New Blog

I've decided that with the purchase of our smallholding to start a new blog.
My blog "Keeping My Roots" was about the journey of moving away from the farm but making sure I was still connected with that way of life. Now we have our own little bit of the countryside I thought it would be good to start again so people can follow our new journey.


The view of our back garden - this is all going to change!

In England we call a property with a few acres a smallholding, but I think this word has lost its original value. It used to describe a way of life where the land helped to support your family and provide, if not income then food. Now its more the middle classes having somewhere to keep a few horses. This is why I decided to use the American word homestead, as I think this still has the meaning of describing a place where your land supports your family.
The "homestead" in question is a 5 acre patch split into three fields with a semidetached 3 bed house sitting at the top of it. I'm under no illusions of all the books written in the 70's about self sufficiency- I will not be earning my living from this piece of land. We've had to have a killer mortgage to be able to live this way, but I will be using it to lessen our bills and improve our way of living, hopefully with the help of family and friends along the way.