Me in my baggy shorts in the newspaper

Several weeks ago I mentioned I had contacted a man who writes editorial pieces for the Thursday property section of the The East Anglian Daily Times our local regional daily paper to see if he would do a bit about our smallholding in the hope it would help with the sale. He called round one Saturday morning in September and chatted over a coffee and we had been expecting the piece to appear ever since.
Finally it was in last Thursdays edition......READ HERE  Go to page 27 

Wish I hadn't been wearing those baggy shorts!

I wonder if it will do any good for finding a buyer who is actually ready to proceed, so far the only people interested have had houses to sell and that means a long wait. Hey Ho........... it'll soon be Christmas - and nobody wants to move in December.

Thanks for the comments about birthday coincidences, seems we are not the only family with birthdays on the same day.

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Sue

H.A.I.S.L.O.S

Do you remember the acronym YUPPIES - Young Urban Professionals and then there was DINKY - Double Income No Kids Yet. Well, we are HAISLOS - Hardly Any Income So Living On Savings!

Virtually all our income streams have now finished or diminished to a trickle so now is when we start to live on the savings we tucked away all through the summer. We had a good season on the campsite, we sold loads of smallholding equipment and I had the unexpected pension pot payout, all this  spare cash  being put into an instant access account which, if we are careful, should see us through without having to touch the larger amounts in bonds, or what we put into ISAs in 2014.

I've purposely not mentioned much about house selling and viewings as it would have got a bit tedious, but there has been some serious interest  over the last few weeks. However no definite offers as they also have a house to sell and whoever buys their house will probably also need to find a buyer and so a chain builds with lots of potential pit-falls and delays. That's why we plan to be the upper end of the chain by either renting, buying an empty property to move into and prepare it for renting out or living in the caravan. As the cheapest place to live this winter is here on the smallholding we are not too worried about the wait, although if it gets to next spring without any signs of progress I may be tearing my hair out!

 I first wrote about our budget way back in 2013  and I find it very helpful to look at this budgeting list  every time circumstances change so I know exactly what will be needed.  My most recent  update was  in August  when we knew more about what was happening after health issues made us decide to sell-up. Now once again every item has been scrutinised to enable us to know what we can spare for travelling this month and what we need through until April - Surely the house will be sold by then...........



The first section - Council Tax and Water Direct Debits, both of these miss the months of February and March, The water bill for the campsite is due later this month. Electricity Bills are due December and March and the TV Licence is due in April.

The second section - The Campsite and Smallholding business - was an outlay of over £200 a month, now this will decrease to just petrol for the chainsaw and mower and diesel for the tractor.

The third section - The Car - MOT and Tax due in February, Insurance due in December. When we are at home  the amount of diesel we use is very little. Obviously it's more for pulling the caravan and having holidays but nowhere near what we used to spend on the Jeep Cherokee.

The fourth section - Everyday Expenses - I've cut the food spending by about £25 - £40 a month.
 We have enough coal and wood for heating and hot water and enough bottled gas for the hob to last us through until we sell.
 Cols prepayment prescription card isn't due until next May. House Insurance due in March. I'm still using postage stamps stockpiled before the price went up last April but I will need stamps for Christmas cards.
There are 2 of our Children's birthdays due before Christmas and then I will need money available for Christmas pressies for 3 Children, 3 partners, 2 sisters, 1 brother, 2 brothers-in law, 2 nephews and 1 niece and one Dad plus small gifts for a few friends.
 We won't need to spend anything on things for the house unless something breaks down.

The fifth Section - Extras that make life interesting - We joined the National Trust while we were away and I'm looking at this as an investment for the year ahead as it will allow us access to lots of interesting places without anymore expense - if we feel in need of a day out locally during the winter/spring we have several fairly local NT sites. I don't need any craft materials or books and we bought sacks of peanuts and bird seed mix from the feed mill when we last got chicken feed - enough for most of the winter. Christmas treats will be kept to a minimum - no extra decorations or tree needed, just a few bits of different food.

When you have a limited income it's vital to know what outgoings there will be and where you can shave bits off if necessary. Yes, we are lucky we have a home worth a lot of money, we have the back up of savings but we also have several years before we get a regular pension.

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 Sue

Hurrying through August

On Monday we delivered the chicken shed to smallholder W in Mid Suffolk. If you can imagine driving through half of Suffolk towing a big trailer with this loaded on top you can see why we got a few odd looks.

Col had taken the nest boxes off the side but even so the shed over hung the trailer by a foot on the near-side so we had to slow down and move to the middle of the road when the road was narrow to avoid getting stuck in the hedge or running into a signpost. The shed is on metal skids so unloaded easily. We still have the other small shed to take to them another day. It's quite odd to know that we will never again keep chickens by the 100s.
We called in at two other places - as you do- one to a company that supply packaging materials to try and find some lids to fit some jam jars that seem to be an odd size and secondly to buy some cheap meat from a butchery place. 2 Huge fresh chickens for £5 each - bargain.

 Tuesday was an incredibly wet day, it's rare that we get continuous rain for so many hours. When I commiserated with one of the people on the campsite she said "it's OK we're from Oldham, we're used to it!"
There were things I could have done but after some clearing in the poly-tunnel I sort of went into a  dull grey mood and did nothing much for the rest of the day.

Then on Wednesday we had brilliant sunshine and blue skies. In the afternoon Col took our elderly friend up to Norwich Hospital again and I sat out and enjoyed the sun. Everyone on the campsite was out and for the first time in weeks no farm machinery chugging round the fields so it was quiet and  peaceful.

Thursday started wet again but I was bread baking so it didn't matter. Col has been delivering various things that people bought at the yard sale on Saturday. A man came back for a second look at the old cement mixer and bought it and a couple of tyres for £40 and another bloke who came to pick up some posts bought on Saturday also bought some other wood for another £15. I've worked out  that the yard sale and the 2 car boots and selling the chicken sheds will keep us for 2 months in winter.

Our electric went off early Thursday evening, we could see that the isolator levers on the electric pole over the road were all unconnected so we knew it wasn't just us. I rang the number for UK Power Networks in the Phone book and a very helpful man looked through all the info on his screen and told me we and 28 other homes around had been switched off for some urgent work somewhere over the fields behind us. He then rang back later to say we should be on by 8.30pm and rang back again at 9pm to check we were back on.   (It was). What good service and what a shame it's so unusual that it needs commenting on.

Col went out to work for his Leiston customer on Friday morning and took a load of junk to the dump. I was supposed to be cutting grass but because we had a heavy dew overnight everywhere was too wet. It turned really hot and humid as the morning went on and then it was too hot for pushing a mower....... tomorrow maybe. Col did the easy ride-on-mower bits in the afternoon and loaded the small chicken shed onto the trailer ready for delivering.
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A few weeks ago I sent an email to the man who does features on houses for sale in the East Anglian Daily Times Property section. The houses he writes about are usually huge/expensive/unusual or very special but going on the theory that there is no harm in asking, I invited him to see our self-sufficient Suffolk property with 5 acres for under £500,000 that we can't sell. Much to my surprise he phoned and is coming out in early September - all publicity is good publicity!

I watched the programme on i-player presented by Anne Robinson- Britain's Spending Secrets , Col didn't want to see it on the night it was on - not his thing - he would have muttered all the way through!
There certainly are some people with plenty of money but how is it that in some places people easily find in-date food  in skips round the back of shops? Round here the bins are all in locked  gated areas. 
I was interested to hear Anne R saying how people are so reluctant to talk about what they earn yet scathing about how others spend their money. Having just detailed our whole budget for all of Blogland to see I know see what she means - for as far as I know no one else has ever done the same - or if they have I've not read any. Talking about money and earnings has never bothered me. That's what we earn, that's what we spend -So What?
 Which reminds me that I never got round to replying to comments after that post . Thanks to everyone who reminded me that we are very lucky to have savings and that's what they were saved for- true. Also sympathy to all other people like me who have had their pension age pushed back and to everyone younger for whom it's even worse. I'm glad to hear other smallholders have plans for what they will do in the future.We thought we had too, until unexpected health problems. The suggestion for selling the land and/or campsite separately isn't feasible here because of the way things (water, electric,drainage and driveway) are laid out and because we are in the middle of arable giant-field country where our little bit is worth nothing much on its own. I'm not worried about what will happen in the future as we've always found that  something turns up as long as we've done what we think is right.
On the post before that Sol asked if I could list the books that I'm taking to a car boot but there are rather too many to list or photograph.

Hope everyone has a good weekend
Back soon
Sue

Our house and other stuff

Many thanks to everyone who commented on my last post.
 Lots of people said they liked the kitchen and that will be one of the things I shall miss. We had the new kitchen extension built in 2011 after 19 years of working in a tiny kitchen which, if you look at the floor-plans on the brochure link, was where we now have the bathroom and utility. We'd thought about selling in 2010 and actually had the house up for sale before I had a bad time with depression from the uncertainty of everything I think. So in the end we stayed and built the extension that we had first thought about in 1992 when we moved in.
I wrote about how we came to own a 5 acre smallholding HERE and I said the house was in a bad state when we moved in. There were several things wrong. Firstly we had to have the house rewired before we could get the mortgage as the wiring hadn't been touched since the place was built in 1955. It also had no felt under the tiles so the first summer we were here Col and my dad took all the tiles off and put insulation and felt in the roof and, because when the place was built there was still a shortage of building materials after the war, instead of plaster on the walls and ceilings everything was lined out with a fibre board. Gradually over the years Col stripped off the awful rough board and either plastered or put proper plasterboard on the walls.
 Outside we had 3 very old buildings, 2 of which were made of asbestos concrete panels and had originally been on the USAF base in Leiston during the war. We replaced those with the buildings that we now have and Kev said he had shed envy! I think Col will miss the workshop which is full of all his stuff, although he is getting on well with clearing it out.
  All in all a lot of time and money has been ploughed into the house and land over the last 23 years.

Many people in comments said they thought the house would sell quickly, I'm not so sure. It's a bit too much land for a lot of people and not fenced for horses.Several people asked if we had started looking for somewhere to move to, the answer is not really. We have 4 choices when we get a definite buyer. 1. If there is a small cottage in Wales with woodland available then we could go for that or     2.We could buy a small house in town in Suffolk without a chain to move into and prepare for then renting it out. 3. We could rent something ourselves for 6 months or 4. ( my favourite) we could buy a caravan and have a gap year!We will see what happens and only time will tell, in the meantime I'm  not  going to go on and on about selling. I want to get back to my normal diary posts.

The men got the water back on  by 8pm on Thursday night but there is still a huge hole to be repaired and the road will been closed all weekend at least. I hope they get it sorted early next week as I want to restart the gooseberry and potato selling and the Alstromeria flowers are ready to pick and sell too. I shall also have to ring the people we have booked in to arrive on the campsite and give them directions for coming in the other way.

Jam making season has started with 8 jars of strawberry/gooseberry made. This combination looks like strawberry but sets better than strawberries on their own. I'm planning to also make some strawberry and I'll use sachets of pectin to set it.
I had a phone call from Cols Leiston customer on Thursday evening, she said her garage door wouldn't lock properly and could Col sort it. I asked her if she'd given it a squirt of oil or WD40, "errr no?" she said. I could tell it wouldn't even have dawned on her. So funny how impractical some people are. As it happens, when Col went down to look this morning a squirt of oil helped but wasn't the whole problem.

I've been getting up extra early all week to get the work done so as to be able to spend every afternoon watching the tennis from Queens Club and then today  just as Andy Murray got started in the second semi-final it rained. I'm not sure what happens if they don't get back out to finish the game as it should be the final tomorrow. While watching I've started  cross-stitching small lavender sachets 

very handy for small gifts.
While Col was working this morning I made a fruit cake and cheese scones and gave the oven a good clean afterwards - fun - Not!

A couple of weeks ago Col called into the Tyre and Exhaust place in Leiston to ask them to save 4 good tyres for our old small horsebox trailer. He wants to use it for the garden and smallholding things that we want to take with us, so needed to get it in good order. They found him 4 good van tyres - even better than car tyres and fitted them yesterday for just £50 all inclusive. Good bargain.

Looking back to this time last year in my diary and I see we had started picking raspberries. This year it will be several more weeks before they are ready. But the strawberries are still going strong and other crops available today are gooseberries, potatoes, courgettes, green beans, cucumber, lettuce and salad leaves, radish and beetroot. The hungry gap is well and truly over.

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Sue

The House Is On The Internet!

We are FOR SALE, well the house is. It went live online today and the sale board will go up tomorrow. If you know anyone who might be interested in a smallholding with a campsite the details are HERE

One of my reasons for wanting to move is to have fewer responsibilities and today proved why. A big water main up the road has burst and we lost our water supply, we had 15 minutes warning and I filled all sorts of things in the house and Col went to tell the people on the campsite because it means no toilets, shower, drinking water and water for the chemical toilet wash out. I feel responsible for all the people on site, they were all very understanding and filled up their water containers while the water was still trickling and they all have their toilets in their caravans. If it was just us to think about how easy things would be.

Essex and Suffolk Water soon had the road up and the 8inch main fixed, it looks pretty muddy down in that hole. It might take a bit longer to put our road back together again. We have a Road Closed sign outside our house but everything is ignoring it and driving up the road, turning round and coming back again!


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Sue

Reasons to be cheerful

• Whoop, whoop, I had an a award winning money journalist leave a comment on my last blog post! And she lives in Suffolk too. Faith Archer also has a Blog called Much More With Less which I have added to my reading list.

• We have had a caravan arrive on site for a 2 week stay and 2 more caravans together for 6 nights which adds nicely to the income so that instead of being £300 down on the same time as last year we are now £50 up!

• All of last years hay has now been sold, leaving a space in the hay shed where we plan to put all of our unwanted smallholding equipment ready for a yard/barn sale later in the year. We've got 4 x 50 metre rolls of electric poultry flexi-net for a start as well as loads of other things. When Kate-who-bought-my-goats came to collect the hay she  put her name down for one of our metal waterproof  feed bins. She said she bought one that is so badly designed that if you lift the lid after its rained a load of water runs down straight on top of the feed sacks - obviously designed by a man!

• We ate our first few French climbing beans on Saturday. These are in the poly-tunnel and are doing really well, unlike the first lot we planted outside which look very sad. The wind and last Fridays storm have also damaged the runner beans. We are also now eating new potatoes from the outside bed and they are delicious, much tastier than the very early ones from the tunnels.

• The sun shone on Saturday and Sunday and loads of tidying and weeding was done. The asparagus bed had been invaded  by a weird and mysterious weed/plant. Seemingly growing from seed and completely covering the bed and only this one bed as if someone had sown them there. It took me ages to get it all out then I spent another age searching through all my plant books to find out what it was. I'm still not sure but the nearest thing it resembles is a Wallflower, I guess I should have left it a bit longer to see if it produced any flowers, that might have made it easier to identify.

Weed on the right and a bit from the perennial wallflowers on the left

• Our local car boot sale - 10 minutes away- is now almost every Sunday instead of alternate weeks. This is both Good but Bad! I went on my own again and spent 3 x 50p, and had a good walk round in the fresh early morning air. A string holder tin, a cross stitch kit and 3 chunky tumblers, as one of ours got broken last week, were the things I splashed out on. Glasses are one of the (many) things I never buy new along with tea towels they are always around and I buy a couple of each during the summer  while it's car boot season. It's no good waiting until I actually need them.  
• Another sunny day and more tidying up on Monday. Col is working his way around his workshop mess dividing things into burning/keep/dump or sell. I was dashing around the house noticing things that needed cleaning before the house photographer comes.  I wish there was an easy but cheap answer to window cleaning, whatever I do here our very hard water seems to leave marks and the windy weather we've been getting whips up dust from everywhere and leaves it smeared on all the windows especially at the front of the house.It seemed such a good idea to have our new kitchen extension flooded with light from 3 directions, after all I had had 19 years in a small, gloomy kitchen, but that means 4 large windows that need frequent cleaning and it always seems to be my job.
• Today, Tuesday and more rushing around putting things away. Col had to go to the dentists for a check up - nothing needed doing. The very young man ( blimey I sound like those old Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke sketches)

came with camera and took loads of photos of the house and smallholding, did the measurements for the floor plan and the details for the EPC certificate. The sun was shining so the photos should look good. We were discussing with him how  some Estate Agents are very poor at photos.Having been looking on line at houses for years we've seen all sorts of odd things. Clothes still hanging on airers, towels on the floor in bathrooms, un-made beds ( OK for Tracy Emin but not good for selling a house!). We are also surprised at some we've looked at that say they have woodland but then there are no photos.
After he went we got lots of weeding done in amongst the Gooseberry bushes. They are loaded with gooseberries but all very small, we really need a lot of rain and less of this East wind. This time last year I had already started picking and selling them.

• Another library book finished.The House in South Road by Joyce Storey Not an easy read, in fact I had borrowed this before and not read it because it tells of an unhappy childhood followed by her unhappy marriage. I stuck it out this time but wouldn't want to read it again.

• The above is not the most exciting picture you will see on a blog, but I'm quite excited by it arriving as it means Col really is clearing out some junk. We plan to fit everything we want to keep from garden shed and workshop in our small horsebox trailer, so a lot of might-come-in-handy-but-never-did stuff will have to go.
• And Finally...............because my Suffolk County Council pension ( from my 8 years of library work)  is so small I had the choice of having a lump sum at once instead of £25 pounds a month. I dithered a bit but decided it was probably a good idea to have an extra £5,500 now. After all I could peg out in a few years time or the Council could run out of funds. This unexpected bonus will go a way to paying for the selling expenses or to buy a caravan if we suddenly decide to do a bit of traveling!

I seem to have lots of new followers on Bloglovin' so welcome to sherri, debijanebell,sue,su,jennifer and Amy. Good  to have you reading.

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Sue