Exciting Chats :)

Since the blogpost outlining hopes and dreams the four of us have been talking and talking and talking. I’ve done some online research and looked at ideas such as Blackberry Farm Community (thank you Alison 🙂 ) and even contacted them (although I’ve not yet heard back), thought about what we would and wouldn’t do and what our personal ‘terms and conditions’ would be.

We do want our own front door, even if that is just a tent flap . I need to be able to yell at my kids, eat when I want, have bedtime when I decide and have a space that just belongs to us. That writes off shared living ideas.

We’re very cagey about throwing in our lot, financially and generally with people we don’t know. Intentional Communities sound wonderful things on paper and at best could provide a ready made extended family of like minded people all working together towards a common goal and building a small scale version of an ideal world. At worst you could end up tied to a group you don’t get on with, giving your all to a compromised dream. With so many reservations about the idea before we even start down that path I don’t think that is the answer for us.

Our actual dream isn’t financially possible. We can’t buy as even though we could probably sell our house and buy another property with land for a similar amount that leaves us with a mortgage to pay and household bills to meet, meaning one or both of us would need to work other than on our own land. We could sell the house and that would give us capital to rent somewhere short term but it would only last a couple of years and then what would we be left with?

So, we’ve been talking about what we think we want, the gaps in our knowledge of both skills involved and whether we’d really like it if that was our day in day out lifestyle. We’ve been looking at training courses to learn about rearing pigs, sheep, cows, slaughter and butchering, beekeeping and so on. All at high costs, all without the chance of practical application any time soon to keep the skills up to date and in use. Ady’s chief reservation every step of the way is coming off the property ladder. I understand his worries and whilst I am more flightly and would risk things Ady is more measured. Probably for the best really ;).

Which leads us to where we currently are. We need: practical experience in what we think we want to do, the chance to learn from experts or people already doing it, the opportunity to see that lifestyle – warts and all and decide if it is really for us. To hone our rather general plan of a ‘bit of everything’ to something more concrete. We need to know all the potential pitfalls, what does and doesn’t work for us, what could go wrong, whether we really do want to be sitting up all night on a snowy March evening lambing, whether milking a cow chaps my hands and chips my nails and I can live with that or not and so on.

And there is an answer… and it’s called WWOOFing. It’s what Caz and Bid did, both in this country and internationally. They had a different agenda and motivation to us but I think it could well be our next logical step. Basically it’s an organisation that costs £30 for membership which gives us access to farms, smallholdings, businesses, self-sufficient and eco-living people who want help on their land in exchange for board and learning and benefitting from their experience. You make your own arrangements direct with the hosts for how long you want to stay, when and what you can offer.

Ady and I read the first ten results on the ‘teaser’ section on the website, using the filter ‘families’ so hosts who are happy to take people with children. I got 187 hits so certainly plenty to choose from and we were excited by all of them – home educating families, talk of eco-living, various lifestock, people wanting WWOOFers who could help look after chickens, help run Forest Schools, assist in the sorts of projects we are interested in learning more about. It was like reading a list of dream hosts really :).

This morning I shared the idea with Davies and Scarlett who are equally as excited by the prospect of what we’re proposing so we have them on board and enthused.

So the plan: We join WWOOF and draw up a list of places we want to visit. This will be both a geographical and what we want to learn type wishlist. We might as well see as much of the UK as possible, on as sensible a route as possible and cover as many of our learning wants as possible. The aim is a full year of doing it in order to see the best and worst of weather, a full cycle of all the seasons, sowing, growing and harvest of crops, breeding, birth, rearing and killing of animals. I want to milk a cow, assist in lambing, learn about shearing, see piglets born, reared and eat the bacon so timing and planning to achieve all that will be quite a job.

From talking to Caz and Bid we know that having a campervan to enable you to live with your own space whilst on someone’s land is a good idea. My Sharan would not be the car to go travelling all round the country so it makes perfect sense to trade it in for a campervan (and add some money to it obviously – if it’s going to be ‘our home’ for a year then we need to invest as much as we can in it). We will rent the house out, which will (fingers crossed) pay the mortgage, make the monthly repayments to CCCS and possibly even give us a small income which would help cover running costs for the vehicle. We’ve rented the house out before, albeit five years ago now and it rented easily, brought in £775 a month even back then and was very smooth and straightforward, particularly with Dad just a mile away as first port of call for any issues tennants may have.

I would investigate staying on the library staff relief register which I think means I’d need to do a shift every 12 weeks or something. If we factored in a visit back to Sussex every 12 weeks that would bring in some extra cash. Ady will speak to his company about the possibility of some freelance mystery shop reports from around the country which he could do in a couple of hours and email in. I would also look into potentially writing about our experiences for a magazine or other avenue that might bring in some money too. All of that could cover any unexpected expenses or pay for time off as we’d still attempt to have some time camping with friends over the year.

So worst case scenario? We walk away from jobs we are not happy in anyway, discover we hate the whole idea of farming and self sufficiency and come back a year later to settle back into our house, find jobs and go back to our ordinary lives. We’ll have scratched the itch, answered our questions, had an adventure and an amazing experience, learnt new skills and had a great year together as a family and met lots of new people.

Best case scenario? Sky’s the limit really. I’m guessing we’ll have learnt enough to be credible employees in that area, have worked out precisely what we want, maybe have more equity in the house ready to sell and invest in our dream, realised what we can live without and what is really important to us.

House is safe, mortgage and debts still get paid, likely we could pick up the same or similar jobs we walked away from, we learn stuff, have a great adventure, spend lots of time together, probably get fitter and healthier, kids have a ball in the environments they crave.

So, timings. Ideally we’d save a bit of cash first. My car plus our final months salaries plus anything we can save should get us a campervan and put it on the road with tax, insurance etc. We need to get the house ready to let with any tarting up it needs, get chickens and ducked rehomed or long loaned out, make decisions about what gets put into storage, what gets sold / freecycled, what comes with us etc in terms of possessions and stuff. We need to plan our route, set up hosts, get our year organised. We have time away booked in July, September and December. It doesn’t make sense to go away at the start of winter when everything will be at it’s bleakest so we’re thinking maybe March, which gives us several months to plan, save, prepare. Winter will be the best time to buy a campervan, spring will be the right time to start a journey like this I think being the start of the farming year.

That’s it, as always up for debate and discussion and amending but for now the four of us are very excited at what seems like a real proper plan :).