the daydream fund challenge thread

rhiwfield

With one thing and another not getting much done atm. Makes me wonder how do you cope with sickness and injury when you have livestock that need looking after? Were the large families of old in part a means of having tied workers for the smallholding, coming into their prime as the parents became less able.

Anyhow to stop DW going stir crazy I drive her to the stunning heritage coast to gaze at the sea and scenery. Which gives me the opportunity to fill the boot with driftwood for kindling....getting some very odd looks from other seascape watchers

Its a lovely short drive to the coast here, the road follows the Ogmore river with the Norman castle, next to which is a beach horseriding farm that also does tipis in the summer. The ford here some people use to catch flatfish but is notable for the stepping stones covered at high tide. And just opposite the castle is the Pelican pub :beer:. Travelogue over but its a good way to revive low spirits!

rhiwfield

Poosmate wrote: »

!

Oh I forgot to mention why I actually came on here! Der!

I found this on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng&NR=1

Poo

Fascinating, albeit a bit complex. For a low tech alternative could Lir raise carp in her pond

Davesnave

rhiwfield wrote: »

With one thing and another not getting much done atm. Makes me wonder how do you cope with sickness and injury when you have livestock that need looking after? Were the large families of old in part a means of having tied workers for the smallholding, coming into their prime as the parents became less able.

Undoubtedly, multi-generational living kept farms in the family, but elsewhere in the world it has also caused the sub-division of subsistence acreage into ever smaller plots.

Perhaps not having anyone to take over here, we keep an open mind about the idea of a 'forever' home! DD2 is interested, but we shall have to see....;) Hope your DW is soon whizzing about independently again, but surely it's good to have a break? We popped into RHS Rosemoor last week, just for an hour or two, and it really revived our spirits. OK, it was partly business, as I get lots of stock photos from places like that and ...er...it's also the seeding season...:o

Loved the video, Poosmate! It has made me think, though I'd not go for stocking at the high densities of fish shown there, nor for tilapia. I'm not sure what fish might work at our normal temperatures. I can only think of carp...

Thanks for your comments about the photos too. I really need a newer camera with a few more pixels, but that may have to wait for a bit. The thing is, with digital, one can shoot lots and discard the duds, so it is quite easy to find half a dozen reasonable ones every month or so.

We have divided our time between fencing and preparing for winter over the last few days, creating some better standing-out areas for the ornamentals in pots. I'm now beginning to relocate the troughs, which means digging new channels for the water pipes. Our predecessors laid half the pipes on the surface , so we have been burying them. Who knows, eventually, we might have a system that can stay on all winter!

alfie_1

i have just dodged rain showers to mow my lawns, build a bonfire, more straw for MABEL, moved a pair of bantams into unused greenhouse [wont mix with my BIG chooks!] cleaned chicken shed out, pruned roses and washing machine on...
im sure most people are leasurely strolling round today and have perfect hands and spotless shoes....
i think i turned left instead of right 20 years ago !!

choille

Yes - Dowsing works. I was sceptical when OH first demonstarted with bent wire coat hangers held in empty bic pens. I had an old friend who used to dowse to workout if plants would grow in her sea side garden, see actuall was also a homeopath that used to use a pendulum to workout which remedy would be best. sAdly no longer with us.

Alfie - Animals are lovely & it is difficult to sell them on - well it is with the sheep I find I worry about where they will end up - well I know it will be someone's plate - but how they will be treated inbetween times. That is why I normally just keep small - provide for our own plate.
You wouldn't get away with the part demolision here becuase you would need a building warrant - so building control/standards office would have a say, don't think you have that down there.
RAS - there are some great folk on the islands & up here. I'm quite active with the crofting federation & have met many crofters from all over the north. I think if you are genuine & not just out to turn a croft into a housing scheme then most locals will be fine. It's not the locals we've had the problems with! There are the die hard traditionalists that are really not open to change - yes we have a few here, but they are all okay with us. If you get up this far, give us a shout.

Rhiwfield - hope Mrs rhiwfield isn't too frustrated not being able to get about on her own steam. It is good to play at being a tourist in your own neck of the woods - or else what's the point in living there.

Today is beautiful & orange with snow glinting off the tops. Looks really wonderful & spent the morning having a bit of an outdoor tidy up. The rain that's come down this last few weeks has ben incredible - everything squelches.

troglodyte

Afternoon all! Gosh lots of things flying around!

Thanks for the video Poo, interesting stuff.

Rhiw I think we need to visit your neck of the woods!

Alfie re planning permission; there used to be a hotel near where I grew up, I can't find a good picture of it but if you go to this link and scroll down to number 36 you can see it there:

http://members.multimania.co.uk/WebFlint/timepast/gallery4.html

It was actually built by my great-grandfather and as a student I waitressed there in the holidays, it was a lovely place. Anyway new owners (maybe 10 years or so ago?) applied for permission to extend, that was refused as the plans were not in keeping with the original building. So instead they just razed it to the ground and replaced with a totally different house, all red brick with a round tower! Planning rules are indeed farcical.

Lotus-eater - yes, dowsing really does work! Often regarded as the occupation of alternative hippies etc, in fact it's really useful and all you need is two pieces of thickish copper wire bent at right angles (or hazel twigs for the traditionalists). I remember we used it when I was growing up to locate a water main; saved us bulldozing it by accident when installing piped water to fields. Just hold the short ends of the rods loosely in your fists so the long ends are parallel to the ground and pointing forwards, then walk slowly over the area and if you cross a water pipe the rods will swing around to align with it - at least that is what we did.

Better get outside now and do a bit before it goes dark! Getting colder again this afternoon - found the last of my climbing beans actually frozen on the vines a couple of days ago :eek:

alfie_1

talking of animals... in morocco i noticed that up in the atlas mountains [en route to the sahara] the communities had literally "allotments". so well organised too.cane fencing as wind breaks, thier irragation systems scrounged every drop of water to super efficiency and they were cutting the winter feed for thier hoofed allies when i passed through! cabbages and other wierd veggies abounded and pleased to say all mules/donkeys etc were fat and well. also noticed didnt use BITS to drive them. what a contrast to the marrakesh hoofers ! some good some bad..... breaks my heart to see but cant interfere....

rozeepozee

Hi guys, we're back from our property hunt and feeling a little glum, truth be told. We travelled down for over six hours in total from the NE to West Wales and were staying in a holiday park for 4 nights. First problem, we had no reception on the mobile phone/internet, a common problem in the countryside, I imagine so we had to drive out to make any calls. Duly arranged a visit to one property which was a way out of our desired area, but we wanted to see what was available inland compared to coastal. It was an odd set up. There was "the" house, a "three" bedroomed cottage. I use speech marks because the third bedroom was on the landing! It was a croft type affair with very low ceilings on the slope (partner is 6'3"). I could see lots of problems with it. For example, the extension, the bathroom, was strangely under a corrugated roof in the attached barn, the draw for us was the unfinished project with PP, a larger house, but, boy, was it unfinished. It just had a roof on it and no floor.... The seller was a bit vague on the plans too... There were two statics (one clearly not legal) and a lot of rough ground with a few apple trees dotted around. The thing that struck me the most was how small 4 acres is!!! I was expecting it to look like a football field. The 400K asking price would have been fair to my mind had the "project" been finished....

The second property we looked at was two cottages on a one acre site. I quickly realised that when you build two properties on a one acres site, plus add in a few sizeable outbuildings, it don't leave much land for growing! There was a 0.2 acre field which had formerly been used as a C&CC campsite and a strip of land at the back.... definately not enough to be self sufficient in any meaningful sense although the second cottage would have provided for a very useful income stream, probably more lucrative than any veggies we could grow, In any case, we'd by this time decided we wanted to be close to the village and it was too far and there was an offer accepted, subject to survey at very close to the asking price £325K...

The next property we really liked. It was about half a mile from the village, raised back off the road slightly but not too much slope, in a lovely sunny aspect with nearly four acres. Just one property on it, a "doer upper" which really only needed cosmetic attention (although to every room). It had its own water source, a couple of entrances, one up the front path and one a gated side entrance (onto one field suitable for campers?), a gorgeous view from the top of the back field, an attached extension "needing attention" which we could convert for the Olds in due course, a small outbuilding with the potential for conversion into an annexe type build at some stage. It was priced at £300K and we mused about the type of cheeky offer we might get away with. The more we thought about it, the more it seemed perfect. We'd looked at the prices that properties could be rented out for in the summer (the village is a tourist draw, a mile from the beach) and were already in our imagination living in a static on the back field while we rented the place out in the summer. The following morning we were travelling into the estate agents to discuss the possibility of putting in an offer, only to receive a belated message from the estate agent saying "call urgently re the property". By the time we got there an offer had been accepted from another cash buyer....

Ah well, we've learnt quite a bit from our little expedition and are now much more focused. Our criteria have changed somewhat: we now know we want to be within walking distance of the village so we can integrate and the kids can walk to school, we can live without a second unit and we know that a description of a property on a 1 acre plot is likely to provide insufficient land. We are now, as they say in the property programmes "more realistic on price". Given how desirable the chosen location is, it looks like we'll have to find a bit more capital to fund our dream. We need to get our own place in a lettable state (it's not been decorated for some time so we'll do that over the winter) so we can move quickly (the property we liked was on the market for under two weeks), keep an eye on the market in Cardigan and go back in the spring. I wonder if the austerity measures will have had any effect on the property market by then? We're both feeling that properties like the one we saw don't come up very often.

rhiwfield

Virtual visit service

1) Ogmore estuary at high tide
2) Ogmore Castle

troglodyte

Popping back with a quick question - does anyone know a way to preserve fruit juice? Can it be heat treated like bottled fruit for example? We have apples and also grapes to use but only a small chest freezer which is mostly full already!