Reflection & Inspirations

Well lets just reflect a little on the last year.... What have we achieved??

Well we under went huge stress' being harrassed by over zealous planning inforcement officers, even if he was sweet and quite cute, he still made my life hell... but we won we went through to the end all the way through the appeal and won....

We have been severely threatened and harased by the lovelyest of neighbours,  having pipe bombs let off in our entrance, when it got out about our success in the planning appeal...

We achieved a great deal on the farm, we fenced off large fields, we processed useless land into beautiful grass fields, using only the power of the pigs nose, tons of organic matter processed through the pigs stomach, which produced tons (literally) of wonderful manure to fertilise out soil, we drained, and leveled the soil, with the help of the digger and our family of five armed with rakes each, and hand picked huge amounts of pesky stones, planted up flower beds, bordered with said pesky stones...

Erected the barns metal frame work, cleaned the farm and yards of lots of Joes scrap, leftover remnants of his inventions and creations.....

Rescued and rehomed a number of animals including some dogs that really needed help on the path through life...

We planted 30 odd fruit trees, and a lovely little orchard of indiginous species, required by planning, re dug the old pool and created the chicken garden....

Found a wonderful poly tunnel to re build our beaten up one, note not built up here on site yet...

Successfully reared, 3 litters of piglets, butchered them and created the most divine, charcutery, pork, ham, sausages, bacon....reared and ate our own chicken, I now know how to humainly kill a chicken and dress it, and no longer feel screamish about the process, I dont know why it was, I could Kill, butcher and dress a pig, without any quarms but ask me to help Joe kill a chicken and I couldnt look.... I must have home killed 6 or 7 pigs this year for our own consumption, and the others went to the abotoir for customers. ..

Oh yes we also tasted our own beef from our Dexter, and await the return from the abotoir of the 2nd.... cant wait we shall be making beef jerky and all sorts of specialities will be indulged in!!
 I certainly wont be sharing too much of this prime meat with outsiders, it is the most devine wonderful tasting beef ever, and those I let taste the odd morcel agreed... nothing like supermarkets finest....

We bred a litter of Rotty puppies to help fund the farm improvements and shall always be in debt to Sasha for her help in the fund raising stakes, we have kept in toush with many of the offspring and they all have wonderfull homes, which is great to know...

The Veg garden was a farce, it looked good for the planners but never came to anything the land was still to hungry in that area, the grass fields we planted had had the pigs nose and bum working on them for 10 years, the veg patch maybe only 4 years, so this year we must endevour to correct this, we have had 15 pigs on the veg site from late July, we have fed them tons of veg and fruit, maybe 2 ton a week at the peak, and they go through upto a ton of barley and wheat per month, less now thank goodness, so theres a lot of input there now concentrated... Jim my lovely sugar daddy figure has brought me in loads of muck well rotted, which the pigs have been turning in, too....we need to work hard on this field, fix the drains and put in maybe another 30 ton of muck, oh yes must not forget Sarah here.. one of the pups moms, her hubby got me a good lot of soot from wood fired chimneys so thats gone in too, and all that our rayburn can produce in ash also goes in there too. . its never ending this soil improvement, the coucil say we are too slow to improve site and get things done, if only they read this and would appreciate the amout of work we have put into the site.....

So thats the reflection now the Insperation.....

Well whilst all of this has been going on I have been beating my self up as couldnt get on with the plans for the challet build, just couldnt settle on the layout, now I realise why its just is not right for us, yes it's recycled .. but just not right for our family, so Insperation from Hungary hit, Whilst out there staying in my sisters house we fell in love, it is a mud or rammed earth construction, of L shape design, well whilst out there we have always said it was perfect in shape and lay out.... Another thing, years ago Joe had a dream that there was something special on the land here that would do something big for us......so what do we have loads of under our shallow useless soil???? CLAY Tons of perfect CLAY..... I wonder shall we build a L shaped rammed earth grass roofed ECO house??? Well shall we???? I THINK SO!! What do you all think?


We shall ..So the plan is... L or U shaped, single story, eco rammed earth or cob house. With a Hungarian ceramic fire, built to our own design with a cooking hob, 2 ovens and a door to feed the fire from the outside as in the Self sufficient Seymores bible... he discribes the perfect small holders fire place that you can cook on, smoke food in and service from out side to reduce the dust in the home, we shall bring in floor tiles and marble from Spain and oak from France all these contacts we have made over the years on our Gypsy travels. We shall also have an old fashioned bread oven and buttery, Everything inside shall be recycled other than the afore mentioned. Fixtures and fitting will all be from the internet, recycled....Where possible Joe will use his wood working skills aquired in Austria when he was a refugee, he calved and built hand made stair cases, so together we shall build all the wooden items our house shall ever need.

So theres the plan... all we need now is to convince the planners, we also want to have a house cow, rear more fowl for meat and egg production, defenately need to keep bees and the garden and the poly tunnel have to work this year ..
This year we SHALL be TOTALLY SELF SUFFICIENT..... Pig in mud will live and we shall prosper wih the rich abundances that our hard labour and land can give us , we shall continue eating richly like kings, we shall spend less and live more, we shall stay home and make every moment with our kids count..And we shall continue helping lost and struggling animals find the journey and path through life easier......