It’s been a while…
So we’ve been in this space for over 3 years now and we were so excited about sharing every part of our existence with you - so where have we been?
One thing we didn’t take into account, was how difficult this move would be. Now, I must be grateful for many things. We live in a beautiful house in the South of France. It is what dreams are made of. We are together and healthy - something we too often take for granted, but we remind ourselves of regularly.
BUT this has been difficult on so many levels. We have been scrabbling to find work. We both have part time jobs, which we love, but it doesn’t pay enough to cover our bills. We could take more hours and find more work - but every second that we are away from the farm, feels like we are walking away from what we came here to do. Every hour we are not here, we are not making new beds, sowing seeds, planting and harvesting vegetables - so we struggle on, doing what we can, when we can.
Our house is a maze of mini building sites and half done jobs which need finishing. The idea of taking on this project was to be with our children more and often we find ourselves choosing the house or the farm over valuable time with them.
Living the dream is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be! We are constantly making tiny footsteps in the right direction. But it is hard. When I look back at photo’s, it feels like we have done so much - but at the time, progress seems frustratingly slow. We moved in and had to start from scratch. Our level of knowledge on farming / no dig / permaculture / animals etc was critically low and we have gained a vast amount of knowledge in all of these areas, but it’s taken years of reading, You Tube and experimenting to get to this point. We did not move into a ready made farm either, we have had to build beds and invest time in creating a living soil, which will improve each year.
We’ve had many long days starting early and finishing late and falling in an out of bed exhausted.
We wanted to share everything with our friends and followers, but to create a great insta post takes more time than we have if we want to actually do the work.
Year on year, it is improving in many ways. Our priorities are becoming clearer. Our drive and focus are where we need them to be and we have a clearer vision of what is ahead for us - but it has taken time and it is still taking time. We are still finding our feet and drinking up information.
Are we through the difficulties? No. Not at all. We are still very much at the beginning, but we have laid some solid foundations since our arrival and I feel like 2025 is going to be an interesting and successful year for us as a business.