We’re at New House Farm this week. Bob and Mary seem very nice but clearly domestic issues are rife as they have seperated. We’ve met two of their four daughters who also seem nice and some of the many people who seem to live and work on the land here including a blacksmith, a guy who builds yurts and camping pods and another bloke who does banger racing and stores his cars here.
Bob seems very shrewd; he grew up on this farm and took it over 19 years ago. Although the website promises archaeological farm trails there is just a leaflet detailing points of interest around the farm with quotes from an archaeologist and all of the markers around the farm trail so you know where to stop and read the relevant text have gone missing. The leaflet was produced with grant money and therein seems to lie a lot of the great promises here – they do all the paperwork and sing the right songs to get grants, funding, subsidy payments and so on but appear to do very little in the way of actually delivering all these things. We’ve seen no evidence of veg box schemes, there are barely any animals here aside from ducks, chickens, geese and a pair of goats and some sheep that need to be kept in view as they are ailing or lame and the farm dogs. No actual farming as such seems to go on and the land is being almost entirely used for renting out either as camping ground or to local people for their work – one of the blokes is growing hazel and willow in part of a field for his own businesses for example.
We have use of a caravan parked next to Willow but the shower doesn’t seem to work and I’m not at all confident that Bob will actually get it sorted, so we’ve had washes using boiled kettle water in the sink (which is fine, we’re quite content with that, although a shower would be nice). The mifi doesn’t work in the caravan either so we’ll likely spend our evenings in Willow anyway.
So today started with breakfast in the house at 830am – toast, cereal etc was all put out for us to sort ourselves out, which we tend to prefer really. We’d already been shown our first task for today when we arrived yesterday of sorting through a pile of wood to chop up for logs and kindling and stack to season, so we got on with that. Davies and Scarlett spent some time sorting out cans – they recycle all the campers rubbish and sell on the aluminium and steel cans but they need sorting and crushing so they were armed with a magnet and told to test to see if they had steel in or not, crush them and put into seperate piles. They then spent some time walking the dogs (three terriers and a larger cross) and cuddling Gerald the orphaned and very tame gosling who is Scarlett’s new best friend!
The kids spent some time with us too and both had a go with the smaller kindling axe and the full size log axe – Davies was much better with the kindling, Scarlett much better at the log splitting.
At lunchtime it was self service again, this time pasta with sauce followed by fruit, rice pudding and chocolate biscuits. Bob arrived home then and made us a cup of tea and stood chatting to us for nearly an hour.
Our job this afternoon was technically fruit picking, but we did have to go armed with long armed gloves and a machete as the fruit bushes were surrounded by nettles and hogweed so we had to battle through that first to actually get to the berries and currants. We got a good crop though and that took us to 5pm.
Dinner tonight was burgers, sausages and some rolls supplied for us to barbecue using one of the fire dishes for the campsite – old wheels mounted on steel plates and legs. We tried to do the farm trail but gave up and came back to sit round a campfire, cook our dinner and chat about what happens next. As we shared with friends this week we have started to consider our next options and have a list of 4 possible ideas.
1. Go home, find some work that pays the bills, preferably both of us part time, with as few outgoings as possible. Give over the garden to growing, try to get another allotment, increase our poultry to some breeding and get involved in the Transition Town stuff happening in Worthing and other exciting ventures.
2. Sell the house and go in with my parents. They would also sell theirs and we’d then find a property with enough land for us, a dwelling for them and some sort of business for them to run.
3. Sell the house and buy a chunk of land somewhere with all of the required elements to try self sufficiency.
4. Take another year at a slower pace and spend longer periods with selected people we have already stayed with and been invited back to, to learn more, see greater slices of the lifestyle and enjoy this way of life for longer.
I am very conscious of having been the one driving our current adventure so I am keen to take a backseat and let the other three have their say about what they want to do next rather than listening to me persuading them to come round to my way of thinking. No one was up for 1 so that can be pretty much ruled out I think. We all liked 2 or 3 and think 4 might be a good plan as either 2 or 3 would likely take a long time to actually make happen. Anyway, time for all of that to be further debated yet.
It was blissful sitting out as the sun set round the fire chatting about exciting futures –
And now as I am falling asleep over my laptop it is time to turn off the light.