Thursday, February 09, 2006
The first year
I made my first mistake soon after buying the house. Having noted all the bindweed, I realised we would need a power strimmer to beat back some of the undergrowth that was threatening to take over the entire property.
Acting in a particularly thrifty manner, I looked at the sort of thing I thought we needed, balked at the price tag and bought the cheapest model I could find. It will do the job, I told myself, may take a bit longer, but my time is free. Wrong on both counts. By saving money, we had also saved on power, and every time I showed some bindweed to it, the machine turned tail and fled, wrapping its little cutter head in strands of weed and grass until it choked and expired. And I was soon to discover that although my time in the countryside is free-of-charge, a job that kept me in town for most of my time made time saving implements a vital necessity.
Unable to bear the thought of buying another piece of almost-identical equipment, I got hold of a scythe, used that to beat back the worst of the weeds and kept them in place with the trimmer. By the end of the year, we had succeeded in clearing an acre or so of reasonably civilized land around the house, including most of the small orchard, a spot for a vegetable garden, and the land on three sides of the pond. I had calloused hands and a permanently sore back.
To celebrate the land that was now visible, we invited a group of friends and colleagues to come and spend a weekend camping with us. We promised to feed them, if, in return, they would dig some vegetable beds in the same place as the vegetable garden used to be. Much to my amazement, many people actually took us up on the idea and came out to spend a day working in the countryside alongside us. They brought children and beer, and split to their own tasks: a friend whose family own orchards in the US looked after our trees, some experienced gardeners prettified the bed in front of the house and others dug as directed.
By the end of the year, we could see that progress had been made. The interior of the house, whilst still totally lacking in conveniences, was at least fairly clean and dry, and we could walk around the land immediately by the house without losing sight of our feet. It was time to take stock and plan for the next year.
We had also started to understand the life around us in this place that was new to us. A blackbird nested in our outhouse, an eagle owl roosted for a while in our unused woodshed and got the shock of its life as I appeared in the doorway. Deer came to our pond to drink and a family of wild boar scared me when I accidentally got too close to the piglets that were rustling in the undergrowth just a few metres from the house. Mum's firm warning grunt is a sound I will not quickly forget.
The time spent in the house, when either the weather or mosquitos were particularly bad, was enough to make us realise that we needed to do something serious about accomodation if we were serious about spending any time there. It was about this time that the idea of going to live there started to grow on us, initially as a way of justifying the expense, growing later into a 'lifestyle choice'. In the autumn we shut up the house for the winter, accepting that we would not be staying there regularly in the colder months, and started to look online at home designs and talk to architects.
One other thing happened towards the end of the first year: we were burgled a couple of times. No great damage done, nothing of value taken (well, there is nothing of value to take), but it was irritating to have to refix the window that they had taken off to gain access.
Acting in a particularly thrifty manner, I looked at the sort of thing I thought we needed, balked at the price tag and bought the cheapest model I could find. It will do the job, I told myself, may take a bit longer, but my time is free. Wrong on both counts. By saving money, we had also saved on power, and every time I showed some bindweed to it, the machine turned tail and fled, wrapping its little cutter head in strands of weed and grass until it choked and expired. And I was soon to discover that although my time in the countryside is free-of-charge, a job that kept me in town for most of my time made time saving implements a vital necessity.
Unable to bear the thought of buying another piece of almost-identical equipment, I got hold of a scythe, used that to beat back the worst of the weeds and kept them in place with the trimmer. By the end of the year, we had succeeded in clearing an acre or so of reasonably civilized land around the house, including most of the small orchard, a spot for a vegetable garden, and the land on three sides of the pond. I had calloused hands and a permanently sore back.
To celebrate the land that was now visible, we invited a group of friends and colleagues to come and spend a weekend camping with us. We promised to feed them, if, in return, they would dig some vegetable beds in the same place as the vegetable garden used to be. Much to my amazement, many people actually took us up on the idea and came out to spend a day working in the countryside alongside us. They brought children and beer, and split to their own tasks: a friend whose family own orchards in the US looked after our trees, some experienced gardeners prettified the bed in front of the house and others dug as directed.
By the end of the year, we could see that progress had been made. The interior of the house, whilst still totally lacking in conveniences, was at least fairly clean and dry, and we could walk around the land immediately by the house without losing sight of our feet. It was time to take stock and plan for the next year.
We had also started to understand the life around us in this place that was new to us. A blackbird nested in our outhouse, an eagle owl roosted for a while in our unused woodshed and got the shock of its life as I appeared in the doorway. Deer came to our pond to drink and a family of wild boar scared me when I accidentally got too close to the piglets that were rustling in the undergrowth just a few metres from the house. Mum's firm warning grunt is a sound I will not quickly forget.
The time spent in the house, when either the weather or mosquitos were particularly bad, was enough to make us realise that we needed to do something serious about accomodation if we were serious about spending any time there. It was about this time that the idea of going to live there started to grow on us, initially as a way of justifying the expense, growing later into a 'lifestyle choice'. In the autumn we shut up the house for the winter, accepting that we would not be staying there regularly in the colder months, and started to look online at home designs and talk to architects.
One other thing happened towards the end of the first year: we were burgled a couple of times. No great damage done, nothing of value taken (well, there is nothing of value to take), but it was irritating to have to refix the window that they had taken off to gain access.
