A Very Small Holding

The Elliffs journey into the good life

Dec
30

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A very merry christmas

Category: The Allotment, The House, The Village Leave a Comment

To avoid all the work involved in preparing a Christmas Day meal we opted to have our family lunch at the local public house.

At the end of the week we attended the funeral for Katie’s step-grandfather, while my parents shielded our children from this somber event.

We received the updated plans for our proposed extension. They were now ready to be submitted to pre-planning where they would be reviewed by the council for their acceptability.

My father helped me add a gutter to the shed to collect rainwater in a water butt. He also helped move the remaining storage boxes from the garage to the workshop.

Oct
21

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A very dangerous taxi

Category: Compost, Maintenance, The Allotment, The Village, Trees Leave a Comment

The arrival of our second child was on the horizon. Katie was unable to drive and relied on me to provide transport to her regular appointments. This was the downside of our move to the countryside. There are no shops, no newsagent, no bank, no library, no dentist and no medical centre. When Matilda was born Katie was able to walk into the town at her convenience. Unless she wished to buy a pint, a Sunday roast or a curry she would have to travel three miles to the nearest high street.

Within a month we would need to make the necessary visit to North Staffordshire hospital. It was therefore the perfect time for our car to request a trip to the mechanic. The engine cut out when we were on our way to the local church play group. We were fortunate to be only a few hundred yards from the village, and had a short walk back to our home.

That evening the news we received from our car mechanic was not good. Although the vehicle could be repaired and the problem simple, it would require a new part to be delivered and cost hundreds of pounds. With a week to wait for the car to be fixed we needed to make provision should Katie need to visit the hospital at short notice.

The next day Katie was forced to book a taxi for one of her many hospital appointments at the maternity unit. The taxi driver was unaccustomed to rural life and his car was almost flattened by a horse, which he had shown little respect for and had driven far too close behind. When Katie returned home safely, I left to hire a small car to avoid another journey in an overconfident taxi.

Katie’s father delivered several wooden pallets that he had liberated from his factory. I had requested them to enable us to build a collection of compost bins. There were not enough pallets to complete my original plan, but enough to get us started.

I used the pallets to create the four walls of the compost bins. In the end there would be four compartments to allow the bins to be used in rotation. While one bin was being filled with fresh green waste, another was rotting down and a third ready to use on the allotment.

Compost bins constructed from wooden pallets and cardboard

Compost bins constructed from wooden pallets and cardboard

To begin construction I bound the pallets together with cable ties and insulated each bin with flat-packed cardboard boxes. I recovered two large wooden boards from the workshop, previously used as the base for greyhound bedding. These acted as lids for each metre wide bin. Two large plastic sheets, that a new mattress had been delivered in this week, were placed over the bins to protect them from the rain.

I started filling the first compost bin with waste collected in our old plastic silo. I added soiled straw bedding from the chicken enclosure and ash we had been saving from the wood burning stoves. On top of this mixture I placed a sheet of weed suppressor and an old carpet to provide additional insulation. As the waste built up bacteria would begin to break down the organic material and produce some fresh compost within a year. That was our expectation.

Although we had started removing trees from our land we did not wish them all to disappear. We both appreciated trees and wanted to protect the traditional trees we had acquired while removing the intruders; such as the Leylandii. Following the removal of the sixty foot Leylandii at the front of our house the Sycamore beyond it was now in full view. I had noticed it was wrapped in ivy from the roots up to the crown. To prevent the ivy strangling the life from the tree I removing it, certain that I heard the tree breathe an audible sigh of relief.

Oct
7

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A very nostalgic journey

Category: Maintenance, The Allotment, The Garden, The Village, Trees Leave a Comment

We began searching for a trailer after we had the tow-bar fitted the previous week. A trailer would allow us to collect equipment, livestock and resources more easily. We saw the trailer as an investment. It would retain most of its value and it will save money on delivery charges and fuel.

Our car was able to tow up to a tonne in weight which restricted our search to smaller livestock trailers. A new trailer would be beyond our budget. Ifor Williams are the Rolls-Royce of agricultural trailers, but even a second-hand Ifor Williams trailer would be more than a thousand pounds.

We were lucky to find an alternative six foot livestock trailer for sale on the Internet. It had a detachable canopy, enough space to carry two large pigs and had been used infrequently. We arranged to collect the trailer from the owner whom lived just across the border in Wales.

It would take ninety minutes to drive from our home in Staffordshire, across Cheshire and into Wales. We did not realise it at the time, but the route we had chosen passed by numerous locations from our recent past.

We discovered that our destination was situated a mile from a house we had viewed the previous year. It had ten acres of land included in the sale, but the elderly vendors had sold the farmyard and an adjacent nine acres to a developer. This required an entrance to be added that cut across the remaining stretch of grass connecting the crumbling farmhouse with the two five acre fields. It was a despairing, but an often repeated situation for smallholdings or farms without heirs. The prime land would be sold to developers or consumed by neighbouring farms, leaving the old farmhouse isolated and uneconomic as a smallholding.

On the journey into Wales we also passed three other properties that we had viewed during our search for a suitable home. Each we had rejected for various reasons including their condition, size and locality. It made us realise how lucky we were to have stumbled upon our new house.

The livestock trailer safely collected from Wales and delivered to our home

The livestock trailer safely collected from Wales and delivered to our home

We collected the trailer from a fellow smallholder, paying in cash, and tentatively made our way home. We made a brief pit-stop to purchase a substantial motorbike lock and secured the trailer to the chestnut tree on the allotment.

During the first few months living in the village we had meet a majority of the residents and gleaned a lot of information about its history. One small question remained unanswered during all these conversations that was pertinent to our allotment. There was a small section of land that cut into the middle of our triangular plot, that no-one appeared to own. It measured only a handful of metres square, but it was an irritation and needed to be maintained.

The scrap of land had been neglected for over twenty years, so I made further enquiries to determine if any of the neighbouring residents would mind if I took ownership of this eyesore. I received no objections and therefore we removed our bounding fence and connected the perimeter fences that had previously navigated around the obstruction.

In August we had hired a tree surgeon to remove the sixty foot tree that loomed over the entrance to our house, and to extract the dead eucalyptus tree from the allotment. Two months later two men arrived equipped to fell the trees and then shred the evidence.

A tree surgeon removing the last few branches of the leylandii

A tree surgeon removing the last few branches of the leylandii

We had requested that they leave us with all the logs and large branches for use as firewood on our log burners. The eucalyptus had died a year earlier and so the timber had already dried to a point where it was safe to burn the wood this winter.

The tree surgeons made light work of both trees. Climbing up, removing the branches as they went, before descending, chopping the trunk into manageable slices.

They had completed the work by the afternoon and we had a large pile of unprepared firewood that would last us more than a year. I took note of their branded equipment and bid them farewell.

Jul
29

By

A very invasive vine

Category: Compost, Maintenance, The Allotment, The Field, The Garden, The House, The Village, Trees Leave a Comment

The largest allotment bed took a little longer than the first to clear of weeds. I repeated the process of the previous weekend, progressing along the length of the bed pulling the weeds out of the soil. I completed three separate shifts removing the weeds and wheeling several dozen barrows to the temporary compost pile.

The three allotment beds after they had been cleared of weeds

Like many gardeners I found the act of weeding therapeutic and good exercise. We had not bought a home with land to satisfy a theological principle. We were seeking a more natural, peaceful and local way of life. There would be no need to join a gym; the land management would provide all the exercise we needed and save money instead of costing us money.  There would be no need to travel by car to the country park; we had the countryside on our doorstep and several bridleways crossing our road. We felt there would be no need to take a holiday; we had moved to a location that was far removed from the rat-race.

We had already discovered we were watching very little television. Our free time was used more productively, maintaining our new home or investigating the local area. A difficultly we could see on the horizon that would interrupt our progress was the imminent arrival of our second child. How much time two children will occupy would have a bearing on what we could achieve and in what time.

Most of the initial tasks involved maintenance and restoration. In our back garden, to avoid any unnecessary injuries to myself, my family or any visitors, I trimmed all the low hanging branches. There were more than twenty trees dotted around the garden and it was apparent that more radical maintenance would be needed to make the garden a more usable space. The trees hid the bottom half of the garden. It was dark, damp and a mess. I lacked any tree felling equipment or lumberjack experience, so I decided to postpone tree management to another day.

The dark cattery interior on a summer’s day before the vine covering was removed

I moved my attention to the old cattery. It had been constructed twenty years ago and appeared that it would be able to serve its purpose for twenty more. However, the cattery was being consumed by vines that had been intentionally planted around the perimeter. The vines covered the roof and protected you temporarily from the rain, until the rainwater began to drip down long after the rain had subsided. The cattery was dark and damp as a result. The paved floor green and slippery under foot.

I decided to cut down all the vines and bushes surrounding the cattery. The vines served no real purpose and would only get in the way of any improvements to the structure. The task was made complicated by the growth of the branches weaving in and out of the steel mesh. I cut all the visible branches that wove under the mesh roof enabling me to pull most of the vine structure from the roof. I had to cut the branches in many places, every two inches in some cases, to separate the plant from the wire.

The cattery enclosure during the removal of the vine branches from the main structure

Several days of cutting, pulling and sawing removed most of the vines. I left part of the vine structure in place to maintain the structural integrity of the cattery wall. The wooden supports had rotten away in places, or had been eaten away by the insects living in the vine architecture. If we decided to keep the cattery in its present design we would need to replace several of the wooden pillars and finally remove the main trunk of the vine plant.

There were smaller maintenance tasks I slowly chipped away at over the passing days. Each time I left the house or returned from the croft I kept an eye out for weeds growing through our gravel driveway. My neighbour had commented the first time I pulled at a lone weed among the stones that it would be a futile task removing them. He had abandoned the idea long ago. I thought I would give it a try. The weeds would never be eradicated completely from the driveway due to the nature of its construction, but I hoped I would keep the worst of them at bay.

Jul
8

By

A very wet new home

Category: The Garden, The House, The Village, The Workshop Leave a Comment

Our first day at our new home did not go exactly as we had planned. Choosing to move in the height of summer you would expect the weather to be a little kind, not the wettest day of the year. According to the statisticians it was the most rain that had fallen in one day since the millennium began. I was not going to let the weather dampen my spirits and barely gave a thought to the possibility of floods or any other problems getting in the way of our dream move.

We were fairly well prepared for the move. I had packed all our belongings into labelled boxes and transported some of our old furniture into storage to make our unpacking less complicated. My parents had arrived a few days earlier, to support us during the move and house sit the following weekend, when we were attending a wedding in Formby. My dad helped me to empty the loft and then move the chicken run to our neighbours where they would spend a short holiday. Katie was six months into another difficult pregnancy, with a toddler in tow, which left the manual labour to me during the weeks before the move. Inconveniently I had two stag weekends and a golf weekend during May that reduced my availability to the evenings following work and a whole week that I had planned off before the big day. I am not sure how we would have coped had my parents not arrived on the Monday. Over the next three days we managed to finish the packing, clean up the chicken’s mess in the garden and tidied the house to our satisfaction.

The removal lorry parked outside our old house packed full of furniture

Friday soon arrived, the removal men turned up on time and began emptying our old house. It quickly became apparent to the foreman of the team that their lorry would not be large enough to hold all our belongings. A hasty phone call later and another removal truck arrived, driven by a slightly annoyed employee, who had planned a leisurely afternoon at his local public house. There was little for my dad and I to do, but wait until they had completed the removal. Katie, Matilda and my mum had left early that morning for the calm and a safety of my father-in-law’s house.

We had the call from the solicitors very early in the day to confirm that the sale had gone through. Shortly after midday Katie and my mum left to meet the previous owner of our new home to collect the keys. The removal men left a short time later while my dad and I waited impatiently for cleaners to finish dusting and vacuuming the old house for our successors. At half past one we were able to wave goodbye to the old place and head toward our new home.

The rain was not heavy, but consistent the whole day. Katie had mentioned there were reports of flooding in the villages around our destination. The road out of our village was closed, meaning there was just one route in. The journey was reassuringly uneventful and thirty minutes later we were only a mile from the house. Then we reached the first sign of floodwater. The road was passable provided we took a route down the centre of the carriageway. I drove slowly to avoid flooding the engine and continued forward. At the Hunter public house the road was interrupted by another lake of floodwater. Several cars had been abandoned in the road, having failed to complete the short drive through the water. Fortunately our village was a short distance after a right turn just before the Hunter. As we drove up the slight incline into the village I was glad to know the climb probably meant our house was unlikely to have been affected by floodwater. Just before we made the final turn into the private road where our house stood we noticed that the main road out of the village had been closed. Those who had been stranded taking refuge in the other village public house, The Greyhound Inn.

As we approached the house we could see the removal vans swapping places on our driveway. The additional van had already emptied our gardening equipment on to the front lawn and my tools into the garage. I could see Katie waiting by the front door. She was smiling, which reassured me that our house was dry and that everything was going according to plan. Although I could see the drainage ditches either side of the unadopted road were full and the rain was still coming down.

The removal team soldiered on, emptying the rest of our belongings into the house. They were done by five in the afternoon. They had not stopped, they had not complained and they had worked hard all day in rain. Our first dealings with Staffordshire tradesmen was to foreshadow our future experiences; reasonably priced, friendly and agreeable. I doff my hat to Pecks Removals and Storage.

In addition to the two public houses the village boasted only one other retail business, a curry house. Therefore we decided on a take-away as the first meal in our new house, hoping that this could be classed as ‘local food’. Katie had sensibly packed a box specifically for moving day, with four plates, glasses and cutlery. So when my dad and I returned home, via a pint at the Hunter, we tucked into our curries surrounded by a hundred unpacked boxes.

Matilda making herself at home in our new back garden

Matilda felt at home the moment we arrived. She donned her wellies and raincoat and dragged Katie with her to explore the garden. Our previous house had a back garden the size of a postage stamp. The new garden was fifty yards long and contained twenty trees that obscured the view from the house to the workshop at the end. Matilda discovered, much to her delight, that the previous occupants had left behind their playhouse, swings and climbing frame. We would encounter several more unexpected treasures in the weeks that followed as we began to explore the new Elliff family home.