The ‘Why’?

I have been asked a few times why did we move from Wales, and why did I give up a well paid job with British Telecom (BT) to basically become a subsistence farming peasant?

Well, the answer is rather multi faceted. In the 90s the UK was being destroyed by the Tories under the dreadful Thatcher. Thatcherism put money, which after all is a totally fictional thing these days, before people’s lives and well being. We could also see a creeping police State, where citizens had their Natural Right to self defense removed and the police becoming more ‘militarised’ and more heavily armed; now many carry sub machine guns and sidearms in many urban areas.

On the job front, I was working for BT as a Business Systems engineer. What shook me was staff got a rise of a few per cent, while the Chairman, took a bonus of £6 million and I watched some colleagues struggle because of the rise in property prices. It didn’t feel good, working in that sort of atmosphere. More and more things looked wrong about the direction Britain was going in. A move became the only option it seemed!

Ireland looked like a good option. The landscape very like our native Wales, but with property prices were, to say the least, relatively sane and there was a certain ‘genuineness’ in the people that was being lost in Wales.

So, we came over to scout for suitable property, we traveled all the west coast, but we were not finding houses that had the technical requirements we needed for what we had planned; a self sufficient lifestyle using a minimum of expenditure. Oddly, we were always drawn back to lovely West Cork. By a strange stroke of luck an estate agent who was helping us, had a new sale come in. So, we headed down to Macroom, got some directions and came upon the house we now call home. The place felt right and the surrounding landscape had that magic you only find in rural places.

There was an acre of land, a renovatable house and a good deep well already on site, open aspects all round and a hilltop where we planned to site our wind turbine; it was all good!

More to follow in my next post.