Enjouanisson

23rd March 2009 I officially became a farmer.

23rd March 2009 - the date that we signed the paperwork and handed over the majority of our life savings and truly committed ourselves to French rural life. It really is no going back now.

We had spent over a year searching for our new dream home - looking at over 80 properties, which in hindsight was a good thing, as it allowed us to re-evaluate what we were looking for.

It had gotten to the point where we were both beginning to be disheartened by the hunt and believed that maybe we were looking in the wrong part of France. Then we were introduced to a Dutch guy named Christian, who acts as an agent for SAFER, a government body that manages the sale of farms and smallholdings. After a couple of false starts where we thought we may have found what we wanted, we finally found Enjouanisson; a traditional French farmhouse in the Grand Gascogne style which ticked most of our search criteria:

• minimum of 4 bedrooms
• needs to be habitable (functioning kitchen and bathroom, weather-proof roof etc.)
• minimum of 10 hectares
• has a water supply
• has woodland
• has views of the Pyrenees

In the weeks that followed our first viewing, we visited the property on numerous occasions, bringing friends and experts to advise us on the state of the building, the state of the housing market and just to confirm to ourselves that this really was the one.

Then in November, we made an offer, which after a little deliberation from the vendor was accepted. Woohoo! It was ours!

But not so fast! Buying from SAFER, being a government body, meant that the process was not so simple. One of the remits of SAFER is to protect the rural and farming communities, to ensure that farms remain working farms and that the local community, young farmers etc. have an opportunity to buy farms at reasonable prices and to stay local. They also stop price speculation on land by making sure that the price of farms and farmland are regulated.

So where did this leave us? Well the buying process went like this:

1. SAFER advertise the property in 2 agricultural magazines for 3 weeks. During that time any other potential buyers can ask for more information on the propery and offer their candidacy for the farm.
2. After the 3 weeks is up, all candidacies are submitted to a board who will decide upon the suitablity of the candidates and basically decide who will get the farm. Their general criteria in decreasing order of priority:
• Are you a young farmer (under 40 with a diploma in agriculture)
• Are you local to the area.
• Do you require a loan to fund the purchase of the farm?
3. Having selected the candidate, the property is then re-evaluated by technical board to ensure that the price being paid for the property/land is correct i.e. not too cheap and not too expensive.
4. If the price is good, then the whole deal gets reviewed by a regional board that have the power to over-rule the candidacy
5. And finally, the whole deal gets referred to a national board (kind like DEFRA) who again have the power to over-rule.

So having done the hard work of finding the farm and negotiating the price we could find that a local young farmer straight out of agricultural college could walk in and take it from under us!

It was late November now and we had missed the November deadline for making the notification in the agricultural magazines, so it would have to go into the December issues. With Christmas round the corner, the board that selects candidates would not be sitting until the middle of January - so we would have 6-7 week wait before we knew if we had been succesful at the first stage.

To add to the tension, if there were multiple candidates for the farm, we would need to present to the board, explainig our vision for the farm, our agricultural qualifications and why they should let us have the farm and not the others - all of course in French.

So we were in a bit of a tricky situation, as we didn't qualify as young farmers, had no history in agricuture and were not exactly local and the idea of bullshitting a presentation in French was a little daunting!

Chris, the SAFER agent, also told us that the area the farm is in, is highly sought after and we would be very lucky if there were no other candidacies.

So it was a fairly tense Christmas as we waited for news of any other candidates. And we were lucky, the fact that the publications came out around Christmas, the slowing housing market and general economic climate meant that we were the only candidates and that the board rubber stamped us. Woot!

Next came the technical board's evaluation of the property - this could be tricky, because despite the economic downturn, I had negotiated a very good price and the technical board could very easily make the farm too expensive for us to buy. Again we were very lucky - the vendor was a huge animal lover - and co-existing with her in the farmhouse were 9 dogs, 20 plus cats and a pot-bellied pig - all of which had free reign to go where they wished - the place had a rather heady aroma of various animals' piss and shit as they did 'go' where they wished. The technician made two visits to the farm and on both occasions didn't make it beyond the threshold because of the stench - add to that the farm had not been worked as a farm for 5 years; he felt that our offer was a fair valuation for the farm!

Effectively the farm was ours and all that was left was to arrange for a completion date to sign the papers, hand-over the money and take possession of the keys.

And that date was 23rd March 2009 - the day I became a farmer.