Although we took time out to complete our Finding Enough monthly financial review as usual at the start of May, I am horribly late in turning it into a post. I’ll save May’s musings for the next instalment (which will hopefully be less tardy) but sufficed to say, it’s been a busy spring in our little corner of the world – and its difficult to get motivated to write indoors when its sunny outside.
April is when the daffodils start to be overtaken by bluebells, and this year seems like an incredible year for them, with carpets of blue in places I’d never noticed them before. The bees must be having a busy time. It seemed like a very busy month for the humans too, but when I look back, I am not quite sure what we were doing, as the renovation didn’t move forwards much, and the visitors hadn’t arrived yet.
It seemed like there was a lot going on this month to get involved with. It is probably a sign of how settled we feel in our new lives and how many like minded people and groups we have integrated into. One of the biggest differences we have noticed with living where we do, compared with where we used to in Cambridgeshire, is the number of community interest companies and local groups run by people who have no vested interest other than making things happen that they feel passionately about. A great example is the regular seed, plant and crop swaps that happen all through the year. Absolutely no money changes hands, people just bring along whatever they have an excess of and you agree to swap for something that someone else has brought. They happen about every month or so from spring to autumn at different village halls and community hubs in the area and are organised by someone who had an idea and ran with it.
I kept meaning to go along last year, but never quite got around to potting up those self-seeded plants that popped up where they couldn’t stay, and sorting out unused seeds to take along. In April I finally did. I had far too many tomato seedlings, a few raspberry suckers that came up in the wrong place and hundreds of strawberry runners, so I thought I’d go along. An hour or two later, I came away with a fleece crop tunnel, some home grown bamboo canes, a few ornamental plants, both commercially packaged and hand collected seeds and some kefir grains. I met some lovely people, am now growing things I wouldn’t have thought of. I never would have started making kefir.
While I was busy preparing for the growing season, Mr Wombat started volunteering with a local woodland charity that propagates native trees for community projects and for local sales. A day a week makes a nice change for him and its the first group he’s joined since moving here, which I think is a good thing. I already have swimming friends and art friends locally and I have always thought that having things you do individually as well as as a couple is healthy.
We have continued to be involved in the local beekeepers association, and in April the monthly winter meetings turn into apiary visits and a chance to see the theory put into practice. As with most things, there are different opinions and priorities for different beekeepers, so it is great to see the contrast of how different people approach it. It also stands out when there is something everyone agrees on!
I think the other reason this post is so late is that I was avoiding writing about a very hard decision we had to make in April. After months of training and trying to make it work with the dog we rescued in October last year, we finally had to admit that we were not the right home for her and she would be better off elsewhere. If you’re not a dog person, this may not seem like a big deal, but if you have a dog in your household, you will understand what a large part of family life they become. With hindsight, we were perhaps a bit naive about what breeds we should consider as compatible with our new lifestyle, surrounded as we are by livestock. I think that our experience with so many different dogs whilst housesitting also made us over-confident in our ability to adapt to any issues that might come our way. If we had still been living our old suburban village life, she would have fitted in perfectly, and she will make a great addition to another family somewhere, but a strong prey drive is an instinct that can’t just be trained out. We would never have been able to trust her off the lead, and as she could jump to head height, keeping her in the garden was going to be too much of a challenge. It wasn’t fair to her or us.
The Dogs Trust were excellent, assigning us a clinical behaviourist for 1:1 video calls as well as sending out behaviour and training guides. They were completely non-judgemental when the time came, and stepped us through the process to rehome her through them. Drop off day was incredibly hard, but they have streamlined the process so there aren’t mountains of paperwork to complete, with just a single form to sign on the day. We gave them a lot more information about her than they had been able to share with us (she had originally been picked up as a stray), so we are trying to see it has a foster placement. She certainly learned a lot while she was with us. As with all things in life, we will learn from our mistakes and think differently before adding another canine family member. We are feeling a little emotionally bruised by the experience, so that won’t be happening immediately. In the mean time we will focus our energy on the house, work on which is much simpler now we don’t have to worry about preventing a dog escaping when we carry things in and out through the door.
With all that going on, we certainly weren’t thinking about investments this month, but they had been quietly regaining some of March’s losses. Its always the same – a big media fanfare when there’s a drop, followed by a quiet, uncelebrated recovery. We’re not quite back to February’s high, but not far away.
Freedom fund value – £1,531,674 (up £40k on last month)
Expenditure – £2,301.00 (or a 2.11% withdrawal rate) including renovation costs, or £5,346.79 (or a 4.89% withdrawal rate) without renovation costs
Earned income – £65
The cost of 2 additional batteries (which will take us to 20kWh capacity) and associated cabling and breakers etc was the difference between the two expenses numbers this month. This made it an expensive month overall, but a fairly average month for general living expenses. As for everyone else, our council tax went up in April (now £212), and we also completed the scheduled maintenance for our water treatment system (£222 for consumables installed ourselves). We also started to buy the kit we will need for keeping bees next year. It’s not a cheap hobby, so we opted to spread the cost over the year. Hopefully some second hand kit will come up before next spring, but we made a start with a new cedar national hive, frames and a few other bits for £269. They were all bought in kit form rather than paying someone else to assemble them.
We earned a small amount from a bit more de-cluttering with £50 for the 4g router we were using before fibre was connected and £15 for a couple of unused WiFi plugs that seem to be incompatible with the WiFi range extenders we have.
The solar panels continue to increase their output and in April we exported £26.66 (up considerably from £7.03 in March). Once the new batteries are connected, we should be able to store far more power than we consume when the heating is not running. We will have to think more about the most cost effective way to utilise that stored power, probably selling from the batteries as well as from the solar panels before recharging at cheap rate overnight.
Other snapshots from April included, what I now know, was a solar crown, easter cupcakes, seedlings for the veg garden on every windowsill, the first asparagus, flowering currant cordial (makes an excellent twist on a kir royale – I just need to think of a name).
Finding Enough 