Caz counts it down

JustAboutThere

Fantastic news about the scores on the doors!

cazmanian_minx

Some of it has now been reinvested into Mr Minx's birthday present - he has always, always wanted to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers live and they're in the UK this summer, so I've booked him a day ticket for the Reading Festival on the Saturday and flights to and from Gatwick from Inverness. He's still speechless They're actually playing T in the Park as well, but that's the Sunday and, ridiculously, is harder for him to get to despite being a few hundred miles closer.

castlelough

Congrats on such wonderful scores on the doors!
And well done on buying Mr. Minx a birthday gift to remember. I love when I see people on mfw striking a happy balance between keeping every penny a prisoner and enjoying life!

DebtFree2012

OMG those scores rock!!! Well done to you!

cazmanian_minx

How has nearly a week gone by???

Lots of good news:

• Roofer thinks he'll be able to start in about 3 weeks
• Work still incredibly busy
• Accepted for Lloyds 32 month 0% balance transfer card with £6k credit limit, so that's the Halifax card transferred away, freeing it up to do the cash transfer offer I currently have on it
• Total available cash available from money transfers plus savings is just under £32,000 and that's before I start accessing Mr Minx's transfer offers, so that's going to get a good chunk of house renovated
• We took the plasterboard off the kitchen wall down the road and uncovered an ENORMOUS fireplace
• Having failed to germinate a single tomato seed last year, 10 have now popped up in the past 24 hours from the same two packets

However, some of the cash may need to be diverted, as I may need to buy 20 sheep in a hurry :eek: Why the rush? Well, the farming payments system changed last year and everyone had to reclaim for them. As a new entrant to farming, I have 12 months to claim my Basic Payment and as the paperwork is completely baffling and a friend of a friend is a rural consultant who specialises in completing the paperwork for all these things for confused farmers on a freelance basis, I've asked her to walk me through it. It's all based on the number of hectares of land you farm and she's advised that I can claim for my share of the village common grazings, which I hadn't realised, but as it's the lowest class of rough grazing land, I can't get paid just for maintaining it, as I can with my fields, I have to actually be using it at a certain density, which works out at 4 cows or 23 sheep.



Technically I should have had them on 1st March to qualify, but she's going to make the case that if I only got the croft tenancies on 29th Feb it's a bit much to expect me to have a flock on site the following morning (especially since I didn't even know they'd been assigned to me until a week later!). If SGRPID accepts that argument, then I will have a short window of time to get my sheep head count up to 23, or maybe fewer if I'm allowed to count the pony as a livestock unit (Merlin might be pushing it, but Finn is going to be an agricultural pony and he's a native breed).



If SGRPID doesn't accept that argument, then I need to let out my grazings share for a year, because I can't not declare its existence, but because it's more than 50% of my land, if I'm not using it then they deem me not to be an active farmer and I don't get any basic payment at all. At the moment, my annual basic payment will be about £1,000 for the fields and about another £500 for the grazings, so assuming I pay around £2,000 for 20 sheep, it pays itself back in four years, and the ewes will also contribute by producing lambs to sell, so definitely worth doing, I think.

mfmaybe

Crikey it's complicated :eek: Is this crofting adding to the complexity?

Get some merino sheep and make super expensive running gear

eco_farmer

The basic payment scheme is an !!!! don't claim money just because its there! do your sums on making a profit on the sells from the sheep. like all livestock businesses its easy to loose money. spending £500 more than you get in is easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cazmanian_minx

I was planning to build the flock to 75 by buying 15-20 lambs a year anyway, so I'm just going to be accelerating the plan by a year by buying ewe hoggs now and then lambs in the summer

DebtFree2012

Great update Caz but I have to say rather you than me on understanding this lark. You sound well in control. Are we expecting scores today?

sugarcube84

It all sounds very complicated! I'm arranging a house move for one pony from the north west to Scotland that's complicated enough for me!