How the Story Ended

 

After living in North Wales for seven and a half years the country life has come to an end.

Alan decided back in 2018 that he wouldn't be retiring from the day job, and so the time we were able to devote to the land was simply not enough to make it an enjoyable lifestyle.  To do this well you do both have to have a real desire to work it together and both love it equally.

So our hopes and aspirations for the country life were just not to be, so we took the decision to sell up and move on.  We have moved to a lovely little town that I have always loved and which Alan has grown to love over the last couple of years.  Here we have the best of all worlds, a thriving High Street of local independent shops, a regular street market, riverside and canal side walks, quiet country pubs and small restaurants.  Best of all we literally have the countryside on our doorstep and the sea just a twenty minute drive away, and here we are so much closer to both our families ... a bit like where we left back in 2009 really.

A final tour around the house and land.

So to round it up ... we gave it our best shot, had lots of laughs along the way, decided to change tack and came away with a small profit.  Not a bad way to spend the last twelve years. but not quite what we envisioned when I wrote THIS  post!!

Sue xx

Time to Say Goodbye

I thought I could do it

Come back and perhaps begin again

But I can't

It's no longer in me

I cannot write to order

Cannot post ahead of time anymore

So I'm here for a final time

To say goodbye

And to thank you for reading my intermittent musings over the years

I've been in a dark, dark place recently

And it shows in my writings

It shows in my dreams

It shows in the faces and places of the world around me

So this is it

Really the end

There's no need to record anymore

But the words and pictures that I've filled these pages with will remain for the many, many of you who are reading your way through the fun filled, laughter filled years.  The years when we found our footings, lost our hearts and began Our New Life in the Country.

Sue  💚

Anniversary, Christmas ... and The End of an Era

It was our ninth wedding anniversary yesterday and we made the celebrations last the entire weekend.

On Friday we took Suky and Mavis to the groomers and whilst they were washed, dried, snipped and titivated and made to look even prettier than they normally are, we treated ourselves to a coffee.  Later on in the evening we went to the cinema to see Allied, a surprisingly good film, even better than the trailer had led us to expect..

On Saturday morning we opened our Sealed Pot and after years of using the money to do various Challenges this year we decided that the money was ours to do with as we wanted.  So we went to the bank to pay the bags and bags of loose change into our account and then hit the shops.  I bought myself a new dress and two pairs of shoes, and Lovely Hubby bought himself a power tool and it's accessories.

We ended Saturday with a meal out, something we have not done that often this year, so it was a treat to put on my new dress and dine at our leisure ...slightly too much wine may have been consumed  ;-)

On Sunday morning after a much more leisurely breakfast than usual we gave the house a good clean  and then put up the Christmas decorations.  We don't go mad, indeed each year we seem to streamline the decorations a little bit more. The ones we didn't use have been bagged up and will be dropped off at the charity shop later today while they still have time to sell them this year.

As you can see from these photos, the little black piggies on the gateposts have got their Christmas finery on too :-)

And this is where I have decided to share our lives for the last time.

Since January 2009 you have journeyed along with us as we moved from town to country.  You've been with us through the trials and tribulations of learning to look after chickens and pigs and as I learnt to grow enough vegetables to feed us and to preserve them in lots of ways to see us through the leaner months of Winter.  You have laughed along with our messy adventures and cried along with our losses ... feathered, furry and family .... you've been true friends in every sense of the word.  But, after much deliberation I think that now is the right time to claim back privacy for ourselves, and to close the gates on our lives in this public domain for the last time.

Thank you for being there, for being you, for the comments, the emails and the visits.  Thank you for following along throughout the last almost eight years.  I will still be around in blogland, and will leave this blog as it stands now for those of you who use it to link to the other blogs on my sidebar, although I will change the photo after this post has been live for a week.  This is not totally the end of my involvement with blogland as I will still drop by and comment on those blogs that I read regularly and follow, and hopefully keep in touch in a more low key way with my blogging buddies.   I hope you all have a wonderfully happy and peaceful Christmas and a calm and happy New Year.

We all have so much to look forward to.

With much love from

Sue and Lovely Hubby xx

&

Rosy, Suky, Mavis, Ginger

and The Feathered Flock