Awards Won

In 1998 Mark’s ex partner decided he wanted to sell the farm.  We couldn’t afford to buy the whole 15 acre site and so bought the 6 acres that contained the main ponds.  Now that we owned the site ourselves we decided that we would try and make it a business again.  There was no accommodation on-site and we realised, from experience, that there was no way we could successfully run the farm unless we lived there, so we applied for planning permission to live on site.  We now had a six acre field with ponds on it and nothing else.  We had no mains electricity, no mains water and no sewage.  We had to first build ourselves a 150 metre driveway which had to be 1 metre thick to cope with the water logged nature of the land. Next we had to get mains electricity laid on which cost thousands of pounds.  Once we had done this we could then construct our living  accommodation.

We also had to dig a well.  Fortunately Mark has perfected the art of dowsing for water with metal rods and was able to find a suitable spot to dig a well for our household use.  Then we had to install a sewage treatment plant for the house.  Once we had done all this we were able to move in which we did on the 11th December 2000.  Our youngest son was not quite four years old at the time.  

Our temporary home in 2000 (not quite finished!) whilst we develop the farm.

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Sparsholt

Japan

Return to the UK

The farm

Nothing worth having ever came easily

New beginnings

Developing the dream

From strength to strength

Where we are today