What a difference a year makes

It has now been one year since we moved on to the farm. The one thing I wanted to avoid was moving on Christmas eve and we were feeling distinctly un-festive this time last year. What with packing up our house and moving to the land it was all I could do to get presents for everyone let along spread any festive fun. A year on and we are still in the caravan and still waiting for a decision on our planning application so it does good to remember what we have achieved in the last 365 days:

• We have power, real, actual electricity. There are twinkling Christmas lights EVERYWHERE!
• We have removed all the stinking rotten silage from the yard
• We have made paths and started to give shape to the land. This one may not seem like a lot but this has even the single biggest thing that has occupied us in the last year 
• We have created a mud bath in the process
• We Had a baby!
• We got hot water (one week before baby was born)
• We have found caves and met the local cavers. They can be found on our land every Wednesday and Saturday. They like dynamite
• We have bats (common pipistrelle thankfully and not anything rarer). They will be living with us in our home when we finally get to convert it
• We have tidied up endless little corners
• We have registered as small holders ready to get our first sheep and chickens in the new year. We are still arguing about wallabies and emus
• We have put doors on the barns and locked them with old locks we have found in the yard
• We have removed the concrete floor from the long barn
• We have created an entertaining space in the milking Parlour
• I have finally made the curtains that I smugly bragged I would have time to make between finishing work and giving birth last spring!
• We have held the first of what we hope will become our annual Christmas yard party
• We overcame a rat infestation
• We got a cat
• We spent a week, in a caravan during a heatwave with a newborn baby, a kitten and all the doors and windows shut
• We have unearthed hundreds of tyres
• We have moved thousands tonnes of soil
• We have planted an orchard
• Removed the concrete walls of the silage clamp - which incidentally lies on top of the ruins of an old house which I will endeavour to find out more about in 2018
• We have finally chosen the tree for the tyre swing
• We have made some lovely new friends
• We have acquired and learnt how to use loads of exciting machinery
• We re-diverted the stream

But perhaps the most important thing is that we followed our dream. I know that I have said it before but on paper, moving into a caravan without power, water or heating, in the winter, 5 months pregnant, with a toddler, to convert a barn that seemed to get no daylight, in a yard at the bottom of a hill where the fog settles for most of the year, without planning permission in place, with a listed barn and no idea what we were doing, sounds like the worst thing we could have done. In reality it is the best thing we have ever done and I would urge anyone to move heaven and earth to make your dreams a reality.

On that note it only leaves me to wish you all a very happy and fun-filled Christmas and to share some pictures of the progress we have made in the last year:

The Cattle Shed before

The Cattle shed after

Tidying up windows

Tidying up corners

Ready for planting bulbs

Re-building walls

Quarry path when we had just gained access...

...and quarry path now

Back of our home before we fully dug it out

Dug-out and re-built wall of what will be our dining room

Silage clamp walls before

and mid excavation!

Flood proofing the stream with the dumper...

...and flood proofing the stream with the tractor!

Thanksgiving the Rock Farm way

Sometimes it's hard to see progress. Particularly if you're living through a process. We don't see the rate at which our children grow until someone shrieks "look how tall he is now" across a room. Growing out a hairstyle or growing a baby takes 400 times longer when you live it because you don't see the daily, incremental nudges that stack up to make a whole lot of change or an entire human in miniature form.

This is how it is with the Farm. For a year now we have been digging, shaping, rebuilding and tidying but sometimes it doesn't feel like we've actually achieved all that much. All that changed for me this week when, after being totally inspired by what the clever folk at Castle Farm Cafe have done with a big metal barn, we hosted a Thanksgiving meal for 17 friends in the former milking parlour.

Since we moved here nearly one year ago, there are only really two things that I have missed: a bath (oh to wallow daily in hot water with wine and magazines!) and a space to entertain in! In our old house our 8 seater table would often stretch to 12 or 14 with kids perched on stools at the corners of the table and an assortment of untidy chairs formerly banished to the garage, hosed down and scrambled in last minute to seat extra guests.

A group of friends old and new came to celebrate a great year with us in a building that was, when we moved here, full of milking equipment and rusting metal. Looking at the picture of how it was then and what we scrabbled together last weekend I have truly realised how much we have achieved. It is now nearly a year since we moved here and there are no end of corners that have been tidied and made good...more on that in December. With an oven that came out of my brother in laws kitchen, a Fire hood from my mother in laws new house, some German beer festival tables and a rope light or two we transformed the metal milking parlour from this:

Before

to this:

On the strength of this meal we have been granted permission to host Christmas in The Milking Parlour so watch this space for mark two complete with Christmas tree and decorations galore as well as Barefoot in the Milking Parlour supper clubs in the Spring!

We've got the power!

As I write this I am sitting in the caravan with the television on at a normal volume, not overly loud to be audible over the hum of the generator. Tomorrow morning I will be able to walk from my bed into my bathroom and have a hot shower, with the light on,          without first having to put my wellies on and go outside to turn the generator on. Be gone days of not being able to buy a whole week's worth of fresh produce for fear that  unrefrigerated, the food will go off before it can be eaten. Adios taking our washing to the grannies on rotation. Hello batch cooking and a freezer full of meals prepped on motivated days ready for the unmotivated ones. Welcome to the ability to use the washing machine and the tumble dryer AT THE SAME TIME. Bonjour being able to hoover and dry my hair at the same time. Ok that last one's a little unlikely but it is possible because, yes, that's right; after owning our dream for 419 days, living here for 332 days and a mere 44 days after the power pole actually went up, we finally have POWER! Real mains electricity is now coursing through the wires from here: 

         

to here:

Old pic but you get the gist!

It wasn't all plain sailing avid readers and casual observers of this madness we call Dream Farm! No. There was our lovely contact at Western Power Distribution who insisted on turning up to every site visit in his brogues and seemed to take every Friday as holiday as well as finishing work just after lunch on most days. There were the guys who turned the pole installation into a whole days worth of 'work' like this:

Vaping the day away

(They also took my help yourself to a biscuit very literally and ate a whole packet of digestives!).

Then there was Scottish Power who we contacted to try and get a meter. They took vagueness and the customer service for which the Big Six energy companies are famed to a dizzying new high with the explanation that "someone will probably be in touch with you to arrange a date in about two weeks". That was 44 days ago. We are still waiting for them to get back in touch with us. 

And lets not forget the meter installation that was delayed by 10 days because the man was neither trained nor insured to go higher than four rungs on his ladder and this was, and I quote, "a five or six rung job". Or the second man they sent out whose ladder was not long enough to reach the meter. 

But frankly I don't care about any of that any more. It's been well and truly chalked up to experience and will no doubt become exaggerated as we tell and retell the story of how we built our dream home, drunkenly regaling anyone who will listen with the ups and downs and the "darling do you remember when those idiots turned up and couldn't even climb up a ladder!!"'s, because, in the words of 1990's number 1 chart topping pop mega stars Snap, I'VE GOT THE POWER.

I have a dream...One year in Somerset

As summer slides into autumn and the new season gilds the trees with orange it has, somehow, been one year since we thought we didn't stand a chance of getting our Dream Farm. How wrong we were and how many other things we have been wrong about in the last twelve months.

This time last year we were feeling pretty lacklustre about the whole sorry affair...the auction was due to start at 7pm on 27 September 2016 and the farm was Lot 1. We didn't hold out much hope in the face of the countless people we had heard about who were also interested and who had also raised money well in excess of the teeny tiny whip everyone up into a frenzy guide price. We were so convinced that we didn't stand a chance, despite the begging and borrowing, that I opted to stay at home whilst Big G went to play our hand and congratulate the lucky new owners with a grace usually reserved for actors losing out on a Best Actor award at the Oscars. And so it transpired that as I lay in the bath flicking through fashion magazines, torturing myself with images of skinny models whilst my body geared up for baby number two, Big G was in a bidding war with a consortium of festival folk; a war that ultimately we won, much to our shock and delight, on our very last bid.

So, here we are, one year on and about a million things have happened both to us as a family and to the farm. I cannot possibly remember them all and would bore you all to death if I could, so here is a somewhat odd and totally incomplete list of things that have occurred down on the farm:

• We had a baby.
• We survived a rat infestation.
• We made it to ten years together which given the previous point is a not inconsiderable miracle. There is still some debate over whose fault the open packet of lasagne sheets in the barn actually was. Needless to say it was not me.
• We got a cat and simultaneously eradicated our rat problem (we hope), although I would not recommend getting a kitten and a newborn at the same time unless you are ambivalent to the future of your nipples ladies.
• We had a friendly squatter who ended up care taking the land for us after we had roof tiles stolen an before we were able to move on site.
• We have learnt and continue to learn lots about the planning process, primarily that it is most akin to dating (if I remember dating accurately) complete with mysterious etiquette, politics, goodies and baddies and obscure rules that only become apparent after you have bulldozed your way through them with good intentions.
• Big G has mastered the art of the digger.
• Big G has dug a lot of paths. 
• Big G dug more paths.
• We dug a bore hole to supply our water.
• We have learnt what the tritylodont Oligokyphus is as our quarry walls have some fragments of fossilised tritylodonts.
• In the spring we learnt that grasses bloom and that our field is transformed into a riot of colour and texture when they do.
• We now know that the north facing barn that we though would be bathed in shade during the summer months is anything but and that what will one day be our garden is in fact bathed in sunlight from dawn until dusk during the few months that we might actually be able to sit outside.
• Our little corner of Somerset is besieged by fog for much of the autumn and winter. When it is not foggy, it is calm and has the clearest blue skies that we could have hoped for. When it is foggy we cannot see any of the barns from our caravan. We love both.
• We have discovered that Ash wood burns well unseasoned, which is lucky as we have also sadly learnt that ash dieback is closing in on us and that, by all accounts, resistance is futile.
• We rejoiced at the realisation that we live 3.5 miles form the site of Glastonbury Festival.
• We have learnt about bats and have three of them living in the barn-that-will-be-home.
• We have learnt that you need to provide special homes for bats when you want to disturb their peace by turning their home into your home.
• We have uncovered caves that mankind has never seen before and rediscovered caves that have not been seen for 50 years.
• We have had a glimpse of the murky and totally mystifying world of the mendip cavers (for cavers read a bonkers few who opt to spend their weekends and evenings in the cold and the dark, wading through water and squeezing through crevices). 
• I realised that I really quite miss my bath.
• We have registered as smallholders and are soon to be the proud owners of sheep and chickens.
• We have had and dismissed 4000** business ideas.
• We have found a wall to a grand house that used to stand on our land over 400 years ago and which had concrete poured on it about 50 years ago. I have yet to find out more about it but from what we have heard anecdotally it belonged to William Strode and was demolished because of his opposition to Kings Charles I and II.
• We have met some wonderful new people many of whom had their first spliff/drink/snog in our quarry.
• On a near daily basis one of us will discover a new view of Glastonbury Tor and will wax lyrical to the other about it despite our land being pretty much the only land in this part of Somerset that does not actually have a view of the Tor...watch this space for Tor-viewing-treehouse-construction news.
• We have totally fallen in love with both the idea and the reality of living in Somerset.

Yes it's a cliche and yes it sounds trite but we continue to be uplifted and inspired by this land every day.

Here is just a small selection of photos of some of my favourite spots of Dream Farm:

Stream

Lotte patiently waiting for sticks

Quarry Path

Much unused fire pit

Quarry wall

Making the most of the early autumn sun

So much of the land is criss-crossed with animal tracks

My favourite spot which next year I WILL spend more time in

In the shadow of giants

Fern-tastic

Re-instated path 

The Quarry edge

Long autumn shadows

The perfect spot for a little meditation

*ish

** not so much of an exageration

Enjoying The Journey...Honest

Since I last posted we have mainly been on holiday (get us), taking some much needed time out to travel across Europe for a friend's Birthday in Sweden. The trip was amazing, taking us through Northern France (full of Brits), Belgium (they drive pretty fast), The Netherlands (Utrecht is a treasure), Germany (watching the harvest happen around us), Denmark (Copenhagen was windy but lovely) and Sweden (paradise on earth) and importantly was as much about the journey there and back as it was about the four days on Gotland (please don't ever go, you will only spoil its empty perfection) with dear friends.

I now realise that we should be looking at Project Farm in much the same way. As our planning application rumbles on, it has become clear that because we are learning in a vertical where the hell did the ground go kind of way, it is inevitably going to be more complicated, stressful and lengthy than we had at first thought. We do not have endless pots of money to pay a planning consultant to negotiate their way through the murky council speak and endless 'further requirements' so we are learning how it all works as we go. Sometimes this feels empowering and positive, as if we really could do it all ourselves. At other times (most of the time) it all feels a little bit overwhelming and I get Paula Abdul stuck taking an eternity to walk down some steps with a MC Skat Kat as an ear worm ("I take two steps forwards I take two steps back" - you're welcome). Like our mammoth 2500 mile holiday if the only prize we recognise is the end goal then all the time in between, all the delays and set backs, will only frustrate us. It is all PART of the dream, not, as it can be tempting to feel, a set of increasingly obscure obstacles put in our way to delay us fulfilling our dream.

Of course this is so easy to write from a cafe with power and wifi and heating and all the other things that we are still in the process of getting. In practice it is like our own bespoke brand of mindfullness. We are learning to see beauty in all the chaos. When it fells like the council will not let us have windows for fear of damaging the integrity of the building, the balance is redressed by a call to the NFU (my own personal heroes) who send us endless information to arm ourselves with. We wake with the mantra of "we will soon have power, we will soon have power" and we go to sleep muttering "Its ok, tomorrow is another day, its ok, tomorrow is another day". As it happens we will have power by the winter if all goes according to plan. Which of course it may not. That's fine too. It's all part  of the journey and we ARE loving it. Honest.

Behind every concrete wall is an old wall of dreams. This particular wall is from the old house that used to sit on our site. More on that another time.

Put your back into it Daddy

Beauty in the chaos

Planning application update

First of all congratulations and thank you to all of you who were baited by this most boring of post titles! I really have surpassed myself with this one.

This is just a very quick (and to be honest not particularly interesting) update on what I am quickly learning is an unapologetically slow process. We now have a validated planning application. We thought we had when I wrote my last post but it seemed there was still a map which was to the wrong scale, although how it has taken three months to realise this is anyone's guess. As a result our planning notice is now displayed for all to see on our gate:

This may not sound like much but it really does mean that we know when a planning decision will be made (it's the 30th September if you are interested but don't feel bad if this little foray into planning bureaucracy makes you want to rip your teeth out; I feel your pain). So in little under 8 weeks we should know if we can turn
this:

Barn

into this:

Initial Drawings

Now we have to wait and see what comments are made on the application and keep everything crossed that we don't come up against too much negativity.

Meanwhile we are clearing the yard of rubble and making some paths in the quarry to give what is essentially a glade some shape and structure. Last weekend we had our first camp on the land which has given us lots of ideas for how to shape the space and where to focus our energies whilst we wait for our planning decision.

Anyone wishing to comment on our application can do so at mendip.gov.uk

6 Months In: 6 Things We Have Learnt

As we hold our breath and keep everything crossed for a positive response to our planning application, the result of which is due any week now, I realised that it has been six months since we moved into a caravan in a former farm yard in deepest somerset. Whilst we are still very much at the start of Project Farm we have learnt loads in the last six months. I can now start a generator every time and my fire-lighting skills have come on leaps and bounds whilst Big G has learnt that it is impossible to build a farm single handedly with two children in tow as well as the not entirely unrelated skill of getting out into the yard and onto the digger before the digger obsessed toddler awakes. This does of course mean that someone else has to deal with the ensuing tantrums but it is amazing what an IKEA breakfast can do to soothe the mind of a distraught three year old.

Here are the six slightly more useful thing that we have learnt so far. These are the first things I would tell anyone about to take on a project like ours:

1.Assume you have a rat problem, before you even move in 

I realise that this is not a great start but I am being deadly serious. Our barns had been uninhabited for at least twenty years so all the flora and fauna had free reign to grow and do and they pleased. Enter us, with our rubbish and our food waste, add some springtime ratty breeding and BINGO we were infested. When I say infested I really mean it...after catching two of the little darlings in my car we realised that thanks to some half eaten strawberries (toddler) and an open window (me) we had had rats TRAPPED IN MY CAR for two weeks. TWO WEEKS*! I practically refused to drive my car for weeks afterwards and Big G had to reconcile himself to the idea of killing other animals. For a life-long vegetarian this was a stretch until talking to some friends who live in a beautiful Comer down in Devon. They had a similar problem but eventually realised that it doesn't matter how many animal rights protests you have been on, we are animals too and we have rights that the rats don't give two hoots about!

The other mistake we made was not to unpack all of our kitchen boxes when we first moved - in one crate in the barn was one opened packed of lasagne sheets...which they rats absolutely destroyed, along with some nearby clothing. It is certainly a good lesson in letting go of your belongings but it would have been cheaper and more hygienic to make sure there was no food for them to feed on in the first place. Lesson well and truly learnt.

A trap, some poison, a full car valet and the fastidious removal of all possible food later and we seem to have sorted the problem (crosses everything and tries really hard to forget that this ever happened).

2.Don't pay a planning consultant until you have joined the NFU 

It turns out that even in rural Somerset, where there is little doubt that your planning application relates to redundant farm buildings, the advice given by a local planning consultant may not include useful things like, 'a lot of what you want to do is probably permitted development so will entail far less paper work and far far less in planning application fees to the council.'

JOIN THE NFU ON DAY ONE! It cost us less that £100 for the land that we have and in 30 minutes on their website we learnt more about what we are permitted and not permitted to do without planning consent even being needed than in the three months of 'consultation' with our 'advisor'. As a sub point the planning department are also not willing or able to give advice which might save you (denude them of) funds. It got to the point where the council wanted five planning fees to convert one shed into five units...which it now appears probably falls under permitted development for that type of farm building we are talking about. We should get an answer on this in the next few weeks also but so far it is looking good. 

The other advantage to joining the NFU is that they have tonnes of advice on hand for all sorts of things including feed in energy tariffs. This is useful if, like us, you want to generate as much clean energy as possible.

3.Get the more terrier-like/less busy one of you to be in charge of chasing people for reports 

Because it turns out that everything takes for ever. You know that bit of buying a house when your waiting for a piece of paper to go from one solicitors desk to another's? You know, the bit that seems to take weeks and makes you want to the solicitors yourself and delivering said document in person? Well engineers, consultants and councils all seem to work at that pace all the time! Get on the phone and badger these people politely rather than assuming, like we did, that things just have to take a long time. 

4.Move in in the winter - it will make the summer seem that much more magical when it arrives

I cannot over emphasise how wonderful it is to watch the land awake and grow after the winter. 

Summer flowers

Common Vetch gone mad

5.The word 'Need' takes on an entirely different meaning when it comes to boys and their toys! 

That is slightly unfair - Big G's speciality is buying and selling vehicles so when he says that he can buy a digger and sell it for a profit once we are done with it I am inclined to believe him. However when he decided to buy a second dumper truck because "we need a bigger one to move that pile of rocks over there faster" I did raise and eyebrow. On the plus side the machinery obsessed boys in this household are in seventh heaven with a digger, tipper, tractor and two dumpers to play, sorry work, with.

6.DO IT! You are more resilient and it will be more brilliant than you think!

I was honestly unsure of how I would cope with life in our caravan and Big G was certainly a little nervous when I pushed for us to be in before Christmas when there was no hope of water let along hot water at that stage. However, we get to wake up every morning and listen to the birds, to walk out and drink our morning coffee in a farmyard and picnic in a beautiful glade where once there was a quarry, all without leaving home which is quite frankly, perfect.

* I would like to officially apologise for my over use of capitals and exclamation marks in this post but, I mean, RATS!!