A quick post on the eve of my leaving our home in Worcs/Herefordshire to live with several other families in North Cornwall on a 30 acre smallholding with the long term aim of becoming as self-sufficient as possible.

We’re all very excited but also sad to be saying farewell to some of the most lovely people we have had in our lives since moving here just 9 months ago. In some ways our move here was necessary for us to realise that the rural life was something we wanted long-term. The people we have mixed with here are all people who have livestock and a deep love of country ways.

My poor eldest daughter has sobbed herself to sleep tonight so very sad about leaving the nextdoor neighbour’s cat behind so I have said to her that she may have a pet rabbit when we get the keys to the cottage we will be living in.

I am going down to the farm without Bealers but with the three children and will be staying in our caravan which is all rigged up and ready to be stayed in (washbags, toys, books, cot, pushchair etc all there and waiting for us). Next week the cottage which we are to live in will stop being rented out to holiday makers and so we will be able to walk across the courtyard and start sleeping in it. I have a little sketch on squared paper of where I think some of our furniture will fit when it eventually finds its way down to Cornwall but I suspect I have been over ambitious and will need to revise these plans a little.

I’m so excited about having so many interesting new projects to get involved in (permaculture design and the soon to be launched LAND initiative, seed saving and swapping, building projects, insulation projects, reed-bed water cleansing, rain water harvesting, The Soil Association’s Community Supported Agriculture program) and of course a ready made new community to enjoy.

One member of the community – Steve happened to be in our existing neighbourhood this week and came over for a brief cup of coffee. He is lovely and funny. It was great to see him but also for him to see where we currently are and see what kind of place we are moving from to be members of the farm community.

Very happy to be starting yet another adventure with my lovely husband and my three special littles and hope to keep people updated with interesting nuggets from time to time.

Next week I shall be moving away from our current home to start our new life at the recently formed south west of England eco-village. It is really very early days for the community because up until now although they have had great ideas and plans on how to become self-sufficient in food, energy and water but there has been a lack of people to do the work and finances to help shift things along.

We will be among a large ‘new wave’ of new people joining the group. Since the original eleven people bought the smallholding in 2007, two have moved out, a new family of three has moved in to become ‘stage one’ members and a new baby has been born.

At the same time as our move down, another young family of five will be moving in as well as another family of three so the new wave influx will double the original population and will hopefully provide new energy, new ideas, new ways of getting things done, new finance and also just loads more muscle power (to weed the veg patch, dig a reed-bed water purification system, insulate current houses against the brisk Atlantic winter winds and to build office spaces in one of the barns, think about wind turbines, allotments for the local community etc).

We’re really happy to be moving in. The decision process for us has been a long one but now we are hoping to make the farm our new home for at least a year while the other community members and we decide whether or not it will be somewhere we will want to live permanently.

This week a couple who were very serious about moving in at the same time as us made what seemed to be the very sudden decision not to join the community after all. They were kind enough to share the reasons that made them realise that this community would not be a suitable place for them to make their home in a long email to us all.

Most of the reasons were around the fact that the community was not yet operating in a self-sufficient, sustainable manner. At the moment meals that are cooked and eaten communally are often made using some fresh veg from thew garden but also augmented by ingredients from the local supermarket, these ingredients often include meat products from a questionable source (ie. not organic), the rain water harvesting and reuse system is not yet in place and although we have plans to build lots of composting toilets for people to use in order to save  flushing litres of drinking water away each time the use the loo the system is still only in the planning stages. The couple (who I was very much looking forward to being neighbours with as they have so many years of gardening and woodland management knowledge) are also very concerned with the way that there is not a community work ethos and various people work on various land-based projects when they fancy but there is not a need for everyone on site to ensure they have spent some time working on a community project. For this couple who have spent many years living lightly on the earth as vegans and commune members this would have been to hard to bear.

For us, however, the fact that the community is a work-in-progress project is very much one of the attractions.

We are hoping to learn how to be self-sufficient at the same pace as the others who have decided to live there. We are hoping to gain huge amounts of rich experience by partaking in so many projects and hope that very soon with so many great minds and so much human energy available the community will move from becoming self-sufficient to being truly sustainable and can proudly call itself a well functioning eco-village.