Smallholding: It’s a work work balance! (From Smallholder)

Smallholding: It’s a work work balance!

2:40pm Thursday 16th February 2012 in News

I have been running this smallholding for nine years now. Well, when I say ‘running,’ someone is running: It’s me. Really, though, it’s the holding that’s been running me all this time. There are many positives to smallholding: It keeps me busy, fit and out of trouble! It is also the most satisfying thing I have ever done. However, there’s always a price to be paid for this kind of lifestyle, financially, emotionally, and in terms of time and being tied.

In every couple that I’ve ever met who adopted a ‘smallholder lifestyle’, (as opposed to treating it as a proper business), there’s always one partner with more enthusiasm and/or knowledge than the other: They are what I quietly term ‘Doers’ and ‘Helpers’. I knew from the start I was the Doer: Husband is regularly away working, (but does help when he’s home), so I juggle a part-time job, childcare and what I quaintly term ‘keeping house’ with pigs, hens, geese and bees, running a large veg. plot, maintaining a wood, orchard, soft fruit patch, and keeping the ‘ornamental’ garden in check: There’s always something to be done and seemingly precious little time to meet the competing needs of animals, holding, work, friends and family.

Welcoming animals onto you smallholding is a way of saying a swift good-bye to any kind of spontaneity in your life: You can still go away - it’s not impossible. If you have reliable friends, family or can hire help-in to do a few chores, it’s no problem. But for me, every time has been a massive worry: Can that person cope? What if the pigs escape? Will our feisty gander, Grey Boy, take a chunk out of someone’s leg, or a freak high wind knock-over a hive? Such worries, real or imagined, have in the past, prevented me from relaxing and really enjoying myself. I resent the time I’ve ‘lost’ when I could have been ‘getting-on’.

Not being a very sociable person, ‘Not being able to leave the animals’ has provided the perfect excuse to avoid gatherings and people of various sorts. However, I know I’ve missed wonderful opportunities to just to drop everything, load child and dog into the car and take-off to the beach with a picnic. The constraint of animal feeding turns every trip into a precisely-timed military exercise. Sometimes I’m equal to the challenge; more often, not: But like many local kids whose parents farm, my child accepts that when I’m not doing my paid work, I’m working at home, and will happily take the dog off to make a den, rope swing or dam, either up in our wood or down by the river. Then I juggle guilt too.

So it’s just as well that people want to visit, as it’s the only way to keep in touch if you can’t or don’t choose to travel. Come summer, guests arrive, stay, and leave loaded down with mementos of their visit, honey, eggs, jam and fresh fruit or veg. depending on the season. True, it’s extra hard work on the washing and cooking front, but lovely just the same. I just wish the veg. grew itself, the fruit picked itself, and that making jam and spinning honey could be done with the wave of a fairy wand…I frequently feel like a swan: On first impressions a picture of calm but paddling desperately below the surface just to stay still…And that’s on a good day!

It’s the same financially; I am resigned to the fact that my holding doesn’t pay its way, so I work part-time to keep up with the bills. In summer, juggling shifts and a farm routine’s fine, (if you put the hours-in). But come winter’s dark mornings and early nights, it’s nigh-on impossible to fit it all in: An early shift starting at 0800, sees me staggering across rough pasture in the dark with a head torch to feed the animals and break the ice in their troughs if required. If the ice is too thick, I bucket water from the stream at the bottom of the drive. By 0730, accompanied by a bout of often hysterical parental nagging (what morning would be complete without it?) child and self are out the house and in the car. I leave her with a friend with whom I share a school run, and race to work. Conversely if I finish at 1800, I race to get home to get to the poultry before Mr. Fox: One New Year’s Eve, we were invited-out. Home only half an hour after dusk, we found two geese dead and Grey Boy injured. Consequently, nowadays we are always the first to leave. Boring, but virtuous!

It’s easy to stretch yourself too thin on the ground, and say ‘yes’ when you should have said ‘no’, but I have finally got better at saying the ‘n’ word., and looking after myself more. I go to bed earlier and try to work ‘smart’ rather than just ‘more’. I found that teaming-up with two friends to share school runs made a huge difference to time (and stress) management. Preparing everything (and checking your children’s stuff) the night before is another tried and tested bit of advice. It saves nagging and shouting. As ‘Doer’ and ‘Champion Nagger’ it’s very easy to nag your ‘Helper’ to do more when you are overstretched. Take it from me, it breeds resentment. Get a second hand quad bike instead: They truly are worth their weight in gold! If you have unused land, try offering an ‘allotment’ or two to local people who in return could undertake to feed or weed as needed.

If you want a chat about work-life balance, or anything else to do with Smallholding, why not leave your animals for a day, (or enter them in one of the classes), and come along to the Spring Festival (aka Smallholders’ Show) in May: It would be lovely to see you. Finally, if things get too much, Rural Stress Helpline does what it says on the label: www.ruralstresshelpline.co.uk This appeared in February Smallholder - March issue on sale now. Share REAL smallholding experiences!