Small steps to big dreams

Hello blog land :) Here I am again. I could blog about our silly cars that have decided still not to work, the many snow covered mile that me and Brian (mainly Brian) have trekked for parts and food, the central heating dying or the trauma of the Christmas tree removal but I won't. As you can tell from that one sentence it would all make for stressful reading and writing so I won't subject you to that. Instead I will blog all about the most exciting thing that is happening right now, our new house! We have just found out that it's all gone through OK and we should start renting on the first of Feb (hooray!). And here it is....
The main thing we love about it is the space. All the rooms are lovely and big which makes a change from the 2 bed flat we're in now. It was fine for Brian in his bachelor days but now with Hayley and me moving in and Cal being there a lot of the time it's a bit of a squish to say the least! This really feels like the first step on the road to our small holding. It may be a long way off but every little step makes it seem more real. Our new house now gives us the room for chickens, fruit and veg and even has the massive bonus of a mature apple tree that I'm so looking forward to getting our hands on :) You can see it here with the bench under which I'm sure we'll spend many an evening on.
We are planning on spending about a year here at the moment and then will look at buying our own place so that when our saving plan ends in 5 years we'll also have the equity in a house hopefully to give us the best chance of finding the perfect farm house and land. We are seeing the next five years as a good opportunity to learn as much as we can about small holding and running a B&B before we jump into the deep end. Our friends and family are helping loads already with brilliant books and hopefully the chicken keeping course next week will be the first of many courses. I'm really glad I've started this blog now as a diary of our trials and tribulations on the way to our dream.

The picture I'll leave you with today is a reminder of summer in the middle of all this snow. Brian took it at the camp we go to every May and September with 60 others. It's probably in my top 5 favourite places in the world. Brian is stood outside our tent when he took the pic of me having a conversation with the cows over the stream between us. I can't wait to be back there again.