I am living in London but the place I am trying to buy is in tuscany, italy. I am trying to work out a plan that might fit different posibilities. The idea is to buy something cheap and cheerful and get it fixed up over the next 3 to 4 years and work out how to grow things on the land available.
The place we are negotiating on is in the Apennines, the land is quite steep but there are lots of old terraces so there must have been cultivation there before. My current house has a small garden but we used to have quite a big allotment so I am not exactly a novice but I have never grown anything on a large scale.
I think community is very important, I have been quite careful with where I have chosen, rural but not in the middle of nowhere, rough track up to the house but a local train station that can be reached on foot, a local village where we have already met some of the locals but with a low population density, no mains water but does have a good trout stream. I think the survivalist mentality would not work out in the long run, you need to work with what you find around you, there is no point in hiding in the hills with a truck full of tinned baked beans.
I work with computers but am retraining as an electrician, I think there is not going to be much call for flash animators in the future and I would be better off learning a more useful trade.
I am hoping that we will be putting down the deposit in the next couple of weeks and we should be able to start work in the summer.
