One Year on

So what has happened over the last year? Well when we moved down we couldn't decide whether to sell our house back east or whether to rent it out in case we weren't happy down here or couldn't find work and had or wanted to go back. With hindsight of course we wish we had tried to sell our house first (this was November 07, just as things were starting to get sticky), but hindsight is a wonderful thing!

We managed to rent our place out, but couldn't find anywhere we liked to rent down here. Luckily our friends have two holiday cottages so we were able to take one of these over the winter while we found our own place. After 6 months there was no doubt that we wanted to stay and I was starting to get work down here training, we put our house on the market (still with the tenants in) and found an old farmhouse to rent. 10 months later of course our house back east has had no interest whatsoever so we have taken it off the market and still have the tenants in there (just).

Our house here is wonderful. It is 300 years old, with wiggly (low) ceilings, wiggly floors, wiggly everything really. Up until about 5 years ago it was a diary farm (like so many farms round here that now aren't dairy anymore). It still has the old milking equipment and is quite sad to think of what it must have been like here. It has 50 acres (although we don't rent these, another farmer grazes his cattle here in the summer) and wonderful views (and wonderful wind too). We have had to get used to no gas and to heating by wood burners only. We have a small veggie plot (which was more like a bog garden last year) and 4 hens who lay wonderful eggs, can't imagine buying eggs from supermarkets anymore. We have also had to get used to being organised on the shopping, it is a pain to just 'pop out' for a pint of milk.

We are 30 minutes from Dartmoor and 30 minutes from the coast. I think we have got used to living here and it doesn't feel like being on holiday anymore, except when we go to the beach and then I feel like being on holiday. It is amazing to think that we can sip a pint of beer watching the sun go down over the Atlantic and then pop back home to put the dinner on (this is a bit tricky now with the chickens as they go to bed at sundown and we have to be here to lock them up so Mr Fox doesn't have them for his dinner).

We hope to find something to buy in the near future with a bit of land so we can have our livestock and also we would like one or two holiday cottages to provide a bit of extra income. Mark has a few projects up his sleeve and I am getting more and more training work coming through (all government funded so free to employers - under certain circumstances) so we are keeping the wolf (and foxes) from the door.