One Year Anniversary
October 30, 2008
We’ve been here a whole year. The cherry blossom will now always be my reminder that another year has passed. It’s in full blossom now as it was when we moved in. It’s a truly spectacular small tree.
So what have we achieved in our first year. Not enough I suppose. We’ve got our design business up and running but there’s a lot more work to go there. We’ve planted over one hundred trees around the boundary, started a vege garden, planted a fruit orchard with over 30 trees, rearranged most of the ornamental gardens (but there’s heaps of work to do there with mulching and weed control), planted a hedge of hazelnuts on the boundary of the future nuttery, converted a pen and old barn for the chooks, pruned and tidied old trees and moved into a second year of organic conversion.
I’ve also done a lot of planning/designing of the layout for the property. The design has changed and evolved many times over the course of this first year so luckily we had no budget to implement any of the earlier ideas. (who would have thought there could be a positive for not having enough money 
). A very useful design tool has been the ride on mower. I’ve marked out different areas by mowing shapes through the paddocks. This lets you live with the layout before any drastic or expensive changes are made.
So what do we want to achieve in our second year. I think this year will be focused on renovating the kitchen and dining area. The 70’s kitchen is badly laid out monstrosity. We have a simple plan to upgrade it that is certainly within our skills to achieve. In the garden I hope to continue extending the vege garden, plant more trees around the boundary and put in some hedges, mainly along the drive. I’d like to start a second, smaller orchard attached to the chook run and plant some more nut trees in the aptly named nuttery. (we planted a couple of chestnuts and almonds already).
What needs to be done as soon as finances allow is the fencing of the top round paddocks and constructing two large ponds. The ponds and round paddocks are key elements in the landscape design so I’m looking forward to seeing them in place.
This first year has been challenging, business has been slow to establish and things have been a bit of struggle. The garden has seemed overwhelmingly large at times and I’ve just walked around bewildered not knowing where to start. It’s also been physically challenging going from a dormant lifestyle to working hard with a shovel in hand. But even with all that, moving here is the best thing we’ve ever done. The local people a refreshingly friendly, interesting and real (and if you’ve ever lived on the Gold Coast for a few years you’d understand the pleasure of that) and the beauty of the mountains, the fresh air and the charm of living on a small farm is absolutely gratifying… and may I never have to live anywhere that I can’t see an apple blossom every year.
