More than we bargained for...

It's not often we get a genuinely warm and sunny bank holiday here in good old Blighty, so when we do we have to be good at making the most of it. The lovely weather meant that we were able to enjoy the 'floating market' that arrived on our part of the canal and the treats that the vendors there had to offer - namely the seriously delicious home-made cake from the 'Molly' boat.

It felt like spring was in full flourish and the promise of summer was hanging in the air. All of the waterfowl were showing off this year's offspring and watching them go about their daily business was a real joy - even the swans that hiss at you as you crane your neck to get a look at their little grey babies were delightful in their own way. What really made the day a real soul-lifter though, was the people we met and sense of community they bought to the place. Whether you were buying what they were selling or not they were more than happy to talk to you and encourage your interest in their way of life. I got chatting to a lady that had a host of honey products for sale and explained that we had just bought a house on the canal and intend to have atleast one hive of bees working on the local area. She was very enthusiastic and was happy to show me what I could make from, not just the honey, but the wax and comb too.

The 'Molly' boat, with it's glorious cake, was home to a little boy who wanted nothing more than to know all about us and tell us all about him. He was a fantastic example of how home-schooling and 'real life learning' can be as good if not better than conventional education - he was better in conversation than a lot of adults I know!

I felt in that one day, a stronger sense of being a part of something than I have for a very long time. When we bought The Keep we knew we wanted a certain way of life, we just hadn't assumed there would be others so close that wanted lots of the same things too. Sometimes it's the things you hadn't bargained for that end up being the most pleasant of surprises.

We had my mum in tow this weekend and the extra pair of hands definitely helped. More gardening and wall stripping commenced, finding my mum, D and I exhausted and longing for our beds at the end of the day. I definitely get my 'airy-fairy' side from my mum and it was nice to have her come and agree with the dreamer in me about how fabulous all of the old, broken down and scary bits of our new home are.

We've started making headway with general purchases for the house. I put a deposit down on a new sofa - this will be our very first new sofa as all of it's predecessors were hand-me-downs - and we have picked out our kitchen units. The house has even started to recoup some of the money we've spent on it all by itself (sort of) - the old fireplace was sold for £40 and the wood from the conifer we chopped down is nicely stowed away in the wood store waiting to save me money come the cold winter months.

It has been a weekend full of promise for the future. I'd like to thank every duck and hissing swan and butterfly and narrow boat - dwelling person that made me realise all over again how much I'm going to love living by the canal. I want to say thank you to my back-yard chickens, that keep churning out eggs even in their temporary half-way-house, for being so patient in waiting for their new abode. To my dogs I'd say 'don't worry guys, this park that you have fallen in love with will be right on our doorstep in a couple of months'. And to every pair of hands that has helped us so far I am so grateful because I just cannot wait to share it with all of you. We are tired but so inspired - The Keep and, in turn The Chook Hook, can and will be the amazing project two very ordinary, city-sick, wannabe good-lifers dreamt it could be.

This week will see piping moved, builders scheduled in and the last of the wallpaper stripped. There is a definite feeling of 'big stuff' about to happen.

Bring it on because come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

Did someone press fast-forward?

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you just pulled your pants on and then before you've blinked you're doing it all over again because a day has entirely disappeared? If you answered yes, then you have my sincere empathy - it's as if we're sprinting just to keep up with the progress on our new home at the minute!

It's suddenly all coming to a head with workmen visiting almost every day to quote us for one thing or another and myself and D chasing our tails trying to keep on top of who is who and what it is they are actually coming to do. Note to self: the name Gary is very common amongst building/handyman types - I think we have 3 of them doing various things. Makes keeping track that extra bit more tricky!

Twice this week I've arrived home to find D falling asleep where he sits and my own lids become heavier every day. Admittedly it has become a bit like groundhog day. We get up and go to work, come back and work on the house, make sure all of the animals are happy, go to bed, get up and do it all again. I think when you watch those home renovation programmes you see people jumping from one disaster to the next with crumbling brickwork and bursting pipes and you think 'good grief that must be stressful and tiring', but we're finding it's the daily grind, the never-a-moment-goes-by-without-thinking-breathing-doing-it that really eats at your motivation.

Thankfully, we have the ever-present visual reminders that all the hard work we are putting in is really paying off.

BEFORE

AFTER

The Garden has witnessed a huge transformation, once the lawn goes in and the veg beds are sorted, it will be almost unrecognisable. The new fence looks a bit stark and unsightly right now, but it will weather in and when I have things growing up it, it will look like it's been there all along. The most important thing is that it will keep my gazelle of a dog from leaping into next door's garden.

All of the carpets have been ripped out of the house and, for the first time really, I can see how it's going to look when we're living in it. I took one look at the garden when we went to view it and knew instantly how I would set it out, but the interior has taken a bit of time. All of a sudden I can see light fittings and wall colours and shelves and all of our things in their rightful place. Honestly, as exhausted as I am, I'm way, way more excited!

Every step reveals a renewed energy and motivation. You can feel the walls begging for their first lick of paint in years and the original floorboards squealing at the thought of being polished up and walked on in bare feet. It's like the house is breathing again after holding her breath all this time.

Did I tell you she has a name, the house? Our new home is called 'The Keep'.

Come rain or shine it'll still be mine.

G

95 feet of penny-saving crazy...

95 feet. 29 metres. 1140 inches. 2896 centimetres. However I break it down, 95 feet of mangled, broken, rotten mesh fencing and the thorny interwoven bushes that went with it was extraordinarily hard to tear out! It took D, my very accommodating dad and I hours of back breaking, arm shredding toil, but the decrepit old fence is out and the new one goes in this week.

A little tip for anybody needing a new fence - buy the materials yourself. The money we saved doing this was amazing. Did lugging each panel, post and kick-board through our entry way nearly kill us? Yes. Is my right arm a useless, limp thing now instead of a working appendage? Yes. Will we run out of Savlon and plasters before the week is out? Almost definitely. But for every ache and pain there's a pound in the bank to be spent on something we really can't do ourselves. In this case around £600 still in the pot - not pocket change.

Of course, a few thousand cuts and bruises were  not enough in one day for us, oh no. Once the fencing had been hauled from its resting place we decided the 50 foot high conifer blocking all light from the bottom of the garden had to go too. The chainsaw died a death half way through the two foot thick trunk, so imagine D, regular-old saw in hand, butchering the trunk as me and my dad hauled as hard as possible on the rope we had tied around the top of the tree... anybody taking a stroll down the canal that afternoon certainly got some free entertainment!

Needless to say it was a bit chaotic when the huge tree finally relented and came down in one dramatic crash. If you're wondering why this post is not accompanied by photos detailing this fabulous show of our complete lack of expertise, it' because we were filming the whole thing using our lovely little camera and tripod... that is now in pieces... because the tree fell on it. £1000 saved on not hiring a tree surgeon, £100 for a new tripod. What one hand giveth the other taketh away as they say.

Amongst all the ripping out and replacing there is a voice in the back of my head saying "this is so unlike you, you don't cut down trees! You plant trees and nurture things and do all that tree-hugger hippy stuff". It's hard to see now that all the clearing out I am doing is going to make way for much, much more. Apple trees, fruit bushes, raised beds burgeoning with seasonal veg, not to mention the poultry pens and bee hive. I'm undoing years of growth just so I can start all over again! I'm sure that's some sort of insanity.

All of the noise and commotion going on in the back garden has meant we have had to face our neighbours - something I have been dreading as I have had bad receptions previously (apparently not everyone loves to hear a cockerel crowing at the break of dawn!). For once though, I was presently surprised by the humans residing either side of us. Detached from us, live a middle aged couple with an ancient little dog who were more than happy for us to take out the old fence with the promise of a nice new one. While on the other side of our wall is a lovely , elderly gentleman that is thrilled someone is finally breathing life back into our old house. He didn't even mind when some of the tree fell into his garden, narrowly missing his very expensive looking shed. All things considered, we could have come off far worse.

It feels like we have more to do now than when we first started, but neck deep in rubble, saw dust and skip hire bills is our current normal and so we are rolling with it. With lots happening without us being there in the day I'm sure I will turn up on saturday morning and find plenty more achieved, but plenty still to do.

Come rain or shine, it'll still be mine.

G

What a difference a week makes...

Just a week after opening the door for the first time I feel we've achieved quite a lot. With both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms completely gutted and the kitchen stripped bare eagerly awaiting it's renovation, we've had the frustratingly expected initial dealings with builders, roofers, fitters etc. It seems you run around trying to get hold of these people only for them to let you down or just entirely fail to come back to you. Nonetheless, in one 'fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants' kind of weekend we've managed to book a roofer to fix the roof in ten days time, a fence-man (unsure what you actually call somebody that puts fences up for a living!) to re-fence the left hand side of the garden next week and we've secured a builder, a plasterer and a painter for the internal work! When it rains it really does pour apparently.

Ofcourse, with the delighted feeling that you are really getting somewhere comes the inevitable 'oh, how much will that cost then?' moment and I'd be lying if I said everything I listed above is going to come cheap. Even mucking in as much as possible ourselves and pulling in favours from family members to help out ,we are already into thousands of pounds on our current tab. Scary for two people on very average wages. Thankfully, unlike many people who take on home renovation projects, I have D - the man has our whole life on a spreadsheet and crunches numbers better than he crunches his daily cereal bar. He keeps his head in the game and not in a dark corner sweating the small stuff. Which leaves me to run off with the gnomes and fairies into the huge garden waiting for me...

Which, by the way, has had some adjustments over the weekend. The little green house has been cleaned out and no longer looks entirely neglected. The huge bush that blocked the path to the garden was ripped out and in it's place sits a pretty little flower bed. Having the fence-man round meant taking a closer look at what we were getting rid of and led to the unearthing of a pretty little mallard sitting on eggs. She was very well hidden (clever girl) and once we knew she was there we steered clear and left her to it. It was lovely to see something happening naturally that we have spent many-a-worrying hour trying to replicate with an incubator.

We've made the decision to upcycle the old shed into a summer house that will be stationed at the canal's edge. I envision a delicately painted hut with electric hook-up for a beer fridge and a heater for the cool summer evenings - shed of the year stylee... we'll see what the end result actually is!

The general layout of the vegetable garden, the chicken pens (with room for expansion of course) and the bee hive with it's corresponding wild flower garden has had it's rough draft, leaving just the many, many man hours ahead to get it looking something like what we have in our heads.

Recipe of the week has, rather tragically, been a digestive biscuit with a cup of tea made on the go. With everything in full swing it's hard to stop and hash out a vegetarian extravaganza with organic whatsit here and locally sourced thingamajig there - so the modest, yet ever reliable digestive has sufficed on many occasion this week.

With sore arms and aching backs we shall plough on into another week of what is slowly becoming a project that is genuinely capturing our hearts - and we all know what they say about hearts and homes...

Come rain or shine, it will still be mine.

G

And so it begins...

It's taken 15 months of living with family, two addresses, two job moves, countless huffs and puffs and saving every spare penny, but we have finally done it. Keys in hand, myself and 'D' triumphantly rolled up to our new home - the first we have ever bought and the one I hope brings all the things we have been working so hard for. 

To get you up to speed; I've spent the last 8 years living with D trying to balance our starkly contrasting interests with busy working lives and the ups and (all too regular) downs of normal life. It's fair to say it's been a tumultuous ride so far, but you know what? we've come a long way and are, I dare say, better for it. I hate to use a cliche this early on, but what doesn't kill us really does make us stronger (or stranger!) - in our case it has anyway.

When I say we have very different interests I mean that D is a trigger-happy Gamer with dreams of becoming a Youtube/Xbox sensation, whereas I think of nothing but living a very simple life, preferably in the middle of nowhere with nothing but animals for company and only the food I grow to eat... Therein lay the challenge when it came to finding a place to live that would suit us both - space for animals and fruit/veg growing for me with an excellent internet connection and links to city opportunities for D's growing success in a finance based career. All of that strung together with exactly zero for a budget meant we knew it was going to be difficult. 

So, when our old landlord knocked on the door and gave us four weeks notice to leave, though we didn't think it at the time, we were handed a real opportunity to halt life for while and get some pennies put in the pot.

We packed up our things, two dogs, 17 chickens and a whole heap of worry for our future and moved in with some incredibly welcoming family members. 

Fast forward the last year of making do and squirreling most of our wages away and we get to the present day excitement of finally having opened that carefully chosen front door and starting the long process of making an Edwardian semi-detached house that's ten minutes outside of the city centre into an urban farm - my 'back-yard farm'.

Over the last few days we have stripped walls, ripped out old (pretty disgusting) bathrooms and lifted decrepit carpet. There's been plenty of planning for the almost 200 foot long, completely paved garden with it's little green house and the stage is now set for building work to commence. Yes, every crack has a lovely price tag attached to it that sort of makes me cringe on the inside every time I see another, but we've started.

As the title of this first blog suggests, it begins here. I'll post every week as our little plot develops and eventually, I hope, you'll get to see how a real, working, urban, back-yard farm works.



Come rain or shine it'll still be mine.


G

Oooh did i mention there's a canal at the bottom of the garden?!