Page 48 - The Farming Years proof

JUST BARLEY
and managed to deal with all that came our way as a team. I now had to exist without her support – the biggest challenge I could be given. But, I had the support of my family who were half of Sylvia which was a great and valued help.
Jim died a year later – a young man with a family. He had a genetic liver disease that he fought until the end.
I eventually decided to get an agricultural contractor to under- take the agricultural activity and it just didn’t work out. He wasn’t interested in 15 acres which was dif cult to enter with equipment that was much bigger than mine. Harvesting has to be done at the right time and it wasn’t. I can’t tolerate inef ciency and my tolerance was nil at that sad time. The only way to make farming work is to control it and I hadn’t that ability. As a consequence, I left the elds fallow to grow weeds until they were sold as building land to Bovis the builders. This surrendered the opportunity to roll-over the land value but, at that time, I had no desire to ful l that option.
We sold the farm house with the barn behind it with part of the stables and 21 acres in 2000 in one lot.
We then applied for planning permission for the farmyard. We applied to convert the barn by the road and the original 2 stables into a dwelling and the area of the open barn into a new dwelling site. We had to put detailed plans forward to obtain permission, which was given. Ultimately, when we sold the farmyard, the new owner built just one dwelling which, I must admit, looks balanced and attractive.
As you can imagine, we made a good sum on both sales but you must balance that with the fact that Sylvia and I had put a lot of work, money, time and love into Home farm. We kept the cottage
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