Living as it was .....

We're just back from a lovely weekend away.  A whistlestop tour of one of Lovely Hubby's old stomping grounds, Portsmouth and a day here at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum.

I've been there once before when I went on holiday with Mum to Bognor Regis back in 2012, and we had a day out to the museum.  I knew as soon as I saw it then that Lovely Hubby would love it as much as me.  It is filled with cottages and houses all through the ages, that have been painstakingly taken down piece by piece and then fully rebuilt in situ at the museum to reflect their beginnings .  You really do need a full day to go round all the houses and appreciate their architecture and contents.

Once again my favourite cottage was one of Whittaker's Cottages (I posted about this one here).

I love everything from it's full and productive vegetable garden ...

... to it's clothes drying area and washhouse.

The larder seemed quite full until you realised this would have kept the family of of Mum and Dad and eight children fed along with the produce from the garden.

And imagine washing the pots after a meal for a family of that size in this little sink!!

And that would have been after you had heated the water that you had just carried in from the pump that you shared with your neighbour that was in front of the pair of cottages.

We spent the full day mooching about all the houses and exploring the water mill and charcoal makers camp in the woodlands.  Picking up ideas such as this type of fencing which we could incorporate very well into parts of our woodland.

Then it was time to come home and spend time in our house .....

... one that also has water that needs heating and carrying from one place to another.  

Yes, once again we are without hot water and for those of you who frequently ask if our Aga heats the water for our house ..... at the moment the answer is YES, but only if I fill all our kettles and big pans and leave them sat on the top of it all day, ready for washing pots etc when it is needed.

Oh well I said I wanted to live simply  :-/

Sue xx

Seven Years of Blogging

Make yourself a drink and pull up your chair this is a long one ...... because today is this blogs anniversary, seven years of posts.  Seven years of ups and downs but best of all seven years of sharing our lives with you .... our blogging buddies, friends, followers and readers.

In October of 2008 when we first placed this advert in the Farmers Guardian newspaper ... we had no idea of the adventure we were starting on.

Resourceful sea-dog (Engineer) and hard working city chick (Retail Manager) (Married) wishing a radical life style change, seek 3 bed property with space to live the ‘good life’ (veggies and chickens), ideally in a rural setting or on a farm in the Oxford, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hampshire area. 

Willing to upgrade and refurb property in return for a realistic rent. Contact the old sea-dog (Alan) on -----------

or e-mail -----------

This blog that has charted virtually our every move, escapade and family event since then, has been the backbone of all that we have done.  Keeping us accountable and being a permanent record of our wonderful adventure.

 Expecting this search to take six months at the very least we were shocked to be contacted within days of the advert going out and offered the chance to rent a farm, complete with it's own farmhouse, barn, derelict orchard and six acre paddock. We spent the next two months closing down my sweet little lavender shop, handing the notice in on our rented house, saying goodbye to family and friends and generally just packing up our lives. Over Christmas of 2008 we moved in and a month later this blog was born.  Each year has had a subtitle and 2009's was 'From Townies to Country Folk' as the pair of us swapped smart clothes and shiny shoes for mud splattered jeans and big comfy wellies ... 

...and kitted ourselves and the farm out with what we thought we needed.  

2010 was the year of 'Pigs and Chickens' and our initial flock of ten rescued free range White Stars was added to over the course of the year.  The pigs came in small and grew and grew, providing us with meat, piglets, a small income and lots of entertainment and hard work.

2011 was 'Our Year of Living Simply' and we knuckled down to building on all we had learnt.  Reining in the spending and learning to live as simply as we could.  Growing, storing and preserving our own food, reusing, recycling and mending what we had.

But we showed our soft side when we re-homed another big batch of rescue birds, doubling our flock of the time to over 50 birds.  As our three year lease was coming to an end we sat and discussed the future, did we want to go for this lifestyle full time or revert to our townie lives.

We decided to not just carry on but to invest in our own future and buy our own land.  No matter how much we loved the area we lived in we knew we couldn't afford to buy in Oxfordshire, but we knew we had to grow our savings as quickly as we could, so we ended the lease on our lovely farm and looked for somewhere over the border in Berkshire, near to Lovely Hubby's work to rent while we saved.

  So 2012 was the year we went further, with the subtitle 'From Simple to Frugal - and Beyond'. 

We found  a ramshackle little bungalow in it's last years of life, waiting to be demolished to make room for the owners to build their dream home.  In the meantime they were heading overseas and needed someone to rent their property ...

... and look after their cat.

The pigs were gone due to family circumstances, and we were not allowed to have any on the land we rented, so we decided to downsize and buckle down and save.  So it was just us the dogs, the cats, and the chickens ... and then we went to a farm sale and fell in love with a Hyline hen and her three fluffy babies.  The geese had arrived.

Harry, Larry and Mo .... the three Chinese Grey geese replaced the pigs in our affections and made wonderful 'guard dogs' keeping our chickens safe from predators and making us laugh with their antics.

It turned out that we had two girls and one gander.  Harry swiftly decided that I was the love of his life and whenever I was in Chicken World would follow me round fawning at my feet demanding cuddles and attention.  

Then it was 2013 and we decided it was to be our 'Year of Less'.  Our little two bedroom bungalow seemed overcrowded with the contents of our four bedroom farmhouse shoehorned in, even though we had sorted out and moved with less ...so we started to declutter.  We car booted, we donated, we gave away and if all that failed we threw away.  The surfaces became clear and the bank account grew.  We worked hard, saved hard and started to dream.  We started to look for our own place ... 

and we found it.

I teased you all with a snippet of a photo while the final details were sorted out by solicitors and then it was ours on 13th September 2013.  Our forever home.  We commuted weekly and started the decorating and preparing the house, and moved in for good on 21 December...

... and on 31st Mavis joined us.

The year of 2014 was our 'Back to Basics' year and  saw us starting the long but rewarding task of setting up our smallholding, we are too small to be a farm, with around 5 acres so this is how we think of ourselves.  We (this is of course being the Royal we) dug out the hillside to mark out the bare bones of the Veggie Patch, and I learnt how different it was to grow on the poor soil of this Welsh hillside compared to the soft growing conditions of Southern England.

We also found out the difference in the temperatures and kept our log burner in action much more regularly to keep the house warm.

Then 2015 was with us and the year of 'Needs Not Wants'.  We kept our spending in the house to the minimum and gritted our teeth and invested in the infrastructure of our future.  The polytunnel was up and I could once again get down to the serious job of growing our own food ....

... while I tried to ignore what was going on nearer the house!!

A full year of building, mess, muck and chaos, I never want to live through that again.  Now of course I think that it as worth it, but at the time I hated every single minute.  But it means that we now have garage space, workshop space and most importantly a safer and more usable access and exit to the property.  

Beneath all this we put in water drains to make our land and the road beyond it safer.  We put in a water harvesting system to catch the deluge of rainwater that falls in this Welsh valley which will cut our future water bills.  Above the garage and workshop we put a huge bank of solar panels to capture the energy of the daylight and this means we are self sufficient in electricity and it will also earn us an income during the longer, lighter days of Summer.

And now we are here 2016 and 'A Year Without ...', a year that we are using as our practice year to see how self-sufficient we can be ready for next year when Lovely Hubby makes the final leap and gives up the day job.  It's been a long time in the planning and you our lovely band of regular and newer readers have been on the journey with us, some of you since the very beginning.  

Some of you have taken the massive step of reading back, seven full years of blog posts charting our successes, our failures, our experiments, our triumphs and our sad times and I guess for you they are fresher in your minds at the moment, than they currently are in mine.

Each time I look out of the window and see this glorious view I know we were right to make this little patch of Welsh hillside our own.  We drink in the view whether it be clear and filled with sunshine, or more recently with the cottages on the hillside opposite shrouded in cloud, mist or heavy rain but we drink it in, breathe in the fresh air as we walk our dogs round our own paddock and look down and across at all that we have accomplished on our land.  We know that a lot of the dreams that we dared to dream really have come true since we found our very own place to put down roots.

So I would like to take the opportunity on this anniversary post to thank everyone for reading this blog,  and to say I hope you will continue to join us on this Our New Life in the Country.  There are even more adventures ahead.

Sue xx 

Back to Basics

 

I decided the sub-title of the Blog this year should be 'Back to Basics', it's something we are really striving towards.  In many ways we are starting from scratch and briefly I had that in mind for the sub-title, but in other ways we are expanding on or making better use of things we have or things we already do and we want this to spill over into keeping everything simple and easy and well .... basic.

 

For instance the very basic of foodstuffs - Bread.

 

Last year I bought in bulk enough flour to make a couple of loaves a week, to keep us in homemade bread and stop us from buying mass produced supermarket bread.  It kind of fizzled out as these good intentions sometimes do, I baked bread on average once a week and bought loaves when they were on offer.  So I still have lots of the bread and yeast, and although the yeast is not as strong as it was it is still working.  So while the stocks are edible and okay to use I will continue to do so but I will obviously be making as much of our own bread as I can to save money on my other Challenge.

 

 

I mean it's not that hard, Ken takes the strain, kneading away with his dough hook for the first five minutes ...

 

.. then I take over ever so briefly to knead and then shape the dough before popping it back into the bowl with it's fetching shower cap on for the first proving.  It's down there now doing it's thing .....

 

 

..... the kitchen is obviously the place to be.

 

It's a lovely sight to see, all three dogs with their full tummies after breakfast, curled up in beds, not their own as is usually the case.  The smaller bed was Suky's puppy bed and she seems to have claimed it back from Mavis, but as long as they are happy so am I.  Looking at the photo they all have their favourite things in front of them, Rosy a ball, Mavis a squeaky pig toy and of course Suky has a bowl half full of food.

 

Which is amazing, she now seems to have copied Mavis and has taken to leaving some dried food in her bowl for later, and even more amazing she doesn't always eat it .... I've seen Mavis having it after finishing the food she leaves in hers.  I wonder if dogs realise when a companion needs food more than they do, a nice thought.

 

Sue xx

Simplicity

 

All this packing and unpacking, moving and shifting has made me think even harder about the things we own.  We worked so hard all through this year and the year before to get rid of things, to sell at car boot sales and online, to move to a more simple way of life and yet still we seem to own so much. So many items have been packed, loaded, driven up the motorway only to be unloaded and unpacked at the other end.  I think doing it in small loads has highlighted to me the sheer amount of stuff we have. 

 

We forgot to bring the dog bowls home with us last weekend, and I wondered what we would put their food in ... for a moment I even very briefly contemplated going and buying two more stainless steel bowls for them.  I needn't have worried, looking around the house when we got home I managed to find two dog bowls within minutes.  We have bowls sat inside and outside the house filled at all times with fresh water for the dogs and cats to drink out of and there were the bowls that used to belong to Sophie, our beloved Border Collie.  So it took me literally two minutes to get two bowls together that can be designated food bowls for the two dogs during the week and stop the need for bringing the others backwards and forwards with us.

 

 

 

We also have enough plates, bowls and cups for us at both ends, I seem to have two very functional kitchens working in tandem with each other.  We truly have everything we need and more.  There are so many less fortunate than us.  We've worked hard for what we have, we both work very hard to earn money and make that money work for us.   And we've managed through sheer hard slog to get together half the value of our home and we plan to pay for it completely in as short a time frame as we possibly can so it is truly ours. To make sure this happens I have decided I will be continuing to downsize our belongings, already at the new house there is a growing collection of things, some not wanted and left by the previous owners and some ours that we have realised simply don't fit in with how we want the house to be, all these will be sold off at the first chance we have and the money raised diverted to paying off the mortgage.

 

In the new year I intend to resurrect my Recipe Book Blog and work my way through my vast collection of books, being much more ruthless this time and only keeping the very useful and much used favourites, the rest will be sold.  I may even be tempted to try to raise £2014 in 2014 the way I did very successfully in 2012.  I find with a definite figure to aim towards you do push yourself that little bit more.

 

But anyway the main thing behind this post was to tumble down in words my desire to get back to simplicity, as I feel in buying things for the new house I had lost sight of it somewhat.  There's been no 'make do and mending', there's been lots of 'we need this so we'll buy it' and that's no bad thing for a short while after all we'd worked hard to save the money to get ready to buy these things and it is the first home we have ever bought together, but soon it has to stop and I guess with a brand new year almost upon us it's a brilliant time to make plans for how you want things to be.

 

How do I want things to be - Simple.

 

Sue xx

 

 

Our Forever Home

 

Decorating our way through the house, might be a long and slow process but it means we are getting to know the very ins and outs of the house.  Noticing it's foibles and little nooks and crannies, the way the old original skirting boards are matched up with new more modern copies. Seeing original woodwork that has never seen paint (and never will) waiting behind cupboard doors to be discovered, the same wood that was put into place in 1920 when the house was built. There's not much of the original house, but what there is will be treasured.   As I paint my mind wanders and plans emerge where once there may have been only the vaguest hints of ideas.

 

The Spare Bedroom above is complete except for the curtains and light shade which we will bring from home this coming weekend ...

 

... the bathroom is complete except for the cupboard door, which was still drying when this picture was taken just before we left on Sunday afternoon. 

 

This cupboard is the 'pop' of green for this room, every room will have one somewhere, it is a slight variation on my favourite shade of green, we had the paint mixed after taking in one of the cushions, which match the new curtains.  We have enough paint to highlight the whole of the house in one way or another.  You will have to play 'spot the green' as I reveal each room!!

 

 

The upstairs toilet is completely finished except for a net curtain which really is needed for this window, although the view is breath-taking so will the view into the room be from the main road as someone goes to sit on the toilet :-)   

 

It was truly the fiddliest room in the whole house to paint, it is so tiny hence the corner toilet.  The pop of green for the moment is the greenery outside, as that is to be masked from view by the net I will have to introduce it somewhere else.

 

The ceiling in the office is now painted and when we get back there I will start on the walls.  They are all needing at least two coats to hide the deep cream colour that is currently on them, but it is worth it as the finish looks wonderful once the second coat is on and it is so much easier to paint when there is nothing in the rooms.

 

 

Lovely Hubby has now laid the tiles that the Aga will sit on and they have almost two weeks to set solid before it is being installed.  Yay, I can't wait.  It's like the house is waiting for it's heart to be delivered, we have brought it life and love and the Aga will bring it warmth and a beating heart.  Yes .... I'm a soppy thing when it comes to Aga love :-)

 

Why the previous owners tiled around the kitchen units we'll never know, you'd think it would be so much easier to tile the whole floor and then sit the cupboards on top, especially considering they laid the floor and fitted the kitchen after the extension was built.

 

The wall behind where the Aga will sit is also being tiled and these tiles will continue around the kitchen, three high on this wall and filling the gap between the base and wall units on the other side.  We chose a simple 'Subway' tile in plain white to keep the look simple and fresh.  Although a patterned or green tile might have looked really good with this simple creamy coloured kitchen and the cream coloured Aga, what if our tastes changed and we lived to regret it.  Far better to keep the fixtures and fittings plain and simple and add the wackier and more colourful touches in things we can change for little cost in the future.

 

Well that's it ...  a weekends work, summed up in six photos. 

 

We have this week at home and then we will have two weeks at the new house to really get stuck in to the  jobs that need doing.  It's all the big jobs, the expensive ones that will be happening over the next fortnight.  The new oil fired Combi boiler is being fitted, the new larger log burner is being installed and the old one removed, the carpets are being cleaned and my wonderful re-conditioned Aga will be delivered and installed during our second week there after the kitchen units are re-arranged slightly during the first week.

 

It's lovely to watch the house accepting and rolling with our plans, slowly and surely it is turning into our place, the one we have dreamt about and planned together.  The one we have scrimped and saved for over the last couple of years, the one we will live in and grow old together in. 

 

Our Forever Home.

 

Sue xx