Sunday, February 26, 2006
Year Two - the smallholding idea
During the winter of 2004-5, we found an architect and started work on the design of a new house. It was a time of great excitement, and for a while it looked as though we were actually going to be able to start building in 2005. After much discussion, we settled on a design for a small two bedroom house (with the existing home/shack being available for guests) with a tiny office area upstairs. A huge amount of thought went into the house and into getting everything we need into as small a space as possible. It is to be made from squared logs about 7 inches thick, supplied by a local company that uses environmentally managed woodlands. We would have to take out a mortgage to build it, but if we did a lot of the finishing off work ourselves, we hoped to keep the total mortgage down to less than 40,000 Euros, a figure that we could imagine repaying without too much difficulty each month.
With all this in the background we approached the spring with a new sense of determination. I bought a chainsaw, so I could cut down some apple trees that were in the way of the new house and a stand of young alder trees that spoiled our view to the East. A few weeks after buying it, and before actually using it, one of our neighbours offered to do the cutting for us, leaving us free to work on the garden. Although disappointed that I was not going to use my new toy, I gladly passed that work on for the extra time it would give us. With the buzz of the chainsaw in the background, we dug over the vegetable beds, added compost and planted seeds and the seedlings that had been growing on our windowsill for ages. We hired Rita's daughter and a friend to pick up the bricks and bits of roofing that had been dumped in various places over time and put them all in one place, and planted a herb garden in the bed by the house.
Our enthusiasm was further fired by the beauty of last spring, when the apples blossomed hugely, as can be seen in the picture, and everything around us was green. We decided that we wanted to live there, despite the obvious complications. My work as an international school teacher would be quite impossible, unless I was prepared to commute for over an hour morning and evening. Rita, on the other hand, had already given up her office job and was working as a freelance translator and writer for various organisations. So long as I could pick up enough writing and proofreading (something I am already doing to a small extent) to pay the bills, we could live fairly comfortably from her salary, and my main input to the household would be in the form of food production.
Everything looked rosy: the house plans were travelling through various offices, my modest attempts at food production were modestly successful, and I was learning all the time, our neighbour had cleared a lot of excess brush and apple trees to open up the land around the house, the bank had agreed to a mortgage when we had planning permission and a valuation, and we had even got our less-than-two-year-old working on clearing wood.
And then things started going wrong. Slowly at first and then with increasing momentum. It started at the environmental health office, who insisted on us installing a full septic system, despite our determination to put a composting toilet in the house and reuse waste water. A huge extra expense. Then came the fire department. They could not guarantee to get to a wooden house so far from town (roughly 12km, in reality) so we had to install our own fire fighting equipment - more expense. Then the bad news from the surveyor. It was going to cost more to build the house than it would currently be worth on the market. This also meant that we had no leeway left in our finances. If, as it inevitably would, the house cost more to build than we had planned for, we would be out of money and unable to borrow any more. Then the thieves started breaking in again. With the local police, we worked out that they were visiting on Mondays or Tuesdays, breaking into the house after we had been there for the weekend, helping themselves to any food left in the cupboards, and taking a few items that caught their eye. With nothing of value in the house, we were not too concerned about the present, but could not see how builders would be able to work under such insecure conditions.
Heavy of heart, we started to look at other houses, homes that we could move into more or less immediately, and that had neighbours very close at hand. We still wanted to live in the countryside, at least for a year or so, but no longer had a clear idea how to go about it.
We looked at a few houses, and trawled the internet for months, but up to now, the only property that we have liked was priced so far above market value that it would have meant mortgaging our souls to buy, and left us with little money for repairs. We are unsure how to proceed, and half the point of starting this blog is that by writing down ideas and options as they occur to us will help our decision making. In the meantime, I have signed on for another two years at my school, keeping me in gainful employment until the middle of June 2008. Hopefully we will know how to achive our aims sometime before then.
With all this in the background we approached the spring with a new sense of determination. I bought a chainsaw, so I could cut down some apple trees that were in the way of the new house and a stand of young alder trees that spoiled our view to the East. A few weeks after buying it, and before actually using it, one of our neighbours offered to do the cutting for us, leaving us free to work on the garden. Although disappointed that I was not going to use my new toy, I gladly passed that work on for the extra time it would give us. With the buzz of the chainsaw in the background, we dug over the vegetable beds, added compost and planted seeds and the seedlings that had been growing on our windowsill for ages. We hired Rita's daughter and a friend to pick up the bricks and bits of roofing that had been dumped in various places over time and put them all in one place, and planted a herb garden in the bed by the house.
Our enthusiasm was further fired by the beauty of last spring, when the apples blossomed hugely, as can be seen in the picture, and everything around us was green. We decided that we wanted to live there, despite the obvious complications. My work as an international school teacher would be quite impossible, unless I was prepared to commute for over an hour morning and evening. Rita, on the other hand, had already given up her office job and was working as a freelance translator and writer for various organisations. So long as I could pick up enough writing and proofreading (something I am already doing to a small extent) to pay the bills, we could live fairly comfortably from her salary, and my main input to the household would be in the form of food production.Everything looked rosy: the house plans were travelling through various offices, my modest attempts at food production were modestly successful, and I was learning all the time, our neighbour had cleared a lot of excess brush and apple trees to open up the land around the house, the bank had agreed to a mortgage when we had planning permission and a valuation, and we had even got our less-than-two-year-old working on clearing wood.
And then things started going wrong. Slowly at first and then with increasing momentum. It started at the environmental health office, who insisted on us installing a full septic system, despite our determination to put a composting toilet in the house and reuse waste water. A huge extra expense. Then came the fire department. They could not guarantee to get to a wooden house so far from town (roughly 12km, in reality) so we had to install our own fire fighting equipment - more expense. Then the bad news from the surveyor. It was going to cost more to build the house than it would currently be worth on the market. This also meant that we had no leeway left in our finances. If, as it inevitably would, the house cost more to build than we had planned for, we would be out of money and unable to borrow any more. Then the thieves started breaking in again. With the local police, we worked out that they were visiting on Mondays or Tuesdays, breaking into the house after we had been there for the weekend, helping themselves to any food left in the cupboards, and taking a few items that caught their eye. With nothing of value in the house, we were not too concerned about the present, but could not see how builders would be able to work under such insecure conditions.Heavy of heart, we started to look at other houses, homes that we could move into more or less immediately, and that had neighbours very close at hand. We still wanted to live in the countryside, at least for a year or so, but no longer had a clear idea how to go about it.
We looked at a few houses, and trawled the internet for months, but up to now, the only property that we have liked was priced so far above market value that it would have meant mortgaging our souls to buy, and left us with little money for repairs. We are unsure how to proceed, and half the point of starting this blog is that by writing down ideas and options as they occur to us will help our decision making. In the meantime, I have signed on for another two years at my school, keeping me in gainful employment until the middle of June 2008. Hopefully we will know how to achive our aims sometime before then.
