Dear kind friends and supporters,

Thank you so much once again for your generosity in donating to my Rerooting fundraiser (www.theseisle.co/fundraiser). I’ve been awaiting some concrete progress to share my news with you, but regrettably the forward steps are still astonishingly small and slow. To update you as best I can:

On May 1st 2022 the vendor of the property described in my campaign text at http://www.theseisles.co/fundraiser accepted in writing my offer to buy his 3/4 acre abandoned property by private sale as is common in France. When I nudged him again in July, I finally heard from the notary he’d engaged: the transaction was formally and officially underway, my passport submitted.

However, we didn’t get as far as the first round of signatures, and as the vendor sadly suffers from mental health issues, neither myself nor the notary have had the responses and documents we need from him; he has been silent for 10 months now, off work on sick leave for some or all of that time. There may be more I could perhaps do to help or otherwise pressurise the vendor, but meantime I’m looking for alternative properties in case there might be a better way forward.

In the fifteen months that have passed, I have made many new friends and contacts, and the property market has also begun cooling post-pandemic. So I’m searching for something else very like this property. But unlike this one, one that were within walking distance of the market town would enable a much lower carbon future. I’m also in intense discussion with micro-farming friends and colleagues about the possibility of a farmshare, as more and more are expected to come on the market this decade, and the old ones usually have a generous scattering of small stone cottages and barns to be shared out between us. I apologise for not having yet put your kind gifts to use: the money you have given me is in an untouchable holding account, and feels like a treasure trove. Thank you so much, and for your patience. As most of you will already know, I’ve been searching in Brittany, Scotland, Ireland and England for some six years now, since tiny budget/income and above all electrosensitivity mean there are very, very few options. But there *are* options, I’m prepared to organise my future livelihood in a number of different ways, and I will *make* one of the options happen. Thank you for bearing with me and believing. I will keep you updated, and you may notice another fundraising burst when the/a property is at last secured in the first round of signatures — I’d be delighted if you’d share my links in your networks at that point.

Meantime I’m despairing yet hopeful, stressed and exhausted but still inspired, and making the most of my lovely temporary accommodation in the forest (thanks Mum!). So, as ever, I’m weaving, and also researching, studying, skilling up (French farming bureaucracy and artisan economics, livestock keeping, natural dyeing, horticulture, lacto-fermentation, fishing, knitting socks, improving my French), networking (at craft and wool fairs, sheep farms, spinning mills, craft boutiques, farmshops, market-gardens and plant nurseries), drafting business plans, and, of course, campaigning https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/building-back-differently-peasant-economics-and-heritage-craft.

There’s also walking, a little EMF-free socialising when possible, and some resting, because all of that, especially when it involves a trip out into the irradiated world (even just outside the present house) is absolutely flooring me!

Thank you again, and my warmest wishes,

Eloïse