Sunday, April 29, 2012

Field of Dreams

Field of dreams - perfect for the cat sanctuary we dream of

Nik and I have been looking for months for the perfect field in the area to try and purchase for a home/cat sanctuary where we could relocate the village street cats after we alter them.  It needs to be a large field.

We have looked at over twenty fields.  Yesterday we looked at several, and the last one we saw was perfect.  It's close to all our feeding stations, it's off the seafront road, it's fenced, it has water and electricity, it has plenty of olive trees to climb, and it has a small dwelling and some outbuildings.  It even comes with its own cats, (twenty-five according to the owner!):

The cats come with the field - Wait, WHAT?

And it is in a nice enough spot where it has the potential to attract artists should we be in a postition to push forward with the goal of also making it an artist retreat.

A view from inside toward the road - it is is double gated


Turning counter clockwise, I give you a somewhat panoramic view:














My understanding is it comes with chickens, too. 

It's funny because Nik and I walk our dog Muji by this property nearly every day, and have been for about 4 years.  There used to be a pig here a couple of years ago, up near the road, and he had his own pen.  We were pretty certain they were fattening him for that upcoming Easter, which tugged at our hearts.  That plus he was alone all the time.  Every time it rained, though, our thoughts ran to this pig alone in his concrete dwelling.  So we started taking him leftovers.  I baked some cookies once that didn't turn out the way I wanted, so we took him those.  It got be a regular thing. 





Anyway, the field has gone up for sale.   Priced at 70,000 Euro per skala, for 4 skala it comes to 280,000 Euro.  I know.  It is hard to know what he really thinks he will get for it though, because as mentioned before, people rarely price land in Cyprus at its market value, but instead way over-inflate the asking price. What we are looking for is something from 10, 000-45,000 per skala.

What the native landowners can't seem to get through their heads here is it doesn't matter what the land is valued at, by themselves or the bank.  If you can't get that price for the land, then it is not worth that.  Simple.  Common sense. That's why the land here sits for sale for years.  The economy is going to have to to get even worse here before they accept for their properties what they are actually worth. A farmer we spoke to today told us none of them have any money and the banks are asking them to pay up on their loans.  Why?  Because the banks don't have any money either.  But the majority of them still sit in their delusions.

What do you think?  Could it be our field of dreams?

What do they think?

We think so.

View of olive trees from road - good climbing for Greyboy

Nice breeze off the sea

and cats to be altered

Now we just have to figure out how to make it happen.

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