My Goals

Is it possible for a hard working family, earning basic living wages to one day afford life on a smallholding? Follow our journey to find out! 

Our family is very lucky (I say luck, really it has been hard work that got us here) to have a home where we feel safe and to have access to a small garden and allotment, the dream though is to one day have a smallholding or homestead as they call them in other countries. A house we can call home surrounded by land, enough to grow our own food, keep some animals and live life as self sufficiently as possible. As someone who is passionate about environmentalism and conservation there are projects I would love to undertake that I feel would have a really positive impact on nature and wildlife too. In order to undertake those projects though we would need to invest in land. 

At the moment this isn't something we as a family can afford to do but in the meantime we are living as frugally as possible in order to save towards this dream future. We are also learning the skills we would need for the dream life such as growing foods, preserving food, collecting water, caring for animals and looking at ways we can be as self sufficient as possible. Essentially living the urban homestead life. 

It can be challenging and it does feel sometimes like we will never get to where we want to be, no matter how hard we work and how much we save but we have learnt to be thankful for each day and focus on the positives in life. We have each other and a roof over our heads. 

A few times we've seen properties with land that would be perfect for our dream lifestyle, unfortunately though they are priced out of our budget, even when considering the sale of the property we currently own. Property prices in the UK have been rising rapidly over the past year or so, especially rural ones. When considering buying a property with land I've been thinking about how we can earn a living from it. I've put together a business plan containing the various income streams and truly believe that we will be able to earn enough to pay the mortgage that we'd need to take out. My husband would continue in his job and I would bring my small businesses with me to the land. I'd have to adapt them slightly but I know I could use my range of skills to continue elements of the businesses on site. The trouble is banks are not so willing to lend at the moment, they are looking for large deposits too. So even with the ideas, the plans and will at the moment we just aren't able to take the next step. 

I hope one day to be able to write a post and film a vlog about us moving into our dream smallholding in the UK but for now I'll be sharing posts and vlogs about life as an urban homesteader. Growing and preserving food, learning about self sufficiency and everything homestead related from our little maisonette above our high street shop with out little courtyard garden. 

If you would like to help us get a step closer to achieving our goal, without spending a single penny there are two ways you could help:
1. Please head over to out YouTube channel, click subscribe and watch some of the videos. 
2. Please read some more of the posts here on the blog and click on some of the advert links. You don't need to buy anything, just clicking on them helps us. 

Doing either or both of these things is helping our little family get one step closer to achieving our goals without you having to part with any money. 

We'll be sharing monthly updates on the progress we are making towards our life goal. You'll be able to read about them here on the blog. When we talk about how close we are to the financial target we are taking into account not just our savings but the most recent valuation of our current home and our family business. 

Is it possible for a hard working family earning basic living wages to save towards a smallholding? Follow our journey to find out! 

If you have a similar dream or if you are already living that dream life and have a blog or vlog about it please let me know in the comments as I love to follow the journeys of others who are interested in the same lifestyle.