the daydream fund challenge thread

lostinrates

Who thought bakery was not a useful asset to the small holder:) For a decent piece of cake and a nice cup of coffee the digger people (who ha a strict addendum on their contract saying they will not do anything extra at all) are going to level the vegetable patch Hurrah...at last. It will need prettying of at some stage but it will be plantable.


They are also going to give me a quote for scraping the banks of the old pond, and digging some terraces into it. (not this time though...it would be nice!)

Lotus-eater

Hang on, hang on, level the vegetable patch? Just watch them and make sure they keep the top soil where it is supposed to be, on the top!

lostinrates

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Hang on, hang on, level the vegetable patch? Just watch them and make sure they keep the top soil where it is supposed to be, on the top![/QUOTE

They are leveling it then adding more topsoil! (from the bits they are digging.) I watched them work yesterday and have been please with their separation of top soil from rubbish filled top soil and then the rest. They said....its a shame to dump this top soil with the junk.....so I said....hmm....may be you could put it where I want to level out....and they said...yes, but lets level it out first:D:D No point you doing by hand over weeks what we can do in a jiffy.

Young lads, farmers sons recommended by someone in old neck of the woods but cover lots of this wessex-y bit. Here before 8 am...and smily.

lostinrates

sigh. I no longer have a garden. Just a sea of mud. Even under our lawn there was rubbish.....loads of it. You hear horror stories about the last house on a new build estate having pure hardcore to work in.....you don't expect it in this sort of place...some junk...but not this!

Interestingly we did find the drain runs which we think are from the 18th century rebuild.....but are redundant now...but where the trenches are you can see the house was pretty well serviced...and laid our totally differently then it was later....because a drain run from the ''missing'' side which we always assumed would have been without water...as the kitchen ATM is at the other end.

edit: infact, thinking about it I didn't even realise houses would have had drain runs then. This is the very old brck though....the vicorian brick and pipe work goes out in another dierection again to the front....where they put a kitchen, coppers and rbuilt a dairy. the dairies before were all over that side.....I'm beginning to wonder now whether these brick runs are something more interesting....

alfie_1

lostinrates wrote: »

Who thought bakery was not a useful asset to the small holder:) For a decent piece of cake and a nice cup of coffee the digger people (who ha a strict addendum on their contract saying they will not do anything extra at all) are going to level the vegetable patch Hurrah...at last. It will need prettying of at some stage but it will be plantable.


They are also going to give me a quote for scraping the banks of the old pond, and digging some terraces into it. (not this time though...it would be nice!)

WELL DONE....:T
iv made many a bacon sarnie to get an "xtra" job done .....:)
my mother taught me from an early age that a cuppa and nosh does wonders for workmen.... gets the job done much better. if you ask one they will tell you [after uv fed them!] that "the miserable old s*d never even gave us a cuppa and we were there hours in the cold, so we didnt bother doing..........." re a previous job. :rotfl:

Poosmate

A Farmers Life For Me is on on bbc2 now!

optimus_primera

alfie_1 wrote: »

WELL DONE....:T
iv made many a bacon sarnie to get an "xtra" job done .....:)
my mother taught me from an early age that a cuppa and nosh does wonders for workmen.... gets the job done much better. if you ask one they will tell you [after uv fed them!] that "the miserable old s*d never even gave us a cuppa and we were there hours in the cold, so we didnt bother doing..........." re a previous job. :rotfl:

I've fixed peoples cars for a couple (ok- half a dozen) mugs of tea ... lol

lostinrates

optimus_primera wrote: »

I've fixed peoples cars for a couple (ok- half a dozen) mugs of tea ... lol

Its a shame you're not near us...tea I can do....with cake! I'm ok most of the time without the car but everynow and then the fear sets in....suppose I needed to get to the vet?

choille

We've had hail showers all day & loads of really loud thunder this morning. I've hardly been out. T'is dash cold & all the stars twinkling away & the winds still pretty strong but not causing stuff to fall off the shelves. I find that really tiring.

The sheep on the farmers thing don't look like Texels to me - Cheviots? Surely?

knithryn

Just thought I'd drop in and mention my daydream.

Other Half and I dream of a small holding, a horse for me, self sufficiency etc. But it's a pipe dream.

So at Christmas I found suitable livery yard (cheap, friendly, not over-clean-snooty and very close) and bought a small horse.
We've got a couple of reasonable sized neighbours' gardens on which we can grow our veg (plus we now have as much horse-muck as we could dream of). We live in the same house with a small mortgage. I still work full time (teacher).

Life is too short to say 'tomorrow' and 'when I...'.
We've just grabbed at chances to make the life we want with the limited resources we have.
I'm now about to sell my sportscar (old but runs well) for a 4x4 which will be more practical.
I'm happiest when at the yard, tending my horse, mucking out, planting veg in the garden, or baking homemade cakes and bread.
Even in the rain, the ice, wrapped up well in waterproofs wheeling a barrow is a great stress relief from the classroom.