~living this beautiful messy life~
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I’m having a bit of a ‘comparison’ dilemma at the moment and whilst I know that comparing oneself to others is never a healthy or helpful thing – I’m just not quite sure how to get it “out of my system”…
It makes it that much harder – because the person I am making the comparison with, is my Love.
My Love is 5 years older than me, and is a healthy happy vibrant person, who loves Continue reading “comparisons”
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On reflection – the other day, I was shown a perfect example of how I know I’ve changed over the last couple of years.
I had to go into town to do some shopping and plus a Physio appointment, but I was also going to the house in town prior to all that, to do some cleaning up.
I was halfway to town when I realised Continue reading “reflection”
Back in the middle of last year, we bought 1.5ac in the foothills outside of town, in a beautiful part of the northern Queensland Tablelands.
You can read about that over at the Strigidae Farm blog, so that I’m not wasting time by rewriting about it here. 🙂
So – for the last 8 months or so, we’ve been slowly working our way into making the shed a home, and getting our house in town presentable for sale.
Whilst most of it has been very enjoyable, it’s also been difficult.
My darling Spouse works a lot – and works long hours – pretty much 7 days a week, and loves the job with obsessive passion.
I only work a couple of days a week, and am now at the point of being very ready to wave goodbye to my job – and I’ll talk more about that decision later…
Up until mid last year, we used to take to breaks of about 3 weeks each, every 5-6 months – but since we found the Farm, we’ve decided that for the time being, all our finances and energy needs to be directed toward the goal of moving there permanently.
This won’t be able to last for the long term, as the only time my Love can really relax is when we are out of the country – so I think this is a decision that is going to need to be revisited…
We tried to do a ‘stay at home’ holiday in December, and it lasted about 3 days before she was back at work 😐 – and even though she adores her work – she needs a break…!
Anyways – back to the process of preparing for moving from house to farm – and the difficulties therein.
We’ve been slowly doing the shed conversion – and it now resembles a home enough that we could pretty much happily move in tomorrow.
The only things we don’t have, that the ‘normal’ home has is septic, and running water inside.
We currently use a system of buckets and jugs for water inside, we have a camp shower under an awning outside (which we love love love!), we do dishes outside under the awning also – which I’ve spoken about in another article, and we have a portable camping loo – which currently needs emptying every couple of weeks – but if we were there full-time, it would need emptying weekly.
I am the loo emptier – as my Love just doesn’t have the stomach for it.
Just the thought of it, and the facial colour changes, and the gagging starts.
Its pretty funny actually!
Emptying it doesn’t bother me in the least – and we are lucky to have a designated dump-point in town, which is free.
Oh yeah – the other thing we actually do need to be able to move out full-time, is to finish the fencing for the house yard, as we can’t bring our small dogs out until that’s done – or they’d just wander off and go make friends with the neighborhood – which probably doesn’t want them as friends. lol
Now this is where some of the difficulties come into play…
I am not in the most fabulous of health or physical condition – and some of the things that need to get done are just beyond me.
I also have a very small car, so the likes of moving furniture, just aren’t a physical or logistical possibility.
All I can contribute to that chore, is moving what I can to the patio at the house in town, so that it can be loaded in my Loves truck, and bought out.
And therein lies another couple of the problems.
a) I pretty much can’t help with carrying anything heavy down the stairs
b) the truck is almost never bloody home, to be able to put stuff into – and when it is home – there is no one around to help my Love get the stuff down the stairs and into the truck!
Aggghhhh!
I can help at the other end – cos the Farm is flat – so I don’t have to be wrangling stairs…
I’ve managed a lot of the packing of things like books, linen, clothing, and general ‘stuff’, and have been able to bring a lot of that out on my own.
Each time I come out, I load the car up as much as I can – so that the trip isn’t a ‘wasted’ opportunity.
But then there is the problem of not having anywhere to put stuff we need, once I get it to the Farm, because all of our drawers, cupboards, etc are still at the house.
Its ok with the stuff we can store – like books, blankets and winter clothing – as we have a storage container – but there just isn’t any place inside our Farmhouse to put stuff, (except for the kitchen shelving) – other than on the floor!
When you are living in a 9 metre by 7 metre space, one of the last things you need is stuff stacked up all over the already limited floor space.
Besides – I would quickly go a special kind of demented at the mess of it all…!
Soooo – we have still yet to find a work-around for that particular dilemma, but hopefully lotto will land on the doorstep – and I’ll just hire someone to come move everything. lol
At the moment, we also have a friend coming to the house in town, to do some of the bigger jobs that need doing prior to sale.
A lot of the little stuff I can do myself – but until the big jobs are done, and the majority of the “stuff” is out of the house – the just isn’t any point in getting into the little jobs – as a lot of them (like deep cleaning) will just need doing again once the building, sanding, painting, repairing etc has been completed.
And there’s no point cleaning to do the painting, until all the repairs are done.
Catch 22 again…
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Soon(ish), I will tell you about the plans we have for the gardens on the Farm.
There’s nothing quite like a productive (& pretty!) garden to make you feel more centered and relaxed 🙂
And remember, if you’re enjoying Simple Life Farmer, please sign up to have updates sent directly to you.
(you can do this in the ‘please join me’ box)
I hope you do 🙂
Until next time, look after YOU!
Editors Note:
I wrote this on another site on the 19th January last year.
Since that time – a lot of things have changed – which I will update you on in the next post or two – but I thought you might like a bit of background as to where my ‘head-space’ was leading me, over a year ago…
Not exactly in the vein of “a new year, a new you” – but some may think it so.
Twenty something years ago, I went ‘back to my roots’, and moved to a thirty acre block in the middle of the backwoods of south west Qld, that didn’t have sealed roads, running water, electricity, plumbing of any sort, or any neighbors.
When we first moved there – it didn’t even have gas.
All we had was a big unlined one room colorbond shed, with an annex slab added, for a ‘kitchen’, and we did have a nice big dam!
I also had four small children – the youngest being just 6 weeks old, and the second youngest still in cloth nappies.(none of that disposable business when my kids were little. lol)
It was a lot of hard work – pretty much from sunup to sundown, but by the time we sold up and left – we had a 5 bedroom home, a visitors cabin, a genny shed, a huge 3 bay work shed, 2 large tanks, and a smaller header tank, another huge dam, a massive thriving vege garden that had shade cloth cover, so we could grow all year round, chook yards, a pig pen, a fully fenced house yard with gardens, sheep, over an 1ac of fenced protea plants, and orchard trees, an 8′ x 8′ walk-in larder/pantry, with gas fridge, a wetback wood stove, a pot-belly stove, solar power, with generator backup, and plumbing with a real bathroom, with a bath, shower, and flushing loo!!
We even had a library!
(I’ve been known to be a little book-crazy!!)
Even though we put in our loo, we still kept the old pit toilet going.
It was in a nice spot, which we moved round every few months, and it had a nice outlook.
On a beautiful day, it was nice to still be able to ‘go’ out in amongst the forest, and just sit and contemplate…And each time we moved it, we’d plant something on top, that would grow in leaps and bounds from all the nutrients. lol
Now, well over twenty years on – I’m feeling the need to get back to the simple life.
Back to basics.
Not to the extreme that it was in those very early day – although it wouldn’t bother me in least if it turned out that way – but definitely back to a Life that has meaning and feeling.
I’ve started growing my own veggies again – and whilst it’s only baby steps so far – we’re trying with the rare spare time that we do have, to work towards making some differences in our Life.
So far in the garden, we’ve got:
two different types of potatoes,
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Two types of beans
Zucchini
Pumpkin
Coriander
Basil
Spring onions
Carrots
Beetroot and
Chillies
We’ve also got a number of fruit trees awaiting to go in the ground.
It’s a start!!
We’ve also been working on ‘reclaiming’ more of our yard, so we can put in more beds.
At the moment, we have what can best be described as a sort-of Balinese rainforest type garden.
Lots of lushness, ferns, palms etc.
We’ve been gradually paring back, so that we will have the privacy that we so desperately crave, but so that our yard can also be a whole lot more productive than its currently being.
Just yesterday we had someone come in, who wanted our old woodshed, and he came and tore it all down, and started carting it off. Free gardening in exchange for a free woodshed!
The amount of room that that alone will give us to put gardens in, will be staggering.
Wheeehee.
And on the news the other day, there was rumor about Masters (the big hardware store) possibly closing down, and therefore having huge sales.
We wanna be there for those sales I can tell you!!
We’ve also just bought a more economical car, which thankfully, is a ute – so that will make it a whole lot easier than its been for a long time, to get plants, supplies etc, from point A to point B!
On a slightly different topic, I have been unsubscribing like a demon of late.
All these things one subscribes to, that just end up wasting your time and cluttering up your inbox (& your mind!) – I’ve been unsubbing from as fast as they come in.
A very liberating way start to each day.
Give it a try! ☺️
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