Debts and loans

However, part of the smallholding mentality is to produce all that you can for yourself, if it can be done economically. Many people (ourselves included), when working out how much hard cash will be required once they have their smallholding, make one serious error. When listing the requirements of life they tend to mark zero against fresh vegetables and meat, making the assumption that what they produce themselves is free. This could not be further from the truth, even if they do not price their time. Vegetables are good value if you do not count your labour costs and if you have a good season; if not, you have to buy seed and vegetables as well If you enjoy gardening and can afford the time, go about it in a businesslike way and grow exactly what you need and try for production when the crop is expensive in the shops - early potatoes or lettuce, for example.

Meat production cannot be marked down as zero cost because of the feed bills. Whether you are fattening some cockerels or rearing rabbits there has to be a food input. If you scrimp on this, they just take longer to fatten. It is better to allow yourself a 26 per cent saving when doing calculations than assume 100 per cent and be disappointed.

Some people go as far as writing off all dairy products as well, assuming that a cow will provide milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt. She will, if properly fed and you can afford the time to process the milk.

The real problem is knowing when to stop with self-sufficiency. The saving of a few pounds can be such fun and so totally absorbing that it can soon expand into a full-time occupation, which completely halts the less interesting but more profitable pursuits necessary to bring in the hard cash required to live.

Self-sufficiency was the dream of the 1970s. Many serious books were written on the subject along with some not so serious ones, and it later appeared in various guises on television. It was mostly treated in a light-hearted manner on television and shown as a great way to escape from the system or to 'drop out', but little useful information was to be gained. In fact, if the programmes were taken seriously, instead of being just good light entertainment, they could be accused of doing harm by over-simplifying the whole issue.

However, taking a more positive view, self-sufficiency has an important role to play in modern smallholding. If you want to categorise self-sufficiency, it is any work that minimises the expenditure of real money; but even in this guise it should be treated with respect. It is easy to become involved with some project or another which should save vast sums of money by generating electricity for free, but this is usually done for entertainment rather than for economic gain. The amount of return is often too small to be useful or the outlay on time and money is not justified by the return. If you can prove that it will pay its way, do it.

There is little doubt that you will be told it is not worth spending an hour making something which can be bought for £1. This is only true if the shop-bought item is as least as good as yours and if you would have earned more than £1 plus deductions during that hour. This applies to repairs of machinery, out-buildings and, of course, your dwelling. There is more money to be saved by doing your own maintenance than by building a methane production plant to cook by - though if you were heating a glasshouse to produce early crops then that could be useful.

When planning your smallholding venture it is essential that cash flow is given serious consideration. It is no good ploughing all your working capital into something which will take two years to show a profit if you need a return in six months to stay solvent. The longer-term investments are often more profitable, but only if the bank is not taking interest all the time. The best bet is a balance between quick  giving some profit and longer-term projects giving a potentially better return. It is also essential to cost out any prospective project.

It is essential that you know the market you are producing for, how it may change throughout the season and what the overall long-term prospects are.

As more people take up these fringe enterprises and succeed, it becomes progressively more difficult for other smallholders to copy them unless they can find something new and relatively unexploited. There are always new requirements to be fulfilled, but we believe the future of smallholding lies in diversification away from agriculture/horticulture and into other fields such as crafts, tourism/leisure or light engineering.

Smallholders or cottagers of the past are often depicted as uniquely happy and contented individuals peacefully going about their daily chores, milking the house cow, tending the bees, feeding the pig, usually with the sun shining - in fact, living an idyllic life. Without a doubt this element is present in smallholding today, but necessarily modified by the demands of modern life. Our smallholding forebears used to support themselves with

Just  three acres of land, we are told, but we must not forget the greater availability of common grazing and the simpler lives that these people led. Over the years the common land has been enclosed and improved giving an overall increase in productivity, but to fewer people. Also, society has become more complex and few people today would tolerate the hardships accepted as everyday life in the past; for example, we now have indoor toilets (water rates), electric lights (electricity bills), health care (National Insurance contributions), and so on. In other word's, now we have not only to feed and clothe our families and provide a roof over our heads, but we also have to finance a range of overheads. These can be trimmed to a minimum, but this can make life rather dull and cause friction within the family, especially if there are children.

So the first important point is that we Cannot model our smallholding on a nineteenth-century one and expect to have a late twentieth-century lifestyle. To obtain this level of affluence from a smallholding today it is necessary to undertake more specialised projects or fringe' farming. This often involves the production of high-quality, high-cost products such as quail or crayfish for the gourmet market. At one time mushroom production fell into this category, but now it is another multi-million pound business and of little use to the small producer. The lesson here is that the market is not static, what is a viable proposition one year (month) has been undercut the next.

Smallholders seem to be drawn from a greater diversity of backgrounds than any other group of people. There does not appear to be any general rule concerning success; people with experience in fanning can have problems as easily as anyone. Equally, a dedicated novice can run a very successful smallholding. The only general rule is that it will be hard work. This is especially true for someone coming from a desk job, in which case it would be a good idea to prepare physically as well as mentally. It is no good knowing what you want to do and not having the stamina to do it. One thing to note here is that you should not over-estimate your physical ability. It is better to ask for help with one job than be unable to do anything for a week because of a strained back. The other is that although you may struggle at first, it is surprising how quickly you become stronger and need fewer cups of tea (always a good excuse for a sit down). It is worth looking at your background and trying to identify any areas of experience you have which could be used either directly on the smallholding or indirectly to earn extra money by jobbing.

This falls into the same category as pressure of business. If you have a private income, life can be as simple as you like. However, if most people you have to pay the bills from what can be made on the holding, the simplicity is soon replaced by planning, pricing and costing, followed by marketing your produce and estimating safe profit margins while trying to stay competitive. The truth is that smallholding has never been simple. The rose-tinted ideas created by the media during the 1970s have done

Individual skills

Try to identify any skills or special abilities  could be of use once you are set up in your holding, but do not banк the only person in the district with that skill Do not merely consider things agricultural because smallholders have traditionally relied on non-agricultural craft work to supplement their earnings. Crafts today should be taken to cover anything from weaving to welding and crochet to computers; in fact, anything that can be run from home, by mail order if possible, that will add to the total income.

Some bad reasons

If you want to become a smallholder to escape the pressures of business, it will not work (without a private income). Your smallholding is going to be your business and to make it pay is going to be at least as hard as any other business. It will probably be far more enjoyable along the way, but do not expect it to be easy. There are lots of other people already doing the same thing; you have to find your own niche in the market

This is one that should speak for itself, but to some it obviously does not Smallholding by its very nature tends to involve many small projects, each with its own chores which mostly have to be done regularly on a dally or twice daily basis. That gives a seven-day week straight away. Many small choree laid end to end with their associated tidying up add up to a 12-hour day. If you do not relish the idea of being tied to the holding seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, think carefully.