Happy Anniversary!

Time really does fly and when you are smallholding it seems to pass with reckless speed.

Two years ago yesterday we moved to Rock HQ. We decided to buy this smallholding before we even saw it.


It was the second house we looked at that day. The first was an overpriced run down grey stone cottage on the roadside with four acres of lush pasture. At first I thought it showed promise, this was before I realised that the lean too I thought was a utility room was in fact the “fitted” kitchen. The whole house reeked of decay and damp and we politely said our thank yous to the owner and set off for our second viewing.

Rock HQ is set in a valley hidden from the road. It stands alone facing west across the vista of Welsh hillsides. To get to it you have to negotiate a narrow track that leads into a farmyard, once there you turn right through a black five bar gate and progress slowly up a steep dirt track that levels out before climbing into the canopy of trees that surround the property. It is an imposing red brick dwelling, called the Red House by the locals and known as Rock HQ by all its previous inhabitants.


We have deeds and paperwork relating to the cottage dating back to the 1750s but there has been a settlement here since ancient times. It was a Neolithic quarry and the standing stones on Radnor hill are reputed to have been taken from here. Much like the house the hill its built on stands alone, an impressive dome shaped hill with many rocky outcrops, cliffs and overhangs. The biggest cliff is the back wall of the stone age quarry which is immediately behind the house.


Rock HQ was and is perfect.

The house had been restored and tastefully decorated, the current owners were both stockbrokers who had decided to pursue the rural dream and gave up London for the good life. After several years of rebuilding and refitting they had reached the conclusion that what they really liked was restoring period property, the call of the wild no longer held any attraction for them so they wanted to give up the farm and start again. Quite why these seemingly rational people give up the comforts of a completed house to live in a caravan for years on end while they rebuild their next project is beyond me.


They showed us around the site.


The grounds and outbuildings were the complete opposite to the house, evidence of neglect abounded. The “barn” was in fact a structure of dubious integrity that somehow managed to defy the laws of physics and remain standing, mostly. Several sections had fallen in or over and under the debris you could just make out the remains of a stone brick pig sty. Fallen trees hindered our progress through the garden, the mass of brambles and bracken were reclaiming what was once a productive cottage garden. There was a time it would have had to of been productive, it would have been a major source of food for the family and the surplus sold or traded at the local village market. Two greenhouses stood defying the attempt by Mother Nature to reclaim her territory.

To me and my untrained eye it showed promise.

Tracey and I had a criteria to be met, she wanted a garden with a Silver Birch tree, I wanted one with a Victoria Plum tree. Side by side on the grassy bank an example of each swayed gently in the summer breeze. The tranquility of the garden was suddenly shattered by a Tornado as it screamed overhead, so low we could see the pilots strapped into the ejector seats. Whilst the owner apologized profusely and explained it seldom happened I reassured him that we loved planes, Tracey loves fast jets while I prefer piston engine aircraft, as I finished speaking a dark grey Hercules rounded the hill and powered down the valley before banking out of sight lost amongst the hills at the end of the valley.


Signs and portents.

Someone was telling us Rock HQ was for us.


The fields, comprising around two acres, were lost in the wilderness; barely visible amongst the flora was a perimeter fence that was on the whole upright and stock proof. The ground wasn’t suitable for much more than mountain goats due to its incline but by the time we had negotiated the treacherous ravine back to the house we had already convinced ourselves with a bit of effort it could be transformed from the homage to Jurassic Park to a landscape of windswept grassland where our horses and cows would roam.

The vendors were lovely people and put up with us crawling all over their lives, Ben and Bethan were also with us so they explored the possibility of future bedroom accommodation, the speed of broadband connections, local night life and the availability of talent of the correct gender, all vital information for teenagers. Tracey and I concentrated on more down to earth matters like was it registered as a smallholding, how often was the footpath used and what were the neighbours like. The place was perfect and our hearts were set on spending the rest of our lives here and I chose Friday the 13th as the day to exchange contracts, after all what could possibly go wrong.

As it happens quite a lot really. Those ten days waiting to move were the most stressful of my entire life. Every conceivable thing went wrong, from the Bank losing our mortgage application to the vendors suddenly having cold feet and insisting that the move be delayed to the 16th, the following Monday. This meant that all our worldly goods needed to be put in storage over a weekend as our buyers were moving in on the 13th. We had decided to move ourselves in a hired van. My best friend helped out in this department, he knew a man with a van. I didn’t think to check which type of van. Come the day, cometh the man in a van, which was a standard transit van, the type of van that has great difficulty in accommodating the precious belongings of a family who had spent 18 years collecting all sorts of junk which now needed transporting across the county to a safe repository.

But Rock HQ was ours.

Well the majority share was the Banks but in essence it was ours.

We are smallholders.

Which, 24 months later we still are and despite fire, flood, rockfalls, the two wettest summers recorded, getting snowed in and a near fatal accident that has left me disabled and the antics of our animals we still want to be here and still love the life we lead. We have rebuilt out buildings, reclaimed the farm from the wilderness, with help built stables and kennels. Our animal clan now numbers some eighty members and includes horses, sheep, pigs (either alive or frozen), goats, assorted poultry and fish.

We have made new friends, met some fascinating people, some the nicest in the world and others who are clearly deranged. Tracey and I have shared the joy of our first lambing, experienced extremes of weather and felt the sorrow caused by the loss of our animals due to injury and illness.

All these experiences mean we lead a very busy, full, emotionally rich and varied life about which we have many stories to tell.

Within these pages are just some of the Tales From The Rock.