This 3 bedroomed detached fully modernized stone built cottage with the option of 4 Acres of land is currently for rent in Llanuwchllyn, Gwynedd in Snowdonia, North Wales. The property is located in a glorious rural position, with views towards Bala Lake, and 3 mountain ranges, the Arenig, the Arans and the Berwyns.

The property is totally refurbished throughout and accommodation comprises a large open plan sitting/dining room with wood burning stove, part ceramic tiled floor and part oak floor with spiral staircase to studio. There is a fully fitted oak kitchen and seperate utility room, 3 double bedrooms with an ensuite wet room to the master bedroom. The property is heated by under floor heating.

The property is surrounded by 15 acres of land with the option of taking 4 acres or just the garden and plenty of off road parking. It is ideal for someone who would like to be ‘far from the madding crowd’. The location of the property enjoys an abundance of wildlife, birds, golf and outdoor activities, and is in an area of rural beauty and tranquility.

The property would be ideal for those seeking to live a more rural lifestyle and is currently being marketed by Lifestyle Lets Letting Agents, for more information please Click Here.

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Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Talk of supporting local producers and British growers is widespread, but when it comes to finding ways to sell their goods many market gardeners and smallholders still face major challenges. Sarah Irving finds out about Carshalton Lavender and how this revival of an old agricultural tradition has survived.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the chalky, gently undulating hills now covered by South London suburbs like Carshalton, Wallington and Waddon was blue with lavender – Lavendula Vera. The area was known as the ‘lavender capital of the world’ and the industry supported hundreds if not thousands of jobs, albeit low-waged manual ones.

Every August, the harvesters cut carried bundles of cut lavender to distilling rooms and the resulting essential oil was shipped to perfumers and toiletry manufacturers across Europe. Lavender wasn’t just used for cosmetic purposes – it went into household detergents, disinfectants, insect repellants and food. With around 150 to 200 pounds of the cut plants needed to yield a pound of oil, huge areas were needed to meet demand. Forget Provence – since the sixteenth Carshalton had been the place to go for this versatile herb.

The idea of growing lavender on a commercial scale in the UK is not as unusual as many might think. Existing lavender-growing projects around the UK stretch from Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and Kent in the south to North Yorkshire and even Scotland.

But with the growth of artificial replacements for many of lavender’s uses, and increasingly available exotic scents for cosmetic use, the lavender industry declined and the fields fell victim to the urban sprawl of London – although the legacy survived in road names like Lavender Vale in Wallington.

But in the late 1990s BioRegional, the South London social enterprise which was responsible for the BedZed eco-home development, teamed up with local organisations and volunteers to revive the lavender industry. They picked a site at Stanley Road allotments which had become a problem area of derelict land and fly-tipping.

Determined to benefit all sections of the community, BioRegional teamed up with a local prison, Downview, to create a nursery where cuttings from local varieties, often collected from gardens on land where lavender fields had grown, were tended by prisoners being trained in horticultural skills. Prisoners on day release also helped to clear the allotment site and ready it for planting.

Since 1999 the lavender field has been a summer attraction in the area. Community access days engage local people, who can visit the site, learn about the local varieties grown there, help weed the rows and pick their fill of the flowers to take home. In April 2009, Carshalton Lavender also held London’s first eco-dating event, pairing up local singles in ten-minute weeding sessions – a useful variation on speed dating!

Making it pay

Although much of the work at Carshalton Lavender is still done by volunteers, the project increasingly aims to cover its costs. It has teamed up with Naturally Thinking, a local manufacturer of toiletries and cosmetics, to market pure lavender essential oil as well as a range of Carshalton Lavender branded bath and body products.

Because Naturally Thinking is an established business it can offer Carshalton Lavender access to distillation equipment without the project having to invest in expensive machinery, and it also provides a market for Carshalton lavender oil as a raw material. Naturally Thinking’s sells its products via a local shop and online retail, and wholesales to the local heritage centre. The essential oil is sold by BioRegional itself, in local wholefood shops and from stalls at Carshalton Lavender open days at the Stanley Road site.

Maintaining and marketing Carshalton Lavender demands the time and effort of dozens of local people, from the volunteers on the committee which manages the field to the local people who help out in myriad ways and the workers who distill the oil and make it into luxury products. Replanting the rows – which have lasted for ten years, three more than customary for commercial lavender production in Provence – will be a major task. But having drawn together a diverse range of people and engaged both the not-for-profit and business sectors, the project looks to have a good chance of success.

Click on the links below to find out more:
Click here to visit the Carshalton Lavender not-for-profit Community Project website.
Click here to visit the Bioregional website.
Click here to visit the Naturally Thinking website.

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Article by Sarah Irving for Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Derek and Jeannie

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the publishing of the book ‘A Gull On The Roof’ by Derek Tangye. Who is Derek Tangye you may well ask and what has he to do with smallholding? You may not have previously heard of him as Derek and his Wife Jeannie long ago fulfilled their smallholding dreams and are no longer with us. However they live on in Derek’s many books which often complete with illustrations by Jeannie, chronicle the fulfilment of their dream to move to Cornwall and live a humbler more self sufficient lifestyle and work the land. The books may have been written a generation ago but the dream remains the same.

Derek and Jeannie both left high paying jobs in London to rent a small cottage and some land in Cornwall and to try and fulfil their dream. They started as most of us do as dreamers with no real experience and learnt from their mistakes. They had simply holidayed in Cornwall and fallen in love with the idea of living a simpler life closer to nature, but they lived out their lives there in a way that most of us would envy.

The books are full of their trials and tribulations as they try to make their new life work, but they are also full of the joys of living and fulfilling a dream and of their obvious love of nature. Their previous lives working in London are a stark contrast to their simple life in Cornwall, away from the trappings of money and success. But their love for their new home and their new life shines through in every book, even when things are not running quite so smoothly as they had hoped.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the very first instalment of what have now become known as the ‘Minack Chronicles’, the Friends of Minack Society , a group of people brought together by their common love of Derek’s books, are launching a new book to recelebrate the books and to introduce them to a whole new generation of readers.

‘The Minack Chronicles Revisited’ not only includes a special 50th Anniversary edition of the very first book ‘A Gull On The Roof’, but tells the story of Derek and Jeannie Tangye themselves. With well over 200 pages, it includes the fascinating background story of Derek and Jeannie, of how they met and came to Minack, interviews with their friends and characters that featured in the Chronicles, together with an appreciation of the beautiful part of West Cornwall that became their home and later Oliver Lane Nature Reserve.

So if you are like many of us just waiting for the right time to fulfil your own dream of owning or renting a smallholding, why not take inspiration from The Minack Chronicles and immerse yourself in the world of Minack.

‘The Minack Chronicles Revisited’ is due to be released in March, but you can pre order your copy now by visiting the Friends of Minack Society website and registering to obtain your copy.

For most of us the dream of self sufficiency, owning and running a smallholding or even a small piece of our own land takes years to achieve. There are financial commitments to consider and often family commitments prevent us from living our dream until the timing is somewhere near ‘perfect’. Another factor for many people and one that stops them taking that bold leap to self sufficiency is the basic fear of it not working out. It can be hard to find people who have taken the leap and succeeded to ask them about their experiences or ask the sort of in depth questions we’d love to ask.

There is nothing more inspiring than reading about people who share our dreams and have taken the leap of faith to make them possible and succeeded. Reading about their day to day lives and the difference the change in lifestyle has made to them can be the deciding factor in deciding whether you make the move or not. It can also be a relief to find you are not just a ‘dreamer’ but are among many who fully intend to one day make that life change to owning a little piece of heaven and trying at least if only partly to work for yourself.

We thoroughly recommend The Minack Chronicles having been inspired by them decades ago ourselves, to anyone looking to start a life of self sufficiency and away from the madding crowd.

Click here to visit the Friends of Minack Society website – a website and forum filled with information about Derek and Jeannie, their books and their lives at Minack and to register and pre order the new book.

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Once winter chill sets in, you start looking for things that you can do around the smallholding that don’t require you to work out in the damp and wind. At the same time, temperatures are usually mild enough in most of the UK for smallholders in the drier English counties of Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk to take advantage of dry spells to plant out winter hardy seedlings of spinach, cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower.

If you live in the wetter areas of the UK or are plagued with the snow this year, December is best left to laying plans for the next year. Unless you get an unexpected break in the weather, many building projects just don’t make sense, unless they involve refurbishing the indoors.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Before you start laying plans for the coming year, take a look back at the year drawing to a close. What worked? What didn’t? Did you have a budget? If you did, how well did your expenditures agree with that budget?

Now, look at the coming year. Make a list of things you would like to do in the next year.

 Do you plan on a selling produce at market? Then go through the seed catalogues and select the crops you want to grow. If a certain variety has done well for you in the past, stick with it. For example, the tomato Early Girl does well in areas where summers are short and cool. You want to place your seed order this month so you have seed in time to start seedlings in January and February for the cold-weather crops and February and March for warmer weather crops.

 Do you plan on selling eggs? Then work up a budget that includes all the costs you will have, chicken coop repairs, feed, ground oyster shells or other calcium source, etc. Make sure you will be able to turn a profit.

 Develop a garden layout for the produce you plan to grow. This includes planning crop rotations and succession plantings.

 Start looking for new marketing ideas, especially if you want to expand your market. Maybe you have products that you can produce on your small holding that could become value added products—fresh strawberries can become jam, syrup, dried nuggets, blueberries can become jam, syrup, dried berries and frozen pies, apples can become chunky applesauce, butter, dried rings, fruit leather and frozen pies. If you develop flavour intense recipes using wholesome ingredients, you can ask higher prices than the grocery stores.

 Develop some definite marketing plans based on your goals.

 Develop an action plan. Schedule when each task needs to be done and assign someone to do it. Now is the time to develop the general overview for the year and then break everything down into jobs that need to be completed within certain time frames.

 Most importantly, make sure you draft a budget that includes all of your overhead. Remember to include all the business costs—petrol for the small tractor and/or rototiller, seeds and seedlings, bedding for the animals, mulch for the fruit trees, etc. Only by taking the time to look at your real costs can you develop a plan that turns your smallholding into a profit-making venture.

December is the perfect time to look back over the previous year. And it is the best time to look toward the coming year. You will never regret taking the time during this holiday centered month to start preparing for the coming prosperous year.

Wishing you Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year.

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Article by Denise Rutledge for Rural Smallholdings Magazine

This 3 bedroomed detached bungalow in a rural setting with approx 1 acre of land, plus use of adjoining paddock is currently for rent in Llanharry, Wales.

The property is newly painted and carpeted and comprises 3 bedrooms, fitted kitchen, bathroom with seperate shower, spacious lounge, huge gardens and also benefites from LPG gas central heating.

The property would be ideal for those with equestrian interests and/or those seeking to live a more rural lifestyle and is currently being marketed by Just Lettings Letting Agents, for more information please Click Here.

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Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

For all those harvesting the crops on their smallholdings, allotments and in their gardens this month, we’d just like to wish you all a Happy Halloween. We decided to try growing squashes for the first time this year and have had great success. We were put off in the past because we thought they would be hard work, need too much watering and so have been putting off growing them for a few years, but they really were easy and very productive.

We’d also like to share this inspiring video from Ecoworks Nottingham which shows their amazing squash harvest this year, all 2.5 tonnes of them! Ecoworks activities are based on Community Gardens and the FRESH Market Garden and Training Centre, both on the Hungerhill Gardens Allotment Site in St. Ann’s, Nottingham.

Ecoworks is a community organisation with the interests of people and the environment at its heart. They exist to promote the interests and personal development of people who are socially disadvantaged by delivering activities connected with the conservation, restoration and enhancement of the environment.

Click here to visit the Ecoworks website to find out more about:

• Organic vegetable and fruit growing
• Healthy eating courses
• Accredited horticulture training
• Craft workshops including strawbale building and willow weaving
• Chemical-free veg boxes
• Harvest Cafe (vegetarian and vegan catering van)
• Volunteering opportunities (growing, IT, cooking, admin, catering, stalls and festival events)
• Mental Health Support on their community gardens. Also the home of Straw Bale Building.

Still looking for Your Smallholding? Visit Greenshifters for the latest smallholdings for sale, rent and exchange.

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

In January 2010, a new European Union grant was announced, aimed at improving rural internet access in Wales. Despite advances in broadband and wireless technology, many rural areas in the UK still have problems with the internet access which is increasingly vital for individual communications and business development.

Even in the twenty-first century, some very remote rural homesteads in the UK have only been connected to the electricity and telephone grids for a couple of years. And with broadband signals only able to travel along conventional phone lines for a short distance, special technology and planning is needed to get the furthest-out smallholders and farmers online. Isolated Welsh lamb and dairy farmers have been forced to give up trying to sell to some processing companies and wholesalers, because as email becomes the standard means of communication for most businesses, they simply can’t keep up.

Rural Communications Solutions, a Cumbria-based firm specialising in getting internet access to rural ‘not-spots,’ cites bypassing by mainstream internet service providers as a problem. Getting services to remote houses, villages and smallholdings simply isn’t cost-effective for web providers geared to supplying cheap broadband to urban mass markets. Suppliers like RCS have to find ways to get strong wireless internet signals to remote sites, without resorting to the kind of controversial and unsightly aerials used by the mobile phone networks.

But as Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy first minister of Wales, said of the EU grant, “In the 21st Century, it is vital that people in all parts of Wales gain access to a high-speed internet service, and it is essential that businesses are fully equipped with the right information communications technology (ICT) infrastructure to compete successfully in a global market.” As well as the ability to access the web, good internet connections also offer rural communities the opportunity to run their own websites, communicate via email, and save on phone costs by using VOIP (voice over internet protocol) calls.

And for smallholders looking for ways to maintain a livelihood from rural locations, the internet is becoming non-negotiable. According to Isobel Davies of Izzy Lane, a designer clothes company which uses wool from sheep kept on her own small farm in Yorkshire, “the website is vital for sales. I think any smallholder will find that if you try to sell through shops the mark-up they have to put on products can make them unsaleable. With clothes, retailers often mark up 250% so if you have a high-quality, high-cost product to start with, the prices become ridiculous and in a recession no shop is going to take that kind of risk. Which is why the internet is brilliant, because if you sell direct to consumers you retain that margin instead.”

Chris Bailey, who with wife Suzie runs Whithorn Lodge B&B from his smallholding in Dumfries & Galloway, also depends on the internet for much of his trade. “Most people come because they see the website, they see that we have the rare breed animals running free range and that’s what sets us apart.” Although the Baileys do get some B&B trade via word-of-mouth and repeat custom, being able to access the internet is key to their business, and to many other rural enterprises. And this is a tool which is still unavailable to many inhabitants of rural areas, especially in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the North and West of England.

Still looking for Your Smallholding? Visit Greenshifters for the latest smallholdings for sale, rent and exchange.

Article by Sarah Irving for Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Photo Courtesy of East Devon Guide

This 4/5 bedroomed Farmhouse, with useful outbuildings and about 10 acres of pasture in 2 enclosures/paddocks is currently available to rent in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

The unfurnished 4/5 bed farmhouse comprises fitted kitchen, utility, lounge, living room, and bathroom. The smallholding is positioned privately about 14 miles North of Carmarthen with stunning views and will be available early/mid September, viewings taken now.

The property offers an ideal opportunity for someone seeking a greener and more rural lifestyle and is being promoted by Cornerstones Letting Agents (Click here to view full particulars)

Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Interest in local and heritage varieties of fruit trees has grown significantly in recent years, according to Hamid Habibi of the Keepers fruit tree nursery in Kent. Sarah Irving talks to him about growing apple trees and why growing fruit is a good path for the smallholder to go down.

“The growth of interest in local produce has motivated people with a bit of land to try and grow fruit,” says Hamid Habibi. “Fruit is a crop which you can produce as a semi-amateur, if you like – it’s not like trying to grow wheat or other major crops. It can be done on a small scale.”

Habibi has run Keepers Nursery for nearly 20 years, since founder Mike Cook retired.

“It started as a hobby for Mike,” Habibi explains. “He worked for Morley Research Station and was a fruit tree enthusiast. After a while, people started asking him for unusual varieties of apple trees – old varieties or new ones which weren’t commercially available – and he built up a reputation. My wife and I got involved in 1991 because we had some land that the nursery could use.”

Over almost twenty years, Habibi has witnessed the growth of interest in heritage apple varieties and in locally sourced food more generally. He attributes public interest in growing food to rising food prices and then to the current recession.

“Apparently people are spending a lot more time in their own gardens instead of going out and spending money,” he says. “Obviously it makes sense for economic reasons, but its also more interesting to grow things that you then eat.”

This widespread engagement with growing food has meant that Keepers Nursery and other selling a broader range of edible plants have bucked the recessionary trend. “We’ve seen a surge in demand in the last three or four years,” says Hamid Habibi. “And the reports I’m hearing from fellow nurseries is that many of them have had a bumper year too. It’s only December now, which is fairly early, but we’ve already almost sold out of many of our trees this year.”

For aspiring fruit growers – whether smallholders or individuals looking for just one or two orchard trees for their garden – Habibi has some words of advice.

“If you go to your local general nursery or garden centre, the choice you get is extremely limited still and it is mainly pot-grown trees, which are quite honestly not as good as bare root apple trees,” he says. And despite Keepers Nursery’s huge collection of over 600 varieties of apple trees, as well as pears and plums, he urges new growers not to “get too hung up” on the idea of growing local or heritage varieties.

“It’s most important that you pick trees which are going to give a good crop, that are disease resistant and which have nice apples that you and your children are going to like,” he says. “That’s not necessarily going to be local varieties – some are very good, but some are quite indifferent. Quite a lot of commercial varieties are also not that good for small-scale growing, because they don’t have resistance to disease and need spraying. So for an allotment or smallholding, by all means go for a local variety – but only if it fits those other requirements.”

Despite this pragmatic advice, Habibi remains concerned about the fate of some of Britain’s heritage fruit varieties. “We are lucky in this country in that there is still a big national collection at Brogdale, although it’s constantly under threat of extinction from lack of funding,” he says. Keepers Nursery, says Habibi, continues “to try to fill that gap,” supplying unusual types to local authorities, National Trust properties and conservation organisations with a commitment to preserving the huge diversity of Britain’s traditional fruit trees.

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Article by Sarah Irving for Rural Smallholdings Magazine

In case you missed our previous posting, the BBC are currently seeking participants for an exciting new Smallholding/Farming series to be shown on BBC2. There is still time, just, to apply so if think you could fit the bill and be one of the couples they are seeking, apply now by sending an email with your name to:

farm@splashmediatv.co.uk

an application form will then be emailed out to you. The deadline for applications is 28th April 2010. Good luck!

The series will feature ten couples or pairs (married couples / siblings / friends etc.) who would like to grasp the opportunity to change their lives forever and run a farm/small holding. The programme will see the ten couples learn all the basics they need before decamping to a farm in the beautiful British countryside where they will be challenged in all areas of farm life, from animal husbandry to coping with the unpredictable summer weather.

They are looking for couples of all ages and relationships (married couples / siblings / friends etc.) who are serious about wanting to change their lives and who will relish farm life. Whether it’s a love of animals, a passion for gardening, an interest in sustainability and food provenance or a general lust for all things outdoors, they want to hear from anyone who thinks they’ve got what it takes to take on this lifestyle-transforming project.

They are especially looking for people who may already have some experience in working or volunteering with animals, food or nature, just some kind of demonstrated interest that would make them a credible and hopefully successful small holding partnership.

The series will culminate in the winning pair getting the opportunity to live and work on their own small farm.

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Article by Rural Smallholdings Magazine