Change

A lot has changed in our lives in the last year. Firstly, after years of planning & dreaming, and always failing to action those plans, we moved from a horrible council estate that we'd been stuck on for 11 years, to a close, but totally different, rural-bordered town. After many disappointing false starts where we'd selected towns, fallen in love with areas, houses and jobs and then not been able to move(I think this happened at least 4 times over the years), I finally managed to pull it off in the space of 4 weeks last May. So, we moved from this:

To this:

Unfortunately, my new garden is North facing and after a complete disaster this summer where nothing grew or ripened at all, bar about 5 tomatoes, I'd all but given up on my vegetable growing that I'd enjoyed in our previous tiny garden.  So, when I was travelling through the local village of Runwell a month ago and saw a 'To Let' sign at the gate to a small meadow, the wheels in my head started turning. I called the agents who told me that I needed to put in a bid to rent the land, but after asking a few questions I found out that there was a chance it had to stay as permanent pasture and couldn't be turned over, so I decided not to bother bidding.

A month later I had a voicemail asking me if I was still interested, as they had received no other bids and were happy for me to turn over the land and start a smallholding. A few visits and phonecalls later and hopefully by next week I will be the proud renter of this: