the daydream fund challenge thread

Davesnave

Alfie, you live in a very 'historic' area, so I guess you could dig up an exciting thing at any moment, but even if it's Victorian, that shield is quite a find! :beer:
So far, I've not done much research here, so all I know is that the barn conversions were once a holding farm on a drover's route and this property lay opposite a house called 'Black House,' or 'Black Cottage,' but physical evidence of its existence is non-existent. At the other end of the land is an old toll house, but again on the other side of the road.

Apart from rubbish, my only digging-up find so far is a little candlestick, about 5" high made of some not very corrosion- resistant metal.

rhiwfield

I'm always excited when I dig up something thats been lost for years, though no way could I match that shield. A long while ago I posted about a china egg, and have found rifle shells, loads of crockery, bits of clay pipe and randomly, part of an old sgraffito chamberpot made by Ewenny Pottery!

This house is fairly modern, but built on the site of a C19th cottage, so dont expect to find anything valuable.

Off to a wildlife group meeting this am, then its more compost to buy to sow/pot up plants this afternoon. Used the last to pot volunteer betony and still got a lot of volunteer curly parsley to !!!!! out, as well as collecting foxglove seedlings for next year. Its amazing how productive a medium sized garden can be, especially when you take advantage of the freebies Mother Nature sends along. Even got heathers in pots that we found growing in the blueberry containers!

Lotus-eater

Davesnave wrote: »

And on another level entirely....I have fruit on my fast-track tomatoes! :j

I have 2 open flowers on my Maskotka tomato's.

Almost everything is out in the plot now. The only thing I am holding back on, is the tomatillos, sweetcorn and squash. It's all in the lap of the gods now.
But the bad frost I had last week, should be the last bad one, any others should be weaker. I hope so anyway, otherwise it's curtains

It looks like I've lost all the apples, or the vast majority. The -5 frost killed them all off, I've never had that before. I think the early warm weather caused too much early growth. Bit disastrous tbh.

The old chicken area is now too full of fruit to be used for chooks, so I am resigned to keeping them in a moveable run if we get any more. But on the bright side, they will be easier to keep out of anywhere I don't want them to be. Which is pretty much everywhere :rotfl:

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield wrote: »

I'm always excited when I dig up something thats been lost for years, though no way could I match that shield. A long while ago I posted about a china egg, and have found rifle shells, loads of crockery, bits of clay pipe and randomly, part of an old sgraffito chamberpot made by Ewenny Pottery!

This house is fairly modern, but built on the site of a C19th cottage, so dont expect to find anything valuable.

Mine's on a very old area. It was used by Romans for iron work, we often dig up bits of slag.
But mostly we find 19th century stuff.
I think me and Dave compared found bottles once and I find bits of clay pipe and once a whole bowl, but sadly nothing bigger.

Last year I found a .303 1939 rifle casing, war issue, probably from the home guard. Amazing to think that the guy that used to live in my house, probably was in Dad's army back then, I know he was the gardener for the local manor.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

newsgroup_monkey wrote: »

I'm fairly new to this thread (I love threads like this, I'll do my best to try and keep up).... out of interest, CoolTrikerChick: What's the current status with your daydream challenge?

We had a local farmer decided to split his land up into small plots and sell them off. I think a few people thought they could buy the land and eventually get planning permission, but it's in the middle of nowhere in a very beautiful part of the country so it's unlikely.

Some of the plots were around 1/3 of an acre and sold for £3,500. It might seem steep, but this is in the South East with good access (although no water).

If we were going to stay here for the longer term, I think we would have certainly considered it.

Its getting harder and harder at the moment to get any surplus money to squirrel away in the fund:o, with the price of living rising... plus we have 2 teenage boys, which are just eating us out of house and home, and seem to have their paws out and want money all the time...

I allways said it is my dream, and i did not want my money saving to effect other members of the family...

With certain things happening extremely local to me, there is no way we will be able to sell our house at a profit, so it looks as though our only realistic option is to buy land......We did put an offer in on a bit of land with an old derilict cottage, but our offer was not the highest:o, I spoke to the agents last week, and it looks as though its all going ahead, in the hands of their solicitors now...

I allways try and find loopholes to make some extra money too:D

and at hte moment i am going to make FULL use of the m&s 15 month interest free on purchases, If you buy their stirling travellers cheques, these are also classed as purchase;) and there is only a 1% charge, so will plonk these into one of my lloyds advantage accounts, to make some interest for me, and them pay off in full by the end of the 15 months, should earn me a few quid...:T



We had a thunder and lightening last night.... hail stones, and huge blobs of rain....... its alot cooler today..

Davesnave.....Hope you had that nice cuppa, and put your feet up with a biscuit....



( just found this on photobucket, so who ever this photo belongs too, thanks, it sums up gardners everywhere:beer: I like their garden too))

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

Apart from rubbish, my only digging-up find so far is a little candlestick, about 5" high made of some not very corrosion- resistant metal.

about 100 camp coffee bottles. Two slightly more interesting chemist's bottles, a very rusty driving bit for a big horse...presumably from when the farm relied on horse power, in the very big hole out the front we found a complete set of horses shoes, an almost complete set of buckles from a horse rug and a bullet :eek:.

edit: oh and in one of the tril pits we dug at the weekend we found a complete pyrex plate. My guess is that that helps date the time that part of the house fell down, when was pyrex first available? 60s??

edit: oh and TODAY finally (its meant to have happened every week since new year) the digger is coing for the really big trial pits. If we have any good finds I'll tell you all! I'm very excited. Our hand holes will need more digging out, but we didn't want to dig them too deep and leave them open so my dad is coming to help me do that for the engineer. I bet its the first time the engineers labourers will have been one of his old bosses and a woman wearing a floral sundress an a cardi digging with a handtrowel and hoping her knickers don't show!

lostinrates

CTC, very timely. I think we should enter the village scarecrow thingy, but I'd have to make it/them this week for the weekend. we don't like the ''theme'' so dh thought we should give it a miss....its certainly not a particularly easy one. TBH, I didn't realise they were themed these scarecrow thingies, before now.

Davesnave

"Davesnave.....Hope you had that nice cuppa, and put your feet up with a biscuit..."

Well, sort of, but the bug I caught destroyed my sense of taste, so I'm not quite back to appreciating biscuits.:( Yesterday lunchtime I had smoked mackerel, and I almost knew what it was, so the effect has been pretty bad. DW has enjoyed being able to suggest anything she likes for lunch/dinner, since it makes no odds to me ATM!

It's funny though, tea is still tea. Whatever's in it still trancends the inability to taste it. In other words, I'm an addict! :rotfl:

I like that picture too CTC.

Lir, themed scarecrow events = posh location! Do they have themed jumble sales too?

Lotus-eater

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

( just found this on photobucket, so who ever this photo belongs too, thanks, it sums up gardners everywhere:beer: I like their garden too))

It looks like an allotment. I like what looks like the carrot beds on the left.

newsgroup_monkey

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Its getting harder and harder at the moment to get any surplus money to squirrel away in the fund:o, with the price of living rising... plus we have 2 teenage boys, which are just eating us out of house and home, and seem to have their paws out and want money all the time...

I allways said it is my dream, and i did not want my money saving to effect other members of the family...

With certain things happening extremely local to me, there is no way we will be able to sell our house at a profit, so it looks as though our only realistic option is to buy land......We did put an offer in on a bit of land with an old derilict cottage, but our offer was not the highest:o, I spoke to the agents last week, and it looks as though its all going ahead, in the hands of their solicitors now...

I allways try and find loopholes to make some extra money too:D

and at hte moment i am going to make FULL use of the m&s 15 month interest free on purchases, If you buy their stirling travellers cheques, these are also classed as purchase;) and there is only a 1% charge, so will plonk these into one of my lloyds advantage accounts, to make some interest for me, and them pay off in full by the end of the 15 months, should earn me a few quid...:T

I just wonder if other farmers are going to think about splitting up their land - this farmer apparently (after doing some investigation) has split his farm into about 120 plots then sold the house with an acre or so individually.

I think this way, land buying IS achievable. I'm in the same boat as you - my other half, if we had our way, would love to invest in a huge piece of land. Half set aside for a campsite (there's very few campsites near us and we're on top of Milton Keynes - Gullivers and so on and also Whipsnade and Woburn are within 10 miles) and the other side set aside as a Market Garden with any excess being sold on.
She's got a BSc mostly in environmental studies and an MSc in Land Management (Conservation and Ecoysystems) so she knows a thing or two about doing it on a large scale.

Unfortunately, we're in a slightly worse financial situation. My marriage went the way of the pear about 5 years ago and she sold her house to fund her studying as a mature student so we're basically broke. I have 2 kids (one of which is a teenager so I sympathise). We live in rented accomodation although we don't go without. We just need to get a financial plan together. Houses are cheap enough to buy right now round our way, but getting a deposit together is a nightmare!

I think realistically, our best move would either to buy a Holiday home and rent it out (We don't intend to stay where we live for much longer) or buy a piece of land. Either way, deposit is key.