Plans for 2007

It's fashionable to say "I don't do New Year resolutions", but I like them. I'm a great believer in turning over a new leaf, in re-inventing yourself, and in taking stock and taking action. In fact, I like resolutions so much I make them all the time, not just at New Year. That's what my monthly challenge polls are about - setting goals and targets and then holding myself to them.

So what changes will we be making in 2007? For one thing, we plan to do more with the allotment. We were only given a quarter of a plot, and half of that was very weedy, the other half having been under plastic sheeting for a season. So we cultivated the clean part, and laid the sheeting down over the weedy areas until spring. It was a smart way to begin, because the area was manageable. In fact we tried to cram rather too much in and some crops suffered from overcrowding. So now we can cultivate the whole of the plot we were given, but we have also been given another section of plot. Maybe this time we're overstretching ourselves, but we'll see.

Another goal for 2007 is to try our hand at beekeeping. I've looked up local courses, and the nearest one is fully booked up. I'm on a waiting list for 2008. But I'm looking further afield, and considering going on a weekend course somewhere. If all else fails perhaps I'll just dive straight in without any lessons. I'm good at learning stuff from books, willing to try things and see if they work, and sensible enough to join a local club for some expert advice if I come unstuck.

The main project for 2007 is to pay off our mortgage. We have calculated that if we were free of our mortgage and largely self-sufficient in food, Ed could afford to give up his full-time job. So we have spent the past couple of days making calculations about how much we can afford to tighten our belts and how quickly that will pay off the loans. Funnily enough this is the part that really makes me feel like we might actually one day buy some land. I'm confident that I can learn the knowledge and skills needed to make it work (perhaps foolhardily so), but what worries me is the ever rising cost of land and property. The financial aspect of buying a smallholding is the daunting bit, and it feels good to make steps towards that.

I'd also like to visit a smallholding or organic farm for some real hands-on experience and a taster of what it would be like to live like that permanently. To that end I have been investigating WWOOFs (voluntary working for brief periods on organic farms). You arrange with a farmer to come and do voluntary work for a weekend. I expect to work hard, but I also expect to learn a lot, not least whether this is really the life for me or should I just stick with my allotment and backyard chickens.

What are your plans for 2007?

Review of 2006

Earlier this year I realised that although I have spent most of my life studying and working in academia, when I daydream I don't dream about publishing papers, giving lectures or attending conferences. I dream about living on a farm, waking early to milk the cows and collect the eggs. I dream about owning a plot of land and raising some livestock and growing some crops. This has always been my daydream for years now, but I hardly talked about it or even consciously thought of it as something achievable.
Watching the TV series "It's Not Easy Being Green" stirred in me such feeling of envy and longing that I spoke to my husband, Ed about it. I told him this was what I really wanted to do, and I'd like to try to make it a reality.

I was on tenterhooks to see his response. If he had laughed at me and called me crazy, I would have perhaps planted a few vegetables in our garden and tried to satisfy myself with that. He didn't laugh at me. He didn't say much either, although that's Ed all over. But the next day he called me over to the computer and said "Look at this". He had been searching on the Internet for smallholdings for sale and had found some properties he liked the look of.

Since then we have tried to gain the knowledge and skills we need to make our dream a reality. We have got a small allotment and grown some crops there. We have built a chicken run in the garden and populated it with two hens. We started this blog which has been much more successful than we ever dreamed, and was recently featured in The Times. More importantly, the blog also helped us make contact with a lot of really helpful and friendly people who dream the same dream as us. Some of them have gone substantially further along the road to self-sufficiency that we have.

In 2006 I also taught students in prisons for the first time, which was very rewarding and educational for me. I developed my relationship with my dad as we spent a lot of time together emptying his house in Liverpool and selling it, which allowed him to settle permanently in Ireland. The kitchen and master bedroom got remodelled following the subsidence we suffered in 2005. Sam, our youngest, started full-time school, and his teacher shared with us her concerns that he has Asperger's Syndrome just like our eldest son (the same teacher was the first to spot the obvious that time, too). So we have begun the protracted diagnosis procedure again.

But it has been our change of direction that has dominated the year. We will look back on 2006 as the year we stared making our dream a reality. The first step was admitting what we dreamed about. What do you dream about?

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?