Daydream fund challenge part 4

DaftyDuck

I don’t tend to wander into the long threads much, as I tend to lose track by not posting regularly, or forget to respond to a reply, but I thought I’d better pop in here, as I'm bound to want some advice at some point.

We moved into our “hobby” farm just over two months ago and it’s been… exciting, to say the least. What with the floods (fields only, so far), the storm bringing down several trees across the road (a £3,000 clear-up bill, including much preventative treatment, and a heap of logs that's garage-sized), my health taking a slight turn for the worse (I only go a bit unconscious now and then, so nothing serious… ), and pretty much every carefully-laid plan coming unravelled, it’s been quite a ride. Fun though. Mostly.

The house and land are all in a bit of a state. It was run as a sort-of stud farm up until the early 2000’s, when the owner died. Left empty or occasionally rented for the next 7 years, it was then bought by a bloke who liked motorbikes and guns, and believed in burying everything metal once they were past their best. Burning them first, of course! I now have a mountain of excavated scrap, nearly as big as the log pile, to get rid of. He even filled the ditches in, as they got in the way of his wheels… hence the floods. That, and the river going up by nearly 3 feet, that couldn't have helped. Bit scary in the first two weeks to watch the flood approaching. It did stop in time, before the cellar was flooded. He had a digger to fill them in… I have a spade to dig them out… Unfair! I did hire a monster digger for a week! My back wants it back again.

Plan was to spend the first year getting the land in order, then to start getting beasties. Good plan! Unfortunately, we met a mad lady who does animal rescue (they are always insane; lovely, just nutty…), and we also inherited a horse from the previous owners, who were intent on beating it into a lorry to take it… Sticks and broom-handles. So, so far we've ended up with an inherited thoroughbred and a nervous rescue thoroughbred, two more very, very hairy horses of dubious pedigree, and two tiny ponies to come in by the weekend. Oh, and some rescued chickens. And four turkeys arrived yesterday – they escaped from somewhere just before Christmas, and needed an [STRIKE]oven [/STRIKE]home. Then there are the three donkeys. We actually wanted them, but they will have to work for their keep. As if! They are as stubborn as ... mules.

I do so like a good plan… no beasts until spring 2017… huh! :T

Anyway, I’m pretty much knackered at the moment from ditch-digging, hedge-planting, tree-planting and trimming, electric fencing, being hauled around by stubborn beasts, chased by an angry turkey, and hiding from a mad lady who will, no doubt, have another deserving case to offload on us. I fear she has goats, and she knows I want goats. She wheedled that out of me before admitting there were goats needing homes. She is evil . That’s just outside excitement.

Inside, the roof leaks (it will be done proper-like, but it’s ladders and botch jobs for now), the heating leaks (I'm taking radiators out as they fail along rusted seams) or fails to come on, the electrics are … odd (two separate supplies of three-phase, although, with nice shiny new consumer units now in place, I can get cracking with that), and the windows rattle in the gales. Or rotten chunks just fall out for the heck of it. Then, when I least expect it, I… keel over for a while. So far, not whilst up a ladder!

Project for the next month is to get some motive power, a tractor of sorts since the donkeys are useless Irish fëccers, change one of our prissy clean cars to something that can cope better with the animal feed and mud, then start doing all the jobs we should have done before getting beasties. Oh, and try to get well enough to not lose consciousness, that'd be a bonus!

All this was all meant to be a slow, quiet ten-year run-in before retirement... :rotfl:

But then, on the upside, I have otters in my river, barn owls on my gate posts, marsh harriers in the reeds by the river, doing their aerobatics over the woods, (and a mad woman throwing animals in my direction every time I see her; think Simpson's Cat Lady, but with horses and poultry). There are willows running along the river, and woods to hide from said batty woman, and the views over the fields are just stunning, even in winter.

I will need a sanity check in a few weeks time...

I'll try and sort out a couple of photos and upload them.

alfie_1

hiya dafty.... oh how I laughed [maybe inapropriatly] at your adventures... please keep us in the loop....before you go loopy

DaftyDuck

alfie_1 wrote: »

hiya dafty.... oh how I laughed [maybe inapropriatly] at your adventures... please keep us in the loop....before you go loopy

Go? Go????

I was throw-away-the-key before all this sorted.

I should point out my adventures started on Day 1 Hour 1, when the removals lorry decided to investigate the flower bed, and fell over... took 11 hours, 3 trucks, and £2,000 (not my money) to sort that out... before they had to fix the drain and soakaway it had fallen into... and the lawn they'd chewed up when the rescue lorry had to come through the garden, and catch the removal lorry by surprise to winkle it out... That close-up lorry has just come through the back garden to get there...

Ooh look, three lorries with lights... do you think the neighbours will notice we moved in? :rotfl:

Edit: I stand corrected. I'm reliably informed the final bill to the removal firm was in excess of £3,500... slightly more than I paid them... by 8X

Edit Edit: the neighbours were fine... It was Christmas, we claimed we'd just brought the lights ourselves, and they were so, so, so glad to see the rear of the people who'd moved out!

DaftyDuck

(Photos... work in progress... some need resizing...)


View from back garden. I think I'd forgotten the sheepses... easily done! {The large back garden has a total of four (4) plants in it.... along with the 2,400 I brought in pots from the last place.... That was 3 vanloads! Pots. Potty... Insane! }


Back over fields to house

Unwanted horses... free to a [STRIKE]mug [/STRIKE]good home

Please God, don't let the mad woman know there's an empty field...


... or this might arrive unbidden... then I'll have to learn to knit. So butch!

I hear another neighbour has bees to dispose of.... How can I say "no"? Oh, maybe claim I'm allergic? Anyone good at disguise? Or witness protection schemes? Any way to hide from these 'orrid pesky people?

A couple of the above pictures are from while we were buying, hence the good weather & foliage. It was snowing this morning...

Maybe a quick getaway on my "speedy" friends....

A morning hug from a donkey, and you don't have a care in the World :D:D They were called Joseph, Mary and... Joshua! (Someone whimped out there...) Joshua is to be renamed Beelzebub, given the chaos they cause. Donkeys chase turkeys... I never knew that!

Davesnave

alfie_1 wrote: »

please keep us in the loop....before you go loopy

Too late, methinks, but those of us used to Dafty's advice on MSE know there's usually large nuggets of truth (or perhaps horse nuts) in there somewhere.... even the odd cluster of wisdom too....like "don't talk to batty women with soft spots for animals...." Oh, hang on.....:o:o:o

I've been meaning to send a personal message to Dafty for at least 6 weeks now, but things just keep getting in the way of sitting down at the 'puter for more than 10 minute bursts....and that damned Panto takes up valuable evening consciousness....but not tonight!

No, instead, we went to Barnstaple this afternoon to visit the friend in hospital, and also so I could pick up my light sabre from Argos.....:cool: Remember, this year I'm the baddie and my character's name and behaviour is pretty close to that of a certain Mr Vader.....

Well I got the sabre, although I had to plead with the girl for a red one, but I also picked up a bit of rebel shrapnel in the nearside front tyre whilst cruising through the Trading Estate Nebula....so the rest of my afternoon was rolling in the road, changing my wheel with tools that looked like they came from My Little Pony's horse box.

It didn't help that I'd crash-landed in front of a used car show area, where the resident shiny suit had coned-off the road, illegally I think, as there were no dropped kerbs. Suit looked at me and I stared back, but that's as far as it went. The Force was definitely not in him....nor was the offer of a proper jack.

Anyway, the strange 'thing' that came with the car held it up in a way that would have passed for mildly puzzling on a Paul Daniels special, so all was well in the end. Needless to say the tyre that's now on the car is a 2001 original, from the days when Michelin made decent ones.

"Open the e bay doors Hal....."

"I'm sorry I cant do that, Dave, it's that s0dding communications mast on the far side of the car park again." :rotfl:

Edit: Sainsburys car park hell for those like me with some glitch caused by the transmitter nearby....have to get out of range or I can't lock/unlock doors.

alfie_1

fab pics daffy.... sorry but daffy is easier than dafty....
whereabouts in the country are you ? [county]

Davesnave

Dafty's out East....or as they say around here, "In that strange, uncharted land, way beyond Witheridge...." :eek:

DaftyDuck

I am, indeed, out East. Norfolk, which is apparently the driest county in the UK.... Wouldn't believe it this year....

RAS

Dafty

Reading your tale left me exhausted. At the moment keeping tabs on the bees is hard enough. I am not (NOT) getting any more livestock for a while, not even quail, until I have moved and settled in.

I will be hiding from your batty woman and anyone else with furry or feathered things.

choille

Dafty - Welcome to the mad world of Day Dreamers - sounds like you have all the right credentials being a bit......of a dreamer.

Hope that you don't over do the digging & your back. It's all slog is this land lark.

Rained most of the day & been quite grey, so I've not done much as I shut down when the light levels are low - well that's the excuse.

Have to get some bases in out side for new boiler........it all seems so piece meal & far off. I don't have a room that is finished or ordered or warm. Upstairs is still without floor or owt really but clutter.

Moved the troughs today & the place is just a bog. I don't think I've ever seen such a load of dead worms - think they must have drowned?