A Very, Very, Very, Very Fine House

Not the ramshackle barn in the picture. That's not our house but it's part of the view from our bedroom window. It is rather charming to look at, and I suspect a barn owl lives in it. I never draw my bedroom curtains because of the view.

I love our house. We moved just over four years ago and I still think every day how lucky we are to live here. It's a small house with a small garden and it's relatively new with none of the period features our old Edwardian townhouse in Liverpool used to have. But it is surrounded by farmland. I can look out of my kitchen window and see a tractor, or cows, or (as today) sheep. It's like being on holiday all the time. There is also a lot of wildlife in the garden and the field nearby, including an amazing range of birds as well as frogs, toads, newts, fieldmice and voles, foxes, rats and grey squirrels. I feel like I'm living in The Wind In The Willows.

One version of our dream is that we buy some of the land we can see from the house, and use it to raise vegetables, fruit and livestock. What's stopping us? We've never done anything like that before, and don't know how to go about it. I understand that farmland doesn't sell in estate agents, for the most part. It sells by private agreement. But how do you actually approach a farmer to negotiate buying some land? What would be a reasonable amount to offer? What about access? How does the conversation go?