Personally 2022 was a pretty tough year. In Feb Leanne was diagnosed with breast cancer and we spent the rest of the year with our heads down taking the treatment one step at a time, treatment was a grind that we knew we just had to get through. Thankfully the surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy were all finished by mid December, just in-time for Christmas.

This also marks our first year since moving into the farm, having spent 3 years waiting for the renovations to be done it’s been amazing to now actually live here. A nice side-effect of having spent 3 years living in various rentals that were mostly not great is that we’re now re-appreciating all the little things about living somewhere nice, a good reminder that the hard times help you appreciate and enjoy the good times.

There’s plenty more to do and progress has stalled a bit this past year so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into some of larger projects here this coming year.

One of the highlights of the past year has been having so many people coming to stay. Hosting friends and family at the farm was a big part of the dream when we embarked on this adventure and we’d really missed out on being able to do that through Covid. I’m looking forward to this continuing in 2023.

We’re now through the bulk of the treatment and we’re coming into 2023 feeling hopeful and looking up and to the future once again. It’s still scary as we shift focus from the immediate treatment to now processing and adjusting our life outlook and plans to incorporate living with the ongoing impact and risks of Leanne’s breast cancer over the long term.

We also weren’t able to travel much at all last year and so one thing we’re looking forward to this year is to explore more of France. We moved here 4 years ago but what with the pandemic and then last year we haven’t been able to see as much of Brittany and the rest of the country as we’d expected. France has great trains which I think could make for a fun family adventure, perhaps even on the sleeper train to Berlin :awesome:. France is also very well equipped for vanlifer’s and we both dream of a long road-trip down south in a campervan.