Archive for the ‘Farm’ Category

Spring has sprung

Saturday, September 29th, 2012

Today was that rare kind of day where the weather was great, the family were all at home and none of us had major plans – which turned our to be just as well.

Regular readers will recall my recent attempt to take a week’s annual leave was taken up with being ill and instead taking the time as sick leave. Undaunted, I have booked next week as annual leave in the hope that I can rest, relax and enjoy the time off without writhing around in bed and spending inordinate amounts of time in the smallest room.

I use the term ‘rest, relax and enjoy’ broadly because this morning She Who Must Be Obeyed declared that today was to be a day of toil rather than a day of rest.  So ordered, we all set to and did a whole bunch of stuff around the farm, which included all of the following and more.

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Last night, we took delivery of a well worn but sound kid’s playhouse that Wendy bought on TradeMe. First job this morning was to size up the job of cleaning it up and converting it into what I shall be calling The Poulet Palace. With our rapidly-growing Brown Shaver chicks and Sussex and Leghorn ‘teenagers’  joining our four original chickens, including Cilla Black below, we’ll be needing more space soon.

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We have been trying to prune back the rampant bougainvillea and creeper that has threatened to completely take of the deck and terrace railings. The first task of the day was to finish the job and haul the cuttings to the middle paddock to help make up a bonfire for later in the spring.

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Meanwhile in the kitchen garden,  as you can see from the photo of Maisie below, the raised veggie patch had run wild since the autumn and was a mass of out of control herbs and overgrown veggies.

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Maisie and Robyn started the mammoth task without a second thought, gathering tools and digging over the patch like seasoned agricultural labourers…

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…forking the earth, loosening roots and pulling up heaps of spuds, kumara and spring onions.

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The veggie patch wasn’t the only thing that was overgrown; our rosemary bush (left below) has spread out to cover an area about 8 feet in diameter, so Wendy and Casia did some aggressive cutting back, calling me and my trusty chainsaw in to deal to the bits too thick for shears.

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With chopped greenery, gone-to-seed veggies and dead wood piling up all around, the ride-on and trailer were pressed into service throughout the day, hauling stuff either to the bonfire pile or our organic dumping spot near the gully in the back paddock.  The numerous trips afforded the three girls plenty of opportunity to hone their driving and trailer-backing skills, as can be seen in the following pictures.

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Driving Miss Maisie

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Flat Out

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Freed from her paddock for the afternoon, our little heifer TJ enjoyed munching her way round the back garden and teasing the very interested bulls in the next paddock before lying down for a siesta in the sun.

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Seeing as the animals were taking it easy, we thought it was time for a break and Maisie outdid herself laying on iced water and biscuits for the workers…

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and Robyn, rocking gently in her chair, decided to copy TJ and have a lie-down!

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Slowly, the sun was more and more obscured by dark clouds that threatened to bring the forecast rain and put an end to a busy day full of fun, laughter  and quite a bit of hard yakka.

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As we went around tidying up and putting tools away, it was good to see the results of our efforts.

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The soil in our raised veggie patch was visible for the first time since we moved onto the farm.

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The three stands of bamboo that smothered the back wall of the house were gone.

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Our first crop, albeit an inadvertent one, was harvested, washed and gifted to our friends and neighbours.

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Our ‘teenager’ chickens and their temporary dwelling were relocated to a sunnier spot.

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Rampant rosemary was reduced and harvested for use in the kitchen and, in another of Wendy’s schemes, packing in cellophane for sale in the local veggie store.

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Heading for the house and a hot shower, I took one last look across the farm, beyond the bonfire pile and over the valley and thanked God for the blessing of living in such a place. I look forward to hopefully many days such as this in the future.

Post and rail, hammer and nail

Sunday, September 23rd, 2012

I’m sick and tired of being, well, sick and tired.  Coming to the end of 14 days of antibiotics, probiotics and electrolytes, I am still not back to 100% especially where energy levels are concerned.  That said, I feel better than I did and for that mercy I am grateful. 

I’m still not feeling up to major jobs around the smallholding but, at the request of SWMBO, briefly attacked an overgrown bougainvillea with the chainsaw until my energy ran out. Looking to take things a little easier, I ventured out today to move our neighbour’s rams from the gully paddock into the large paddock.  Given the lush spring growth we have as a result of the winter rains, Larry and Garry (or is it Barry and Harry?) needed no prompting to move to new pastures and start munching.

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While they munched, I set to and did a few running repairs to the post and rail enclosures, stiles and other wooden structures around the place, so that things looking like this…
 
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…ended up looking more like this.
 
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Jobs done, I spent a while just watching our calf TJ graze along side Poppy the lamb and the chickens in the home paddock.  There’s yet to be a time when I experience such moments and fail to feel blessed to live where we live, look after the land we live on and steward the stock we have.
 
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TJ is growing in stature and confidence, increasingly happy to use her weight and muscle to push her way to the front of the feeding queue. 
 
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Poppy is just as keen to be fed first and uses her speed, not to mention her piercingly persistent bleat to inform us that we’re taking too long or have our pecking order priorities wrong. Part of our enjoyment is sharing these times with others and being a part of a community where we can connect with people, learn from them and do life together.  
 
We are blessed to have friends like John and Justine who have given us much advice, their continuing friendship and an old bench we can sit on and enjoy cups of tea in the sun; friends like Sean and Katie whose girls come to our place and ours to theirs to spend time just doing stuff like making hokey-pokey and rehearsing their dances and friends like Johnny and Michelle who walked over this afternoon to borrow some golden syrup, stopped to chat for a few minutes and ended up having a glass of wine and a few olives as the sun slowly headed towards the horizon.
 
 

Relief beef

Friday, September 14th, 2012

No sooner were the chicks installed in the laundry than we got a call from Johnny. Apparently he’d arrived home late this afternoon to find our new calf waiting in the yard so he was loading her to bring over to our place.

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A little while later, the rumble of a farm bike and the rattle of a trailer heralded the young heifer’s arrival.  Immediately, we could see how bright, lively, inquisitive and nervous this little Jersey/Fresian cross was – a very different story from poor Willow. 

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We had only just got her coat on and moved her into the paddock when Maisie and Robyn came home from school.  As they came up the drive, we could see their faces light up. After lightening quick change from school uniform, they joined us in the paddock and had the honour of giving the calf her first bottle feed.

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At some point during the feeding, the calf was named TJ – the initials of Maisie’s last and much-loved primary school teacher who recently died of cancer. 

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TJ quickly drank the two litres of milk and began the tentative process of getting acquainted with Poppy the lamb and the chooks with whom she’ll be sharing the home paddock for the next while.

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So, as of this evening, our growing livestock register stands at:

  • One lamb
  • One heifer
  • One rooster
  • Three laying chickens
  • Five day-old chicks

We’ve been considering at least one more lamb and really, around here, who knows what tomorrow will bring or when we’ll gifted another blessing to steward?

And on the seventh day…

Friday, September 14th, 2012

… he rose from his sick bed and felt somewhat human again. I had such great plans. Booking 5 days’ leave sandwiched between two weekends meant nine consecutive days away from work and busy getting stuff done around the smallholding. Or not, as it has turned out.

Sadly, out of the last 10 days, I have spent the best part of seven of them in bed, on the loo or lying on the couch thinking about going to the loo or back to bed. After a visit to the doctor and some tests, it turns out that I have had concurrent campylobacter and rotavirus infections, the same stuff that killed Willow. 

With just two more days before I have to go back to work, today was the first day when I actually felt like doing anything like tackling some of the jobs around the place. So, while Wendy tackled the wildly overgrown shrubbery…

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…I slowly but surely worked my way down the drive, regrading and redistributing the metal by hand to even out the surface and smooth things as much as possible.

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I have lost a bit of weight in the last week but I hadn’t realised how much the dehydration and lack of food had taken it out of me.  Just raking and smoothing 150m of drive almost did for me so I finished off and headed back to the house to enjoy a few minutes sitting with Wendy, drinking tea and enjoying the view.

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We are still bottle-feeding Poppy the lamb but she is supplementing this more and more by grazing in the home paddock.  That said, one lamb – even a guzzler like Poppy – isn’t enough to keep pace with the Spring growth.In order to keep the grass in good order and deal to any weeds before they reproducing, I spent a pleasantly sunny hour topping the paddock.

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After a quick sandwich for afternoon tea, for lunchtime had come and gone without either of us noticing, we headed to the local rural primary school to collect the newest additions to our small holding.

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We had ordered five Brown Shaver chicks through our friend Michelle (Johnny’s wife) who works at the school.  One of the mums had placed a bulk order for local kids and parents, sourcing the chicks from the country’s major producer in Christchurch.  

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As part of a much larger consignment, the days-old chicks were flown up this afternoon, collected from another farm and driven to the school in a heated box. From there, we whisked them home to take up residence in a lamp-heated cat cage in our laundry, ending their 1,000km journey with munch of Peck n Lay and water.

Funnily enough, these little squeaking bundles of fluff were not to be the newest additions for very long.  Just as we were cooking dinner and getting ready to take the youth group to an indoor climbing centre for the evening, we got a call from Johnny telling us to get ready for another arrival.

A battle lost

Monday, September 10th, 2012

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We had our first loss on the smallholding earlier today when our calf Willow finally succumbed to the infection she has been fighting for 9 days.  Speaking to our vet this afternoon, rotavirus is the most likely culprit.  He says that it is currently prevalent in the area and many folk are seeing losses amongst newborn calves.

Willow seemed jaded the day we unloaded her from the trailer, so she was most likely already infected and we’ve been fighting an uphill battle since then. For a week now, we have been tube feeding several times a day, alternating between calf milk and electrolytes in an effort to keep her hydration and nourishment up.  Latterly, we have also been administering injections of antibiotics, penicillin and pain killers to get the virus under control and keep her comfortable.

Wendy and Maisie have been the mainstays of the care effort, demonstrating veterinary care skills that belie their relative inexperience with such things. It has been a sad but salutory experience for us all, forcing us to fast-track our ‘on the job’ learning about general animal welfare and hygiene regimens, as well as more specific stuff like giving subcutaneous injections to cows.  

Before sunrise one morning last week, I carried Willow to the shed in the back paddock to get her out of the storm that was blowing through. As I did, it dawned on me that this was something that people have been doing since they first domesticated animals and I more fully appreciated the privilege and responsibilities that come with stewardship.

It feels like we have a lot to learn, though are told that we did everything right and the battle may have been lost before it began. Undoubtedly more calves will follow but we’ll always regret losing our first so quickly.

Ironically, it may well be rotavirus (or a campylobactor infection) that has kept me in bed or the bathroom since last Wednesday. Hopefully, the meds and the electrolytes will kick in soon – especially as I’m meant to be enjoying a week’s leave starting today.  

To end on a brighter note, we have new tenants –  a nice couple who moved into the cottage last Friday and are slowly settling in.

The Calf & The Cleaner

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

We’ve had an interesting twenty four hours.  SWMBO and I were both up during the night to try feeding/hydrating the calf with little success. After a disturbed night, I woke at 0500hrs to the sound of lashing rain and strong winds and a sick and cold calf sitting in the wettest place possible, just inches from the stall full of dry hay I’d prepared for her last night.

Realising that things were worsening, I spent the next hour shifting equipment out of and hay into the old feed shed in the back paddock before manhandling her up the hill and into a much drier and warmer spot.  In hindsight, I should have moved her there at the first sign of problems but, being pretty new to all this, I just didn’t join the dots early enough.

Having missed the school bus (along with half the kids on the same route due to the driver leaving too early), Maisie has spent the day helping Wendy managing things.  She took the calf to the vet with my mate Johnny and it turned out that we had a fairly good handle on things; the calf most likely has coccidiosis and this has been compounded by the scours we saw yesterday.

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Like humans with diarrhoea, the more the calf gets dehydrated, the weaker it gets and the less likely it is to recover.  So, to cover all the bases, we got antibiotics to fight the infection and electrolytes to help rehydrate her.  The injection was no problem but the calf was hardly suckling so the only way to get her fluids up was by using a feeding tube. Hearing that this would be another $50 bucks, Wendy and Maisie saved the day (and $40) by using our $10 aquarium gravel cleaner as a feeding tube and funnel.

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So this evening, while the rain lashed around the shed, we set to and fed the calf for the second time using this hi-tech solution before tucking her in for what will be a much warmer and drier – and hopefully healthier – night.

Our cattle is low(ing)

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

Two days ago, we were joined on the farm by a four-day old heifer, Willow, a russet-coloured Jersey/Angus cross purchased through my good friend Johnny*.  The plan is for Willow to be the start of Maisie’s college/OE fund, raising her to breed weaner calves that can be sold on.

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Wary Willow meets Abbie during her first bottle feed.

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The calf cover keeps her warm in the spring Westerlies.

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Willow and Poppy get acquainted.

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Tentative to feed from the bottle, it turned out that she has calf scours (diarrhoea) and possibly coccidia, so we’ve confined her to a temporary stall under the main deck and have kept her fluids up all day.  Hopefully this, plus some vet meds and electrolytes we’ll pick up tomorrow, will see her perk up and recover.

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* You can see Johnny doing his off-farm rural postie job in this recent TV news piece.

Two shakes of a lamb’s tail

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

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Having ringed her tail a few weeks back, we drove through our gate to find a tail-less Poppy skipping about the home paddock.  As we got closer to the paddock, we were greeted by the surreal sight of Poppy staring through a gate from which her now-detached tail was drooping.

Update Four: Life on the smallholding

Friday, August 24th, 2012

I haven’t written much here lately so what follows is a rough visual timeline (one picture for every 2½ days) of some of the things we have been up to.

1. Standing outside the garage wondering about which little patch of chaos to tackle next.

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2. Joining the dog on the couch in the garage with a cup of tea, knowing the chaos can wait.

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3. Worrying that I’ll never mow the steep back garden without injuring myself.

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4. Spending a chilly early evening zeroing my new pest neutraliser.

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5. Collecting firewood, stacking firewood, chopping kindling and bagging kindling.

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6. Popping over to the neighbours for a few hours messing around in Jeeps.

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7. Fixing windows for the tenants.

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8. Buying SWMBO the nice shiny red sports car she’s always wanted.

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9. Flying to Sydney and back  in 24hrs for 1 sleep, 2 meals, 3 meetings, 6 taxi rides & an interrogation at Customs at 3 a.m.

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10. Learning from my mate Johnny how to dig post holes, widen a gateway and string No.8 wire.

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11. Chuckling at doing a little light gardening Kiwi-style i.e. with a big blue tractor.

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12. Wondering (repeatedly in this very rainy winter) if our access road will flood.

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13. Taking a family time out to help our eldest move out to a house with new friends.

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14. Collecting  and stacking more firewood, chopping and bagging more kindling.

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15. Working with my youngest to build a new, wider gate for the new, wider gateway.

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16. Sharing the satisfaction of a job well done – and a gate that fits!

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17. Remembering to go to the day job that (mostly) pays the bills.

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18. Admiring the decorating prowess of SWMBO (and assembling some furniture).

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19. Rescuing a sadly fatally traumatised birds from the woodburner flue. 

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20. Sampling a taste of the old country.

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21. Relishing a homemade egg and bacon muffin containing our first home laid egg.

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22. Assisting Johnny move his flood-bound flock to greener, drier pastures.

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23. Knocking myself out in the basement and bleeding a lot.

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24.  Making time with SWMBO to continue running our youth group – like when dissecting pigs’ eyes!

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25. Prepping the rentals for letting.

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26. Re-enacting ‘Fahrenheit 451′ with the kids’  old school work.

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27. Researching local history and finding that valley floods (No. 12) are par for the course.

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28. Retiring old power tools and buying their replacements.

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29. Buying a car – and then selling it again (long story).

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30. And revelling in the daily beauty of views, skies and rainbows (more of which soon).

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Update Three: The House

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

We have flicked through the property papers and attended a good many realtor open homes over the last year or two and I was pretty much over the idea of ever finding a house and smallholding that would suit us as a family and that we could afford.

We looked at a place in a nearby township and I asked my friend Kevin, who is an architect, to give me his opinion. While he didn’t actually say ‘don’t buy’, it was clear he had reservations as he outlined the stuff he saw and the potential expenses we might incur.  He also gave me a piece of advice that he always bore in mind when buying a place; namely, you’re buying the vendor’s reason to sell and, if you don’t establish what that is, it can be an expensive mistake.

As we chatted outside the place, he told me we were setting our sights too low. By only looking at places we could afford and not considering other more expensive places we could haggle over and bargain down, we were unlikely to get anywhere close to the kind of place we were looking for.  This turned out to be sage and timely advice.

For a laugh, the next day we went and looked at a millionaire’s mansion with 10 acres and had a hoot imagining ourselves living there with the galleried bedrooms and the kidney shaped swimming pool; the power bill and pool maintenance costs would have seen us bankrupt within a few months.  Even so, I was tired of the whole house-hunting thing and, driving home, I had decided I’d had enough of looking.

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Two days later, SWMBO asked me to go view another property after work. It was the last thing I wanted to do but I begrudgingly agreed.  However, it turned out that the property was close by my friend Johnny’s farm and as we passed his place, turned onto an unmade road, through the gate and up a drive, I has a sense that this place might just be different.

And I was right, it was away from suburbia but close to the school bus route, was one bedroom short but had space to create another, had good land but not too much, was more rural but the commute was still realistic. Over the following weeks and months, we jumped through the usual and some not-so-usual hoops as we slowly but steadily worked our way towards making an offer we could afford and the vendor would accept. 

Built on the side of a hill at the end of a koru-shaped drive, the house overlooks a valley which leads to a small estuary on what is one of the largest harbours in the world.  We found the custom-built house cleverly thought out, well-designed and built with an eye for detail and a quality finish. You can imagine the goosebumps we got when the owner told us that the architect he had commissioned to design the place was our friend Kevin!

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The house is North facing with the rooms and decks laid out to make the best of the day’s sun.  The large roof catches the currently-plentiful rain and routes it into two 5,000 gallon tanks buried beneath the back garden for our water supply.  The windows give us amazing views of the surrounding farmland, fantastic skies and spectacular sunsets.   

Fanning away from the house are three paddocks: a narrow scrub-filled gulley dropping away to a small wetland area, a larger sloping grass paddock and a home paddock just below the house, where we keep our chickens and lamb. Across the drive, we have an acre of wetland reserve, a mini-ecosystem of native trees, plants and fauna bisected by a little brook. 

Halfway up the drive and opposite the wetland area, there is a small one bedroom rental cottage. Imagine our surprise when, on one of our visits, we discovered that we knew the folk renting it!  Sadly, they have moved to housesit for friends so we’re currently in the process of showing the place to a slow trickle of prospective tenants.

Adjacent to the main house is a self-contained one bedroom flat, which will provide space for visiting family and friends.  In between such visits, we will offer it as a home stay for international students or something similar to bring in a little extra income.  

Between the flat and the house is a large double garage or, should I say was, as we had a local builder convert part of the space into a bedsit for our first year uni student daughter, leaving the rest for a workshop and storage space. In fact, storage is one thing we’re not short of, as we’re blessed with two lofts, a wet room, a large basement, an under-deck store/animal shelter and a feed store in the back paddock.

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