The 6 weeks wait is over... Decision ...

Well it came a little bit earlier than they said,, I suppose you would like to hear the answer.......

We WON!!!!!!!

 
The inspector totally got what we were up to, he understood us, he pointed out that we needed time to finish our work and that if we were thrown out like the council wanted within the 6 month period that would mean we aould be out in mid winter, how would we care for our animals etc... Well what a nice man!!!!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY GYPSIES!!!!

According to council policy and guidelines we are officially recognised as Gypsies, we are following a gypsiy life, we fullfill all the criterium in there paper work.... you dont have to be ethnically a gypsy but to fall into line with there official guidelines...

We are given 20 months stay!!!

He gave us until May the 1st 2012 he pointed out that this was good time for us with the summer in fromt of us for travels....

 Once again he showed that he totally understood us, he also, at the hearing said you will be putting in for planning and you will be appealing if they turn you down??? I feel he was telling us something there... So after getting very excited and hyper ventilating a lot, I rang Les Stephan Planning Associates to give them the good news, they were so pleased for us and said the Gypsy status is very important, we have decided together to put in for planning straight away whilst the council has the words ringing in there ears ....

Oversion to living with in bricks and mortar!!!

3 times the Inspector refered to my oversion of normal life and houses made of bricks and mortar.... Well I just want to live on my own land with my lovely family and enjoy self sufficiency..

So a new chapter open in our lives...

We are now feeling settled for the first time in our married life, we have a home, we are doing this for us!!

We are planning now our futures  on our holding, our veg patch has to be huge next year, we have to have a house cow, making butter, cheese and enjoying our own milk, we need to keep bees, we soon have our sheep arrive to eat our fresh grass that is now growing too much..


We have a batch of pigs ready to go to the butchers and to sell our meaty products we also have a Dexter beef animal ready to kill too, we are producing all our own eggs now, and about to kill some of our home bred and reared meat cockerals.

Iron age pigs .....

We are now looking into wild boar x Tamworths, this is the direction we are going into, our neighbour is homing our, large white pair to help with there veg patch digging, We have been given our first Iron age boar and have arranged to have some Tamworth wives too.... our Middle White x Oxford and Sandy Black had 8 healthy piglets and all are doing well...

A  Very Sad day!

Sadly Babe my Belgium blue sow, deserted her lovely maternity quarters in the middle of the night during a horific storm and gave birth to 13 piglets which she sadly drowned in her mud patch she had created, most sad, we now know that next time she has to be locked in her straw bed kit and not allowed to follow her miss guided instincts,

She was broken hearted, I had to fish out all the little ones and leave them in a line for her to see dead, as she kept looking for them all and got very upset, rubbing up to me her sadness was very clear to see, but once she saw them all she stopped and allowed me to dispose of there bodies, her milk quickly dried up. A very sad day..

So I really must get into the habit of blogging now we really are going all out for self sufficency.. we are having a weeks hol and animal sitters are moving in then we move forward, no more dreams all has to work, we are going to look into a new home firstly...

Our new home an ARTIC FRIDGE LORRY BACK...

Yes we have decided living in the caravan is far too costly during the winter, we need a well insulated home, we will be installing recycled double glazed white windows and patio doors, we need to look into some way of digging our own boar hole and getting frsh water, at the moment our well is full of stinking brown surface water...

Log burners a necessity, all that wood laying around here, we need to heat oursleves and be able to have showers.. I have been skip diving and found a shower, I just need a better water supply, but i'm not ready to ditch the watering can yet!!!

The roof of our building must go on so we can store our impliments in the dry.


Poly tunnel...

Well sometimes we are so lucky, a lady emailed me and offered me a huge 12.5m x 8.5m poly tunnel well its actually a swimming pool enclosure and cost over £12k its just had a new cover and was all our dreams come true.... we borrowed our friends lorry he runs his own removal business Kynastons Relocations and is based in Guilsfield hes a good friend and we appreciated his hel,. we drove off and slept in a heap on a pile of blankets in the back, one day of work later and our polytunnel was loaded , it was a very pleasent drive to Cambridgeshire, we will be putting it up very soon, and moving the old one onto our veg patch..The diesel came to £100 and we gave John £50 to say thanks... it was a great adventure...

We will also be looking into Diesel production from veg oil..
Also researching some sort of heat safe or store for our new poly tunnel, we want to heat it all year to supply us with all year round veggies..
We went to a strawberry farm just past Aberystwyth who grows them off the ground in polystyriene pots so we will be collecting poly boxes and having strawberry tunnels, we have been down to Coed y Dinas our local super store country store type thing that had a huge sale strawberry plants for 50p and they even had loads of runners on them ... yes.. free plants....


So let me know... how many of you are there out there reading this, is it interesting?? what else do you want to know??? Should I write a book about our adventures?? as I think they are about to really begin!!!