First Entry

Even though this is not the first posting to this site it is the first time I wrote about Southside farm. It is a copy from an entry I made in a notebook I sometimes write odd things in. It is dated, and was written on,16.04.10 Sunday. Here is most of it with the brackets being corrections made today.

We put an offer in for a piece of land, over 8 acres, on Thursday 29th April and we are still waiting for it to be accepted or rejected. We have lots of plans and thoughts about it. The land has 2 stables and a huge hey shed on it. There is a static caravan that has had most of the innards taken out. Some farming implements are there which we could do with them being left as well as 2 large containers and a diesel generator. The current owners dug a huge hole (pond)+- 50m by 20m at the bottom of the slope in the land. They had dreams of putting carp in it. The slope above it has already started eroding away. This is a bit worrying. Near the 'pond to be'is an oozing spring. Richard has already looked up on the internet how to contain the spring(that is not actually the spring). He also got me to buy a cash book. At the back of it he, and since yesterday, and I have written in pencil a lot of ideas on what needs to be done on it as well as what we could do on it.

As soon as the offer is accepted, we take it in faith that it will be, Rich wants to go there & make an inventory on the farm. He has done a lot of research on the land already. Some time back the land either side (not quite accurate) of the farm was used as land fill so we'll have the water tested. The min. price the water lab charges is £100 but for the list of things we want tested it will come only to about £8 but the people at the lab don't tell us what else they can test for. (We most likely won't have it tested as we believe that the water is fresh).

The main thing the land will be used for is beekeeping. Rich did it in his teens in SA. We went on the school Walkathon 2 weeks ago. On the walk Rich chatted to one of the Dads' in Astrid's class and mentioned the land and his interest in beekeeping. This dad, Mario, phoned Thursday morning to say there was a bee talk that evening and a walk this Sunday. Rich went to the talk, found it very interesting.

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We went on the bee walk that Sunday. It was fun even though it rained a bit and we only saw about 5 bees and one wasp. We collected some wood and have since drilled holes in it and attached it to a fence post in our garden with hopes that some bees will find it and nest there. Rich has also kept contact with Jess, the lady who led the walk. We have become members of 'The Global Bee Society', it supports all types of bees, not just apis melliflora (the usual henoey bee).

The writing on that day continued with some irrelevant stuff and then picks up on the farm again.

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Now for the first time, I can understand how disappointed people can be when they hope to buy a house, or land, or maybe anything really, where they have had very real and attainable dreams about what they would do when they acquired this house/ land/ whatever and then find they can not buy it.

Actually I have missed a lot out as there are things Rich doesn't want me to mention but I have written this as the 'dreams' and pictures I had for Southside were so real it, at that time, seemed unlikely that we would not get the land. Well we have not exchanged yet so there is still a possibility (slim though it is) that we may not get it. Of course some dreams are not manageable or practical, others take a lot of hard work and others a lot of time and or money. However buying Southside farm is to me a positive dream come true. No matter what we achieve or not, just having the place and being able to camp on it, the peace and privacy, will be great.