The beginning

January 16th 2007
Following a life changing incident in October of 2005, the Summer of 2006 saw us make a decision to sell up and move to Eire. We wanted to live a self sufficient, eco friendly life, and planned to buy a house and some land, for as little as possible, have no mortgage and work for ourselves. Adrian was not convinced, but agreed to give it a go, as much to pacify me as anything else I think, but nevertheless, the decision was agreed on. I started looking around on the web for suitable properties, and checking out removals etc.

As time went by we realised we would not be able to raise enough funds without a mortgage, which meant we’d need jobs, which we couldn’t get as we were I UK, couldn‘t move without jobs…vicious circle! A dear friend of ours living and working in Eire, Nick Abel, agreed to help us out. He was in the midst of trying to buy himself a property, and agreed that when he had, we could move over and live with him while we got ourselves sorted, we discussed buying in with him, and agreed that if we could find the right property, that idea was a goer. Eventually Nick and I wanted to open a holistic centre/school, so it was a good move.

However, for various reasons this did not work out, poor Nick couldn’t find anywhere suitable, that he felt comfortable with, that he/we could afford. So, he moved on into a rental property, whilst we continued trying to work out how we could go it alone without putting any undue pressure on Nick. We knew what we wanted, 2 -3 acres of land, with a derelict/renovatable property on it, reasonably priced so that our equity from our property could be used to fix it up. We wanted to be ‘green’, to have solar heating/lighting, wind turbine, composting loo, grey water system, our own water supply and animals, not too much to ask for!!!

We kept coming up against the same problem though, we could probably afford the land and building, but not the work required to make it habitable. Then, January 10th 2007, I received a newsletter from Innocent Smoothies, with a link to Simon Dales’ site http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm showing a low impact woodland home, built by himself and his father in law, for a cost of £3000 finished in 4 months!!!!! I delved into the site, ummed and ahhed, and finally showed it to Adrian. He just loved it, and agreed that it was totally possible for us to do the same thing. I mailed the link to Nick, and he also fell in love. So, our decision has now been made…we are going to buy the land, and build a couple of these houses, one for us, and one for Nick, and then, in the future, add a couple for workshops and courses, Heartwood Village Centre will be in existence!

I have so far designed a very basic house, contacted Simon Dale for help and advice, and also figured out how to build a composting loo. We already have one offer of help with straw bale building, a big part of the house design which we have accepted, and are hoping for more help. We’ve found a suitable piece of land, and are saving every penny we can and putting our house here to rights, with a mind to move over in September of this year. Lots of decluttering to do, lots of things to sell or recycle, but we’re going ahead, and every step is taking us towards our dream.