MOVING to a more self-sustainable living

[ahoragi]

Well the time has come for us to move on from our current home. We have been here for seven years. Many of your probably do not recall the garden pictures but our property is pretty rural and we gardened quite heavily. We grew our own food and stored it to survive on throughout the cold winter months. Unfortunately our 1.4 acres are just not enough for what we want to do, which is grow enough food to where we no longer rely on the grocery stores. We also want to add chickens and possibly goats to our family. The art of living in a self-stainable environment cannot be had here so it was time to MOVE.

We recently sold our house to a good friend and co-worker who will use it as his starter home and start growing like we did. He and his family are young and this place will do them well. My wife and I fortunately stumbled across an amazing property that has almost 7 acres of flat land, a pond, wood burning stove, big garage, and last but not least, a chicken coop. I got a few things to fix here and there but then we can start being one with the earth again and grow our own foods and live off the land.

Here are some pictures of our old home. I will always have a love for this place as it is where I held the first vegetable we ever grew.

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

I absolutely adore this <3

Seven acres is a good size... I think you're probably in the sweet spot there and sounds absolutely ideal I do remember seeing your pictures from before, and it sounds like you have a wonderful project ahead of you. Don't be a stranger, and please share your progress with us - it's something I'd love to follow along to!

I've been gradually moving my yard away from an exotic garden to cultivating natives and bushfoods, but might make move in the next few years to get a space with more land, ideally getting something along the forest fringe which has been degraded and work to restore and rewild it, while weaving in some extra native rainforest food sources. Like you, I love my current place, but with less than an acre we can't protect enough land to make rewilding meaningful or effective in making anything self-sustaining in the long term. Once we do make that move, it'll be our last one and be our "forever home" so we need to get it right - our plan is to get a conservation order on it and to have a demountable/modular as our living space which can easily be removed, and after we're gone, bequest the land to a conservancy trust so it'll be protected in perpetuity. We've been scoping out a few areas but are still tossing up which to go for.

in the meantime, here's a few native bushfoods from our neck of the woods. Some are from seed, others we got a tube stock from the local community nursery who have a lovely campaign to propagate natives and encourage people to switch their kitchen gardens from exotics to natives. Murnong ("Yam Daisy") is my new best culinary friend ^_^

 

[SoulOfNeytiri]

Well the time has come for us to move on from our current home. We have been here for seven years. Many of your probably do not recall the garden pictures but our property is pretty rural and we gardened quite heavily. We grew our own food and stored it to survive on throughout the cold winter months. Unfortunately our 1.4 acres are just not enough for what we want to do, which is grow enough food to where we no longer rely on the grocery stores. We also want to add chickens and possibly goats to our family. The art of living in a self-stainable environment cannot be had here so it was time to MOVE.

We recently sold our house to a good friend and co-worker who will use it as his starter home and start growing like we did. He and his family are young and this place will do them well. My wife and I fortunately stumbled across an amazing property that has almost 7 acres of flat land, a pond, wood burning stove, big garage, and last but not least, a chicken coop. I got a few things to fix here and there but then we can start being one with the earth again and grow our own foods and live off the land.

Here are some pictures of our old home. I will always have a love for this place as it is where I held the first vegetable we ever grew.

Just saw this! WOW!! IMPRESSIVE!! Do you feel like Avatar has anything to do with you wanting to live off the land? Or perhaps the opposite - you were drawn to Avatar because it resonated with how you already felt in how you wanted/working towards living? Hope this makes sense...

 

[ahoragi]

I absolutely adore this <3

Seven acres is a good size... I think you're probably in the sweet spot there and sounds absolutely ideal I do remember seeing your pictures from before, and it sounds like you have a wonderful project ahead of you. Don't be a stranger, and please share your progress with us - it's something I'd love to follow along to!

I've been gradually moving my yard away from an exotic garden to cultivating natives and bushfoods, but might make move in the next few years to get a space with more land, ideally getting something along the forest fringe which has been degraded and work to restore and rewild it, while weaving in some extra native rainforest food sources. Like you, I love my current place, but with less than an acre we can't protect enough land to make rewilding meaningful or effective in making anything self-sustaining in the long term. Once we do make that move, it'll be our last one and be our "forever home" so we need to get it right - our plan is to get a conservation order on it and to have a demountable/modular as our living space which can easily be removed, and after we're gone, bequest the land to a conservancy trust so it'll be protected in perpetuity. We've been scoping out a few areas but are still tossing up which to go for.

in the meantime, here's a few native bushfoods from our neck of the woods. Some are from seed, others we got a tube stock from the local community nursery who have a lovely campaign to propagate natives and encourage people to switch their kitchen gardens from exotics to natives. Murnong ("Yam Daisy") is my new best culinary friend ^_^

View attachment 497

Where are you from?

 

[ahoragi]

Just saw this! WOW!! IMPRESSIVE!! Do you feel like Avatar has anything to do with you wanting to live off the land? Or perhaps the opposite - you were drawn to Avatar because it resonated with how you already felt in how you wanted/working towards living? Hope this makes sense...

Thanks. I grew up with my dad watching National Geographic and nature documentaries on TV and my grandfather gave me hundreds of copies of the NG magazine as well till he passed so I was raised with a hint of nature. My only job as a teenager was landscaping so I learned so much about planting and maintaining the natural surroundings. When I first saw Avatar it kind of ignited all those crazy feelings that we all went through during the first film release. It hit me a bit harder than most because I already had a crush/bond with nature growing up but my life path was going in a different direction at the time. After the first film I started growing plants indoors to the point where the plants and their pots were too big too move and that's when I knew I needed to get some land to further experience my growing needs. I met my wife after I purchased the house and we grew a few things and one was a cucumber plant that sprawled all over our 10x10 deck and from then on we were hooked and it expanded. So I guess it was a little bit of both to answer your question.

To top it off, I was reunited with an old friend who I grew up with, and call it fate or just a plain old coincidence, but he was in the process of starting a company called Garden Design and Installations in where he installs gardens for people who want to be self sustainable and grow their own foods. He wanted to partner up with me and I couldn't so YES fast enough.

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

Where are you from?

New South Wales. I was born in Sydney but live in the country now

 

[ahoragi]

New South Wales. I was born in Sydney but live in the country now

I am so jealous!

 

[Sopyu ftu äo]

I am so jealous!

I must admit I am very, for want of a far better world, "patriotic" about my home environment. I am deeply attached to it, and I genuinely do believe it is the most beautiful and perfect place I can conceive of, and though I have in the past lived elsewhere (I spent a few years in South-east Asia when I was younger) I can't imagine doing that now, and the idea of being separated from this place is genuinely horrifying.

But at the same time, I feel everyone should be able to explore and deepen that same bond with their own ecosystem. My home is the most beautiful and perfect ecosystem in my eyes, because it's my home, but I absolutely feel that people in other places should be free to celebrate and love their land with every bit as much depth and feeling as I do

It's something I very passionate about as my own family never enjoyed that when I was young, and it really is heartbreaking (my mum and nan in pticular hated our envrionment) that they didn't get to feel that sense of love and belonging - so find it and hold on to it ^_^

Love your local environment, wherever you are - She'll look after you

 

[ahoragi]

Haven't had a chance to share some pictures of our new forever home. We were fortunate to find this place which is smack dab right in the middle of farmland with no neighbors. Great property with a solar system, a barn, garage, and forest all around. We started our goal of being self sufficient by getting 16 of these little pooping machines that provide us with lots of eggs. What a joy...and a job...is has been having them.

 

[ahoragi]

The garden was the first thing we set up and had to learn about this on-grid solar system and how it works. It's not the ideal solar system that most people want but our electric bill is -$700 so I can't complain.

 

[ahoragi]

But like how life is, you get thrown some hardships your way. We got flooded a couple times. I guess we were in the Way of the Water cuz it sure did not stop for us!

 

[auroraglacialis]

This still looks great, I am sure you can find a solution for that flooding like allowing the water to go into the ground faster or create a pond or ditch - moving to a better place would just be too much effort after all.
I really love these things but I never managed. Land near the cities is expensive here and I have a job that binds me to the city with its university and research facilities. So for now I just have a bit of mini gardening and keep a lot of bees who can go and scavenge all the land that I do not own and still give me something back from that. I am a bit afraid for them this winter though as its really really cold for a long time unlike most of the recent years.