In January of this year my wife and I decided to address our work/life balance that we both felt had become out of kilter with our dreams and aspirations. (To be honest we were both bored with our jobs and desperate for new challenges)

It’s been a lifelong dream of ours to own a modest small holding on which we could keep a few chickens, grow our own organic fresh vegetables and generally reduce our stress levels.

Although we are lucky enough to already own a reasonable sized house with a small veg garden we always hankered after more space. Living in leafy Bucks is cool but it’s almost impossible to find a plot that we could afford, so we had no choice but to look further afield.

Eventually after much searching we found a small 3 bed bungalow sitting on half and acre of land in Hampshire. Bingo! .. it ticked all the boxes and was affordable (just). Ideally we would have had a little more land but if we can make this work we can always look for more in the future.

It was about the same time as I was told I was about to be made redundant which kinda forced our hand somewhat but if I’m honest it’s the push we both needed. It’s now the end of May, we own the property in Hampshire and have started work on creating the dream.

We’ve have a plan that includes building a polytunnel, creating a kitchen garden, keeping chickens (only for the eggs) and generating some of our energy needs using Solar and Wind. So as you can see we have a lot to do but it’s going to be a blast.

We’d like to share our experiences with you and if you want to comment then please do and we promise to provide a response.

As the blog comes together we will add pics videos and the odd podcast to keep you up to date on progress.

Warm regards.

jR.