First meetings

Today is Thursday 8th July, Astrids' school breaks up at 13:00 tomorrow for 8 weeks of summer holidays.

On Saturday 19th June Astrid had a sleep over at a friends house and Rich and I went on to the farm to meet David the owner. David and his wife Rachel were already there as were the couple who own the two pigs, Mark and Sue. Mark and Sue were clearing their things out of the containers. I felt sad for them as it was between the time of as good as selling the farm last year in November and putting it back on sale this year, about April, that Mark and Sue tried to raise the funds to buy the property. David waited for them. When it became clear that Mark and Sue would not be able to afford to buy it David put it back on the market but they kept their pigs, caravan, a small generator and some other items on the property. Mark I think works with generators and said he would help us to rig ours up.

We went for a short drive down the road to see if the chap who was storing the generator was in, he wasn't. Rich jumped over the 6 foot gate, with ease ( I was impressed), and had a look at the generator. It has been installed in it's own little van, but we still don't have it yet, 8th July.

Anyway all the time during the trip and while walking around the premises to see if we could raise the chap, David is talking about the farm, how he got it, what they did on it and about the neighbours and the people who were going to buy it last year. David bought it from a chap called bill, I think. For a long time, possibly on and off for years, David would ask Bill if he would sell it to him, eventually when David had as good as given up Bill asked David if he still wanted it. Yes he did. It came with a price, of course. David and Rachel reared Shire horses on the land, they had nine, or was it twelve, in the big shed at one stage. One of the horses belonged to Davids', I think mother-in-law but it had to be put down on the property. It was cremated. The family planted a red chestnut tree and sprinkled the remains of the horse around the tree, in it's memory. David asked us to please never cut the tree down. We have no intention of doing so. I'll get a photograph of it here eventually.

David also said that when you have animals they die. He got upset when he related how a mare would reject her foal so they would bottle feed the foal. His son would come home from school looking for and worried about the foal only to hear it had passed away. Rachel and David decided to sell the farm after they each fell off a horse and injured their backs, within six months of each other.

david as good as sold the property to a couple from Scotland last year in November. The lady, Betty, used to walk around the land with David telling him of her dreams of planting trees on it. He thinks she may be a herbalist or naturopath. Betty got 200 trees and sent the list to David. It didn't mean much to him and the only one he remembered was Birch. Well in between first meeting Betty and her husband David and their next meeting, a few months later, David saw the other David and asked Betty if his health was okay as his colour wasnt good. Betty said they were just going to see the doctor the next week. It turned out that Betty's husband David had cancer. David agreed to pull out of the sale. Betty said that if whoever buys the property wants the trees they must phone her. Since then David has said he would phone Betty on our behalf and give her our number. Rich thinks that she probably doesn't have the trees any more as they may not have survived this long. We shall see.

David said that he had been advised to split the property into portions and sell each portion separately. He would thus get a lot more money. He said he could have done that but he didn't want to as he would lose his friends, the neighbours, in the process. He wanted to sell to people he felt would keep the land whole, look after it and get on with the neighbours. David and Rachel have bought a hotel in Paynton, within 200mtres from the shore so they are some distance from the farm. To me it says a lot about a person who, moving so far away from an area, still counts his friends as more important than money. I don't think that, in this day and age, there are too many people who would do that. It also says a lot for the friends. david said that if he couldn't sell at a reasonable price he would have rented the land out and not bought the hotel.

I feel as though the land has and is loved by many people and that Rich and I will help to heal other peoples hurts as well as realise their dreams and our own as we love and make a success of the place. Just before moving to England I had a picture in my mind of owning a B&B and having a few acres of land to grow things on. While we have lived here and I have indulged in that dream a few times I have thought about what I would like to grow and the first thing that always comes up is trees. Tree for food and medicine. As David said, I have picked up on Betty's dream. I see the land as a gift from Richards parents and from our angels and the angels of the land. When Rich and I were waiting to hear whether our offer would be accepted or not we kept reminding ourselves to give it over to the angels. I also asked them to help clear any hinderances to the sale and to help David with his finances but also that whatever the outcome it would be for everyones highest good, even if it meant that we didn't get it. At the same time from the day I first saw the place I believed that we already owned it and I am not a materialistic person that wants to own a lot of stuff or who puts a high score on possessions. It was more a feeling of 'this is ours' rather than of 'I have to have this'.

We still haven't completed. It still isn't actually ours. Astrid has asked a few times if we really are going to get it, but to me they are technicalities delaying things not that things will fall through. There is something about the tenant not having been given a months notice to move out. We hope to exchange and complete on the same say day which won't be this week now.

We will now have to watch our finances as we paid more than we could really, and now we have nothing left to buy equipment with. Rich still had some money left in SA which he has been working on getting over here. That will help with the basics but not with ongoing expenses of council tax mortgage repayments, increase in school fees and a salary cut for both of us from next year because of austerity measures. Then I say to both Rich and myself that if we hadn't paid the extra we wouldn't have the land but also that since the angels gave us the land we can keep giving it back to them to help us develop and finance it.

You may say this is fanciful thinking, and I am not suggesting that Rich and I don't play our part by working, well think what you like and we shall see.