Counting down to D-Day!

We have 3 weeks and 5 days left before we get to move in to our dream home.  We are literally counting down the sleeps!  The temporary accommodation that we're staying in (my Uncle's empty house) is working out okay, but it's trying.  There's very little space, but we have hot water and cooking utensils with a roof over our head so I shouldn't complain too much.

We are almost done with the Christmas shopping which includes a treat to myself of seeds.  My Dad has kindly offered to start some off for me, specifically the onions.  I bought a couple of different varieties:  Onion 'Kappa', Onion 'Bunton's Showstopper' and Onion 'Rossa di Toscana' - Vita Sementi which are a red variety.  He has planted a few of the today and we will stagger more over the next few months.

I have bought DH an incubator for Christmas :D and we can't wait to use it.  Ideally I would buy fertilised eggs to start asap but we couldn't keep them warm on moving day, so really we should wait until we're in.

We've sold.... 6 weeks, 4 days and counting before we can move in though!

I feel like the Tasmanian devil or whatever that whirlwind cartoon is called!  I haven't stopped.  However we have some fantastic news:

 

WE HAVE EXCHANGED ON THE FARM!!!!!

What a huge relief.  I cannot beging to tell you how stressed we have been over the last feww weeks or so.  I can feel it melting away though I have been left with the worst headache!

We don't actually move in until 15th January but we are counting the days 1 by 1.  Currently we're living at a family member's house who is working out of the country for the most part of that time, so we've very lucky in that respect.  Having said that it isn't easy to up sticks into temporary accomodation, only to do it again in 6 weeks and 4 days!

So in the mean time, we now need to order the stables, plan the deliveries required to get the horses to the farm and think about what livestock we will want and when. 

I'm going to keep a notebook with me for the next few weeks as I have a feeling "good ideas" will come at the most inappropriate times.

Let the countdown begin!

I thought I better post something to let you know we haven't dropped off the face of the earth, though at times it's felt like it.  Over the last few weeks to month or so we have been in a state of turmoil with the sale of our house.  The buyer's mortgage had a condition on it meaning they needed an extra report completing on our house.  After lots of sleepless nights, upset and general stress we have finally heard from our buyer that they are now ready to proceed.  Finally!!  We are over the moon!

So now the packing in earnest begins.  We're moving everything from the top of the house to the bottom, specifically the dining room.  It's hard to know what to pack and how - it has been a while since we last moved!  As I'm packing the boxes, my mind if drifting off to what meals we can cook in the farm house kitchen and how we will get on using the Aga.

Hopefully the Christmas decorations will be going straight up if we move in this side of Christmas!  Saves on the dusting anyway :).

The farmhouse we hope to get

Let me tell you a little about the house.  It’s set on a country lane and is the last house on the left (there is a horror movie called that I think).  There are only 3 houses on the lane so it is very private and listening to traffic drive by will be a thing of the past.  Any cars will either be visiting us or lost!  This is great news for hacking the horses out and about the beautiful English countryside.

Speaking of horses, a big thumbs up for this house is the bridleways that surround it.  Literally two metres from the entrance gates you have the start of a bridleway.  At the end of the country lane and across a B road, you have the start of another one.  They both lead to many different routes, so much so you could do a different one each day of the week.  I couldn’t ask for more! 

The house itself is five big bedrooms, more than we ever imagined we’d get and has a huge farmhouse kitchen with the previously mentioned Aga J  The back kitchen window looks out on to what will be a small turnout paddock for the horses and further behind that is the main field which is around 2 acres give or take.  It dosn't have as much land as the first house we looked at, but with good paddock management combined with lots of hacking and indoor stables, it’s more than enough for us.  The house itself is a lot nicer looking than the first house we offered on.  Doesn’t it look pretty?

Hopefully our new house.

 

Of course it isn’t ours yet, so all of this is still a dream.  It’s a darn good dream to have though. 



The long wait

Things seem to be ticking over smoothly and quietly on the sale and purchase.  In the “quiet” moments I’ve been looking at what I can do to help things along.  I say quiet, I never have a quiet moment, everything has to be planned to the Nth degree to fit in! 

So I have been looking at removal firms.  We haven’t decided whether we are going to use one or do it ourselves with a 3.5 Luton van.  It’s the cost that is putting me off.  I’ve had some quotes in around the £550 – 700 mark which is putting us off.  However for the help on the day, maybe it’s a no brainer.

There are a couple of local firms I am getting quotes from who visit the house and once we’ve got them all we can make a decision based on that.

I’ve just discovered the Agaliving website…..I really shouldn’t look but can’t help myself. 

Maybe I should pack a box or two to keep my mind from wandering.

House number 2!

What a stressful time moving is turning out to be!  I use moving in the loosest of terms as we’re not moving anywhere just yet!  The first farmhouse has fell through as the valuation on it came back at 25k less than we’d offered to pay and the owner wouldn’t budge at all.  So we walked away.  The house was fabulous and the land was everything we wanted and more, but we wouldn’t pay more than it was worth.  There is too much to do to it to bring it up a decent standard of living and we’d be behind before we started financially, should we ever have had to sell it!

So we quickly set about looking for a new house and viewed four in one weekend.  Each viewing takes up to 1.5 hours depending on how much land comes with it, how big the house is, what outbuildings there are and so on.  We really loved the third farmhouse we viewed that weekend.

After much discussion we put an offer in which was rejected, as was our subsequent offer.  A day or two went by and we waited for them to come back and change their minds.  They didn’t.  I had a growing feeling that we were making a mistake by not upping our offer as the house is perfect and the land is pretty near perfect too.  We could afford the asking price but nobody pays the asking price these days, right?

Well after much to-ing and fro-ing, we settled on a figure which was 10k below the asking price and showed at least a small amount of flexibility from the owner.  That was Thursday 17^th September 2015! 

Since then we have sat through the mortgage application again, updated the solicitors, took a hit in the form of a £95 fee for work done on the one that fell through, been asked to move out by end of September and had a whole bunch of paperwork sent through, processed and returned.  Of course we can’t move out by the end of September. 

Where do we stand as of today?  Well the valuation is being completed on Wednesday 7^th October and then hopefully the mortgage should be issued shortly after that without any hiccups.  The searches have already been issued and should be back in line with the mortgage being issued.  We’re waiting on the property information form from the people who we are buying from.  That will make for interesting reading.

I’m tentatively hoping for 26^th November at the latest but wishing for a lot sooner.

Did I mention it has an Aga?

Whilst we are waiting

We are keeping ourselves busy with natures freebies.  Today we went for our second bramble picking of the year.  We take a good haul but leave plenty for other people and the birds.  They are currently sitting in a bowl of cold water letting all the nasty's float out, before being open frozen and bagged up.  Hubby uses them for his smoothies and I'll of course have to make a apply and bramble crumble with them.  We may go back next week for the last picking.

Rodney and Buster, the two latest additions to the family are settling in very well.  They are 12 weeks old tomorrow and have now had their first injections.  An awful experience for them as the first one is a stinger but it is for the greater good.

In smallholding news, well smallholding to be news, we had a valuation completed on Friday which means we should get the results back by Wednesday.  Fingers crossed they say it is worth what we need for the mortgage. 

I wonder what this week will bring?  Will our buyers finally get organised and get some paperwork through to the solicitor?  Will our purchase property find her onward house as she hasn't as of yet.  She will move in to rented if she needs to but by when is the question!  We are hoping to move on Bonfire night.......It will be a Guy Fawkes we certainly will remember, remember.

We've moved

blogs.  At least blogs for now.....

We are amazingly in the process of buying our dream farm!

Please follow us on the new link:

http://oursmallholdingadventure.blogspot.co.uk/

Thank you :)

Welcome to our new adventure....

We are about to embark on an adventure that we've dreamt about for a long time.  There's never a perfect time to do anything, something can always hold you back if you let it, so we're taking the bit between the teeth and letting nothing stop us.

'We' is myself, Tracy, husband Steven and children Grace and Jack.  It doesn't stop there as we have Buddy, our black Labrador and Rodney and Buster.  They are 2 Jack Russell's who joined our family on Friday just gone.  There are 4 horses and an extended family & friends in that mix too.

Our 'adventure' is moving to a new home, a smallholding.  We have had an offer accepted on our current house and our offer on the smallholding, or farm as the kids call it, has also been accepted.  Formalities have started and the wheels are in motion.  We hope to be in this side of Christmas and can't wait. 

So why don't you join us as we sell our lovely family home on a main road in North East England and move to a small hamlet, still in North East England, where broadband is the latest thing.  All 2mb max link of it.....

Middle of the week yeah!!

Well it's official. I made it half way through my first week back after the holidays. Work has been ok though today has been testing as I've been told my job is changing. It's not for a while so I'll keep my head down and earning those pennies until I'm told otherwise.

GH has been busy working on another piece of woodwork. This one was more testing than the first as the letters couldn't be completed the same way. It's all good learning for him though. I'm very impressed still.

The chickens are in full swing and are giving us an average of 4 a day. Egg recipes in the near future I think.

I'm trying to get myself up a bit earlier each morning. I'd love to class myself as a morning person but there's nothing I want more when I wake up than to nod back off to sleep! So with that in mind, I'm off to read a bit of poirot then sleep. Alarm at 6:00 rising at 6:10 maybe? Place your bets!

Utility bills and keeping the costs down.

Well hello! This is my first attempt to post to the blog from the blogger app, so forgive me if it doesn't look as it should.

Ok so today's thoughts revolve around the gas and electricity bill that I've just had to pay. It was expected of course. I just hate parting with hard earned cash to the utility companies.

Our energy usage for the gas is up 12% on last year. This is due to the cold weather we've had this month and the hot weather we had last year. Polar opposites it would seem.

The energy company rang me with a better deal and I refused as I don't trust them! So I logged in and decided to find one myself. We used to pay £170 a month when I was carefree with money (useless more like).  Now we pay £90 as I've just moved over to a new tarrif from pay quarterly.

It's got me thinking again about how to reduce the cost of the gas and the electric. We've already done a whole host of things including getting rid of the tumble dryer, ensuring lights are off, use the woodburner, only wash dirty clothes opposed to just because they've been worn once. We reduce water use, shower time, bath use etc, I cook more than one meal when the oven is on, make sure the freezer is full to run efficiently, run the dish washer on the quick cycle for the most part and use the economy setting on the washing machine. These are just to name a few but I need to get back into that way of thinking.

It's not just for the gas and electricity either, the grocery bill needs to stay low and can only be done with planning. Fuel consumption needs to be brought back in check and general spends need to remain low.

So combined with an hour or so work tonight, I shall be getting my brain working as to how to keep or get the bills down.

Starting with the heating is now off until the winter. We have the woodburner for emergencies, but it's physically off at the boiler now. The kids will stay warm in their beds on cooler nights with extra blankets such as this gorgeous one my amazing mum crocheted for them.