A New Life

Well, I'm starting on the biggest adventure of my adult life, at the grand old age of 46.  I have packed in a well-paid job as a director for a blue-chip company, packed up my bags and my husband Nick, and bought a 16 acre farm in deepest Dordogne, in south west France.
No more regular pay cheques; annual bonuses; company pension; life assurance and private health plan.... not even a company car. 
This new life is lived outdoors, and its hard manual work - but its set in the the most spectacular countryside of the beautiful South Dordogne, where the sunflower fields tumble into fruit orchards, and tractors bumble through the country lanes, and the sun shines... and shines...and the M25 is a distant memory.
The plan is to convert five old farm buildings into holiday homes, and turn the land into productive vegetable gardens, orchards and grazing for animals.  We want to become as self-sufficient as possible, and to use the land we have to best effect - recycling as much as possible, whilst making sure that aesthetically the plot is beautiful enough to attract visitors to the holiday homes. No mean feat!
First of all then, some images of the starting point.
This shows the farm in its location, the five old farm buildings surrounded by grassland and plum orchards.

We own 4.5 acres of plum orchards, which we rent out to the neighbouring farmer.  He harvests them for prunes, which is one of the main harvests down here, particularly in Lot et Garonne (the bordering region to the Dordogne).

Our plum orchards....

On the other side of the plot, we have 11.5 acres of grassland with fields of just grass....

.. and some fields with plenty of mature trees to provide shade in the hottest of the summer months...

We also have a natural pond in the nearest field.  Although we are actually on top of a hill, the pond forms a low water point, where all the rainwater and agricultural water pools.  When we first saw the property, the pond was full and there were masses of dragonflies and insects.  However after the drought of this summer, the pond has dried up - a project for the future!

Well, thats the overall plot, and the scale of the project will be obvious in the next post showing the buildings to be converted!