6.3.2010
The sheds are nearly usable. The builders have one more week in which we hope will complete the two smaller sheds. The walls on the big animal shed will have to wait until we have a clearer idea of how far our insurance money will stretch. Quotes coming in at present for aspects of the house are really alarming.

Our animals are well. The sheep keep escaping from their paddock and joining us in the building section of the farm. They have plenty of feed where they are but they were all reared on recycled barley from Simon’s brewery and they miss it. The goats are fat, as they should be coming up to the mating season. Only two goats were mated last year because the fires left us without means to give them adequate care but we will have to mate about half this year.

Ben has set up gigantic metal moulds and plans to pour a new concrete water tank between the top two sheds next week. It will catch all the rain from the big roof and is well above our new house site so should supply us water by gravity. None of us has ever made a tank before so the whole process will be interesting! We have laid pipe underground so that all the tanks are joined and water can be exchanged between them. The idea is to also lay purple pipe so that we can transport recycled or dam water the same way but separate. We have relied on hosepipes trailed along the ground so far.

Mentally we are pretty strung out. There is so much thinking and effort needed every day and so many big decisions to be made that we are feeling over whelmed. It is hard to get in a space where we can just relax and laugh about things. We both feel that our past way of living has ended and as yet we have not replaced it with anything that has meaning. This is probably not really true but our plans are so embryonic that we hardly dare acknowledge them even to ourselves.

The issue is that in order to retain a sustainable life style we have to keep animals and they need constant attention. This makes it difficult to do hobbies and trips away from our property. When we ran the host farm we had contact with wonderful people who came to stay every weekend and sometimes wwoofers as well. Now we hardly see anyone and when people do come it is a bit like someone looking at you whilst you are naked. The bare essentials of our life is all that is left to see and there is no opportunity to dress things up and present the sort of image that we feel happy with as a first impression.

One thing I do feel good about is the kids. They have all been a fantastic support and live lives that make us proud to be related to them. Al has even organised a working B on Monday to get us going on rendering the shed walls. Steve and Johno have covered the wood and metal shed frames with foil paper and stretched chicken wire to take the render. At present the sheds are a vivid shade of blue which is a bit confronting. The builders say that sometimes the foil can be shocking pink that stands out much more. Well. We have not had to suffer that horror but I will still be happier when our sheds tone into the background a bit more.