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Thread: For the love of <insert deity of choice> STOP RAINING.

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    Default For the love of <insert deity of choice> STOP RAINING.

    AAAAAAAAAAAaaaagh!

    Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

    I should have bought shares in Tate and Lyle.

    Me and the Mrs were talking about packing up and moving somewhere with some land. That little place with 2 acres in France for £30k is looking more and more appealing. (it needs another £50k spending on it just to be liveable).

    Having piqued our interest, what do you reckon the minimum amount of land is to supplement an income? Not just bees, but chickens, ducks, fruit, crops even. Farmers market kind of scale. The aforementioned place has to be used for crops or livestock. I've no idea if bees even count as livestock in France and 2 acres isn't enough for the hundreds of hives I reckon you need to make a living from it.

    So if you were serious about packing up, going somewhere where it's affordable, how much land do you reckon you'd need to "make a living" (I budgeted trying to make a living from beekeeping on a personal income of £30,000, ignoring Jimmy Carr tax dodges)?

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    Hi
    in Germany they say you need 300 hive to make a living from beekeeping.
    If you have hens and goats you can save a bit on milk and eggs, and will always have something for the grill...
    What about this? tickled my fancy..

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    Everywhere has its bad weather from time to time. Mull seems to have a drought at the moment. I'm looking on the bright side. The ground is saturated and the lime trees are showing their buds again. A bit more rain in the next week or so, queens mated in this last good spell, and when the sun comes out in a fortnight the nectar will be flowing in.

    If you are planning to sell locally grown stuff to local people, you'll need the people to buy it, a good method of getting it to them, and you'll need to do it better than the folk already doing that.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    queens mated in this last good spell..
    Fingers crossed. It touched 18c yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours.
    I will be checking apideas at the weekend and I reckon any queens that did not fly by yesterday will have left it too late.
    A queen which flew and mated yesterday should be producing eggs by Saturday.

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    Mull's drought has just ended with some useful rain and more on the way. The onions will probably bolt but at least the rain gives us a break from the constant swarm-checking and the bees a chance to cap all the honey in the supers, most of which are too heavy for one person to lift so inspections have to be timed for when both of us are free. One novelty this year has been the abundance of bees working honeydew on both ornamental cherry and sycamore leaves. Hope the virgin queens got out for their mating flights before the weather turned. Just know that the big hives will make swarm preparations while it's wet and windy then be off at the first sign of sunshine ... they always do that!

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    Senior Member chris's Avatar
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    Do you remember those John Seymour books back in the '70's? He reckoned a family of 6 could make a living on 5 acres. You'd have to use some muscle though.Which part of France? Do you speak French?Don't even dream of markets if you don't. There are some regions over here where you have been preceded by a type of English person that has left a bad impression.
    However, if it's a real dream, then go for it-you can always sell the place back to some Brit for a good profit if things don't work out. One other thing- the majority of French farmers make their real money from subsidies. The others are going broke.

    I think we had some rain once- I'll have to check out what it is
    Last edited by chris; 21-06-2012 at 12:00 PM.

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    Ah! I have a John Seymour book - very useful. Think my husband propped that up in front of him when he drew his first chicken! There's advice on beekeeping, too, IIRC, from the happy days before varroa.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Calum View Post
    Hi
    in Germany they say you need 300 hive to make a living from beekeeping.
    If you have hens and goats you can save a bit on milk and eggs, and will always have something for the grill...
    What about this? tickled my fancy..
    300 hives was about what I reckoned it'd take, in a good year, to get something approaching a liveable income from. (ignoring raising/selling bees themselves) It's also why everytime the Mrs goes off down this route that I try and persuade her that I really don't want to try and make a living from beekeeping

    As someone once said to me: "If you want to make a small fortune from beekeeping, start with a large one".

    The farm looks nice too, that money won't buy you a two bedroom house round these parts!

    Quote Originally Posted by chris View Post
    Do you remember those John Seymour books back in the '70's? He reckoned a family of 6 could make a living on 5 acres. You'd have to use some muscle though.Which part of France? Do you speak French?Don't even dream of markets if you don't. There are some regions over here where you have been preceded by a type of English person that has left a bad impression.
    However, if it's a real dream, then go for it-you can always sell the place back to some Brit for a good profit if things don't work out. One other thing- the majority of French farmers make their real money from subsidies. The others are going broke.

    I think we had some rain once- I'll have to check out what it is
    I think we're in agreement that the most lucrative crop farmed by the French is EU subsidies
    This particular place was close to Limoux in Aude, but as we're in pipedream stage of planning we're (or the Mrs at least) not even tied to France, let alone a particular part of it.

    Neither of us is close to being fluent in French which is an important point.

    I think the Mrs is viewing all of this through particularly rose tinted specs at the moment but I think it's hard not to when you see what an amount of money that wouldn't count as a deposit around these parts will get you elsewhere.

    I don't think she's quite considered just how much effort is likely to be involved in her grand plan to get away from it all, but we can dream right?

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    Senior Member chris's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nellie View Post
    Neither of us is close to being fluent in French
    That's it then. I really can't imagine you in a situation where you wouldn't be able to talk to people.

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    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Calum View Post
    What about this? tickled my fancy..
    Surely off topic ... the thread title was " ... STOP RAINING". Arran is a verdant green island ... because of the rain. About 1.5 - 1.9 metres per year.

    Notwithstanding the rain, Arran and much of the west coast are beautiful. And very little OSR

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