Happy New Year

And sorry about the lack of posts! We're now in our new house and currently have no Internet or TV, had a manic Christmas driving round seeing friends and family and only now will our life start to get back to normal - well until the baby turns up!


The move was quite rapid with lots of helpers, although I was told off by quite a few people that I shouldn't have made my wife move at 8 months pregnant, but everyone could see why as the new house is ideal for us to bring a family up in.

[Picture looking across two of our fields at our new house- a 1950's semi]

I've got my container all set up to house my tools, made a few minor alterations to the house and unpacked lots of boxes, changed the fuel tank, put furniture back together - it pretty much felt like home the first night there.

The house is a cosy little 1950's semi-detached with open fires and a nice layout, we've then got a good sized garden and 5 acres to the side and below. This is split into three fields, all to play with, divided up with some beautiful large oak trees, a few larch, ash and willow with some patchy Hawthorne hedging. I've already had my brother there altering a few trees to allow a tractor in the bottom field!

The next year is going to be interesting! A new baby(really exciting), hopefully lots of work coming up, a smallholding to plan and get going and a new veg garden to start growing.

I'll be posting all my self sufficiency type stuff on my other blog http://keepingmyroots.blogspot.com/ which will now involve more than growing veg and a few chickens. Hopefully we can now produce more of our own meat as well as plant an orchard with a big veg garden right on our doorstep. I'll be trying to preserve as much produce as possible and hopefully we're become less dependant on the "Big Machine".

This blog will still detail what I get up to with wood (as well as the work we've got to do on the big oaks (I hope you're reading this Dave)) and I'm going to push hard for interesting and varied work on a wide variety of projects.

Thank you all for following me over the last 12 months or so, having this blog and reading everyone else has made me so more passionate about what I do (if thats possible) and its made me want to learn much more. Thanks again.

This is going to be a good year.