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?!