Change m'dear and not a moment too soon

The title is inspired by the first words of the (underrated) 6th doctor and this summer has been a period of reflection for us both and one thing which has cropped up is how we use our farm. For the last few years, we've tried to be self-sufficient and that has included trying to grow lots of crops. Our first year was very successful but this year hasn't really worked as well as we hoped, so we've decided to scale back the vegetable patch and focus our efforts into animal rearing and fruit trees.

The main reasons for this are 

1. Time: Animal feeding takes about 1 hour a day, everyday with cleaning/maintenance a extra 2/3 per week. Working the land requires periods of hard long work. This small regular time commitment fits in better with Andy's other responsibilities which are mainly located in Szeged.
2. Resources: We've had problems efficiently watering our plot and to maximise our yields would require major investments
3. Energy/Motivation: We are currently more motivated to make fruit and dairy based products to eat than to spend hours hacking bindweed out from between potatoes.
4. Cost: The killer is that we can go Szeged's Mars Ter market and find big good-quality vegetables which are extremely cheap. Home-grown is supposed to the best but is does not make financial sense to work hard and long hours to produce expensive, bad food. Meat, on the other hand, is expensive and having Goats/rabbits/chickens and their by-products to eat does make sense.

So next year, we are going to simplify the veg patch, potatoes, peas and grains (probably oats) and make a small kitchen garden for growing a few tomatoes, peppers and herbs. We'll see how this goes :)

Here is the moment :)