Self-Sufficiency in Style
Buying your smallholding - Part Six
Inspecting the outbuildings.
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Self-Sufficiency in Style Buying your smallholding - Part Six Inspecting the outbuildings. |
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Three
quarter inch shingle over rubble. |
The key question in respect
of outbuildings is finding out just what alternative uses exist for each. Where should you start? Oddly enough with a land feature: hard standing. You can't have enough hard standing and what there is can't easily be moved. Hard standing gives access to buildings for people and vehicles. You can manage without hard standing, but you will spend most of the winter digging the car out of mud. |
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with any outbuildings that might be transformed into living accommodation. This will include barns attached to the house and any caravans or mobile homes. Converting barns to living accommodation will (in the UK) require planning permission, which may well be refused, especially in the case of listed buildings or where the house has already been extended. Generally, for obvious reasons, mobile homes and caravans attract less attention. Caravans can double as workshops if you don't mind doing most of the actual work on larger items outside. They can be towed to the site of the work. |
An obvious extension possibility. |
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If it was not for the chicken hut in the way, this tunnel could take two cars and still leave room either side for cucumbers and melons followed by winter salads. |
Polytunnels,
depending on the floor composition, and door configuration offer lots of
possibilities. * big doors, hard floors and access from hard-standing make them very useful as garages. * with care (possible overheating) they can be used as winter storage for hay and straw. |
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A garage, especially if attached to the house, offers lots of possibilities. Usually there will be light and power, water too if you are lucky. Our garage does triple duty - as a place to keep the pick-up truck - and recharge the usually flat battery! We have it equipped as a kitchen/brewery. Current UK regulations insist the vegetables are prepared away from the main kitchen on a smallholding with animals. (Please do not ask the writer for an explanation. This is the country that banned foxhunting and are still happily hunting foxes.) It triples as a home for the tumble dryer, when the weather is too wet to use the line in the walled garden |
The pick-up is an essential piece of equipment that does not respond well to being left outside. |
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"Quaint and rural" is the only possible description. |
Any substandard buildings are
always used for storing logs and kindling. This one also provides an occasional home for teaching calves to drink from a bucket and a place to pop odd "machinery" overnight in the summer. It has been used for piglets and for raising poultry. Don't turn your nose up at scruffy buildings. They have their uses - and a certain rustic charm. |
| Some buildings are posh, some
are not. All seem to have led double lives. Even the humble potting shed had a couple of years as a tool shed before migrating into the walled garden for what may be its final use. |
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Three smart sheds for storage, one insulated, with two bays between. |
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without an obvious dual use is the farrowing arc; a specially insulated and
constructed maternity facility for the sow. It has a bar to try to prevent
the usual sow trick of sitting on the offspring, a nice plastic screen to
allow ventilation and a door to shut them all in at night. There is even a
fender to stop the piglets straying. The arc opposite is much simpler, moveable and has many potential uses. |
Pigs, goats, sheep would all appreciate this at times. |
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As you can see, the only limits to multiple use of buildings is your own imagination. |
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You may return to
Buying
your smallholding - Part One -
Don't complicate things! In future articles, we will tell you why you cannot avoid the "crunch" moment - and why it should come sooner rather than later. In the meantime, if you are so inclined, you can return to FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS which deals specifically with Hangman's Cottage or perhaps UNDERSTANDING ESTATE AGENTS will offer you some help for any sale or purchase |
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...multiple occupation - at Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
