can be

Sounds like you've got a great ethos - and livestock will be a piece of cake after three wee tots 

[mab]

Hi theburkers, 

The great thing about this forum is that everyone's very understanding and full of constructive advice - even when you admit you've done something REALLY stupid (speaking from personal experience).

If things go according to plan I'll be buying a place shortly with more land than I know what to do with, so I'll be in a roughly similar position, although I have spent the last 2 years on a 1 acre site and managed to keep a few beasties alive and happy with help from the folks on here.

welcome!

mab

[Goldcraig]

That sounds just like us...we have just under 5 acrea, with a stream that runs through it...We had lots of work to do to the house, and were down to soil in 3 of the rooms...my kitchen is the old milking parlour and retains some great character ( and no I'm not being sarcastic)......We managed to get the Conservatory finally sealed and dry last week, so we should be ready to move in in March.....When I look at what we inherited, to what we have achieved in 4 months, over the winter and festive period...I know we made the right choice and being skint while we pay for the renovation material will all be worth it...
Fruit trees are already pruned, Chicken Hut already shored up and treated, new roof etc...duck hut...still the same, stables all painted, need to fix the roof leaks first and given that I'm no stranger to a fish supper, this will be a job for my dearest with the sealant !!!
We have managed to procure a Greenhouse which I will change the glass to polycarbonate for the kids....
Animals........so far, a rabbit, 2 x kittens for the stables (who are both wired to mars bars and terrorise my daughters wee Dog) and a rescue springer for me....
Sleepers ready to build the raised beds for the clay soil.....
Spring Summer......bring it on !!!!

[Jimbofish67]

It sounds like we're all moving to Wales, although we 're not quite as far West as you guys, just East of Ammanford.
We havn't move in as yet  but on every visit the neighbours have made a point of coming to say hello and I couldn't agree more with the earlier post, good and friendly neighbours make a big difference.
Our house is ready to go, but the 4 acres, we have now discovered had not been properly dealt with in almost 18 years, boggy mountainside, brambles, ferns and reeds, so we know it's only going to be hard work from day one, but we'll be moving in hopefully before the summer and I can't wait

[Goldcraig]

We're in North Ayrshire....

[Bionic]

Goldencraig,
I lived in Drongan for a while and then Alloway. Two different worlds.  I liked it up there though
Sally

[henchard]

Hi we're not far from you in Carmarthenshire and even nearer to Jimbofish67 and moved to West Wales just over a year ago. The whole area is stunning and North Pembrokeshire amongst the best! Some Pembrokeshire Walks on our blog.

http://lizburton.co.uk/wordpress/

[Mel]

Hello! We wish you good luck and a big welcome from Northants!

The top part of our land is the same,in the end,we placed lots of raised beds and used it as the top allotment! The Willow grows very well here too,so If you wish to grow lots of this and coppice it in years for firewood,I shall gladly send you lots of cuttings which you can just stick in the ground and they grow