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 🙂
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Until next time, look after YOU!
Here, we are putting in two sliding-glass doors – on either side of the huge window in the centre.
