The first stage in my plan is to start Wwoofing in March. This will mean I can vacate my flat in Bristol and start bringing in the sweet Airbnb £££, which will take the pressure off and give me time to think.
I thought it might be an idea to make myself more useful on the farms by learning some skills: dry stone walling, hurdling etc. Owen suggested the best place to start was probably getting my chainsaw ticket, and he put me in touch with a friend of his who’s just done it.
This got me thinking about ways I could make extra money, because the Airbnb will only just cover my living costs. I quite fancy the idea of being man with a chainsaw and being brought in to carve up a fallen oak or ash. Having done a load of research into the retail price of firewood – around £460 per cubic metre – and the average yield of one bloke with a chainsaw and a petrol-powered splitter – around 7 cubic metres per day – I worked out I could earn £3,220 per day.
My brother soon pissed into my imaginary logburner and gave me the reality of being a tree surgeon. Hard, dangerous work, and all the wood gets used by the landowners. I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I also looked into solar kilns and think at very least there could be some kind of service for people like Kristy.
So I took the Einhell to a bloke in Fishponds to get it serviced. It’s probably just the fuel gone off, apparently.
After the reality check, I struggled to keep the enthusiasm. What the hell am I doing becoming an unskilled handyman / labourer at my age? Then I remembered, it’s only a small part of the plan. And the difference between being a labourer and an entrepreneur is mostly about the ability to plan.
With coding, it’s so easy to start doing before planning. That’s been the pattern the past decade.
I found it really difficult and painful but in the end I managed to spend an hour or so laying out a very basic plan for the next six weeks leading up to my moving out.
