the daydream fund challenge thread

Davesnave

I'll be sending an email later, but meanwhile I can only endorse what lir says and agree that you're right; a smallholding can be a bit of a money pit. While people may do well with them as investments, they have to be sold before that money is freed-up.....which kinda defeats the object!

But.....I've always said that mini-holdings under the magic acre are the way to go for the majority, and here rhiwfield constantly proves that a decent garden, properly managed, is capable of being money saving and very productive too.

rhiwfield

Pear trees planted in March 2010 and espaliered are coming along fine

As are these winter squash I photo'd before on the two main compost heaps...I swear those tendrils start twitching if I get too close........ now where did I buy those seeds?

Davesnave

rhiwfield wrote: »

:rotfl:They are seriously impressive. Methinks you must have more shelter than we have here.

Ours I've planted around the edges of the year's chicken muck-out pile, which happens to be in our most sheltered spot, but like lir, we have under-surface issues there, so not sure how they will fare.

Anyway, they are nothing like yours!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

I think with me i would like to have a few pigs and sheep, but getting my head out of the clouds:rotfl: you are right a good sized garden well planned can yeild quite a bit..

This is what we were going to do with the M.I.L's garden that we had cleared 2 years back ( pics at begining of thread) she didnt mind us paying and getting it all cleared, and the old trees cut down etc, and saying we could do anything we liked with it, but once we had paid and had it all cleared, it was a diff story then.... saying we couldnt do this, and you have damaged my pots:eek: they were hidden by the brambles, and hadnt seen daylight for years.... so we left it.... that would have been fantastic for us to learn to manage a big space etc....

One part of me wants to go and clear it again to see waht we could do, but another part of me is thinking she will be exactly the same so leave it...

Anyway..... Iam trying to run and catch up with the garden..... havent sowed any peas this year:cool:, but i was just reading the pack, and it says i can sow them in June.....do you think its a bit late, or just go for it, and see what happnes? or flip what the heck...lol... once i finish my cuppa i am going in for hte kill, and sow them:rotfl:

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Been thinking about what Davesnave said about our Rhiwfield's garden etc..

It got me thinking...... Rhiwfield was just wondering..If you had yuor time again ( sorry i know that sounds bad...lol...) what would, or would you change anything regarding your downshifting? would you have done it earlier? or done things differently in the begining etc..?

and the same question of all on the thread, in hinsight would you change anything?

rhiwfield

CTC, it's easy to go down the "what if only" route. Sure things could have been done differently, or better, but the key thing for me was to stop being an employee and to live life as I wanted.

Davesnave's magic acre would probably be too much for me with my back problems, but my medium size garden produces a fair bit of what we eat and I like Seymour's approach that we are jacks of all trades.

There's lots of talk about work/life balance, I'm just glad that I was able to stop paid employment to enjoy life and do what I wanted, even though it meant giving up a big pay packet. Not having enough money to live on is soul destroying, but knowing when you have enough and dont need more is life enhancing

lostinrates

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

Been thinking about what Davesnave said about our Rhiwfield's garden etc..

It got me thinking...... Rhiwfield was just wondering..If you had yuor time again ( sorry i know that sounds bad...lol...) what would, or would you change anything regarding your downshifting? would you have done it earlier? or done things differently in the begining etc..?

and the same question of all on the thread, in hinsight would you change anything?

A life without mistakes? N'ah. Who could live with someone so pompous, so self righteous. Not me!

Not that I'd make the same errors again mind. Of course, I'm still making them :D I do envy davesnave and rhiwfield their great experience ..but I also know they got that knowledge by doing. I'm not sure, for example, we've even identified what we've got wrong and right yet.

One day, I'd still like to build, I would, the perfect lir-gin palace. BUT despite myself and some things that make this place not perfect I am falling in love with it.

There is never enough money/hours in the weekend to do it all, that's all. Picking your ''fights''. The bees probably weren't a priority, and hives, even old ones buy the time you've done repairs and bought panels and wax etc aren't cheap...but they make dh happy. so was it a mistake? I dunno

Davesnave

Terribly difficult question, CTC!

Hindsight's always 20/20. If we had our time again, I think we'd have given this place a miss and gone for something easier , but before that......
....it would have been difficult to beat the compromise we achieved, managing our responsibilities towards our kids and an aged parent, while also doing stuff that meant something to us. Like rhiwfield, I wanted to get off The Man's treadmill, but going part-time was the best I could do. Helping to run our business enabled me to stay sane in a situation where the environment of paid work had become unsatisfactory.

Lots of people find themselves in the same situation; I know someone here who runs a little business and does voluntary work, which probably compensates for the hassles I know they suffer in the day job.

You run your own business, so although that brings a different set of worries, if you can make it pay enough, even if it doesn't pay a lot, that's a bonus.

Looking at the position we're in now, I'd say the most important thing is to decide what you really want and focus on that. We thought we could run a small plant nursery and rescue a smallholding and re-model the house....oh, and sort out and sell a garden 100 miles away! Now, we realise we were over-ambitious, especially at our time of life, but it could have been worse. We might have had our own flock of sheep and half a dozen pigs as well! There are only 12 working hours in a day, and when you're older, or it's winter, maybe much less than that.

About the 'magic acre' I referred to, that wasn't an oblique reference to Seymour, but more about the way property prices go whenever the land with them looks do-able for horses or other 4 legged critters. For that reason, I've always held that if people are only into veggies, chickens and/or flowers, they can probably manage better financially on something smaller. As we've found, it's important to remember that the time & effort in growing/rearing is only half the picture; there's time & effort involved in processing & preserving too. We really wouldn't have 50 different apple trees if we hadn't inherited them! That's 40 trees to prune that we don't need. What could we be doing instead when pruning time comes around?

And so on....Oh dear, it's raining hard. That won't please Pete, who was here yesterday turning the hay, and due again today. Now there's one thing I don't really have to worry about....much!:o

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

And so on....Oh dear, it's raining hard. That won't please Pete, who was here yesterday turning the hay, and due again today. Now there's one thing I don't really have to worry about....much!:o

weather worries with livestock are something extra to contend with. To a degree plants can be protected. I had forgotten this weather watching, worrying ahead. Its a slow constant....e.g. its warm, the recent rain here was blessed (grass here cut and gone) but the virginia creeper on the house is going red and always in my mind I'm thinking '' is this an early, long winter?'' or ''will we have enough grass for winter''. The weather that answers your prayers never allieviates the concern...because there is always the ''what's next''. An early winter and a late spring can cost you a lot of money with feed.

Davesnave

We have a few worries with our new livestock, but not weather-related. Two of the Australorps have colds/respiratory probs. We are treating them with garlic in mashed potato and Tylan (organic & antibiotic remedies in tandem!:rotfl:) and attempting to avoid that expensive visit to the nice (expensive) vet lady.

We've informed the seller, but even if we were to return the birds, it would cost an arm & a leg in fuel, so not keen on that route either.:(