Monday 26 March 2007

The Three W's


What, Where, Why

The Flood Street Farmlet is a single acre (just slightly less to be entirely honest) of hillside to the west of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales. It contains a number of fruit trees, chooks, ducks, guinea pigs, two lambs and three children. It is the nucleus for a future larger version along the same lines.

Whilst the kids are young we felt it better to stay in a village and work on a smaller scale. As they get older they'll be capable of doing some useful work rather than requiring time and effort for maintenance! This place allows us to learn, try new things, and most importantly collect together a nucleus of plants, animals, tools and materials ready for the next place (if time and conditions grant us the opportunity to move on).

The picture above is from upstairs, looking east, almost a year after we had moved in. The little shed is our first chook house. Development proceeded from a dusty miniature horse ridden paddock to it's current state, with an orchard of 30+ trees, berry patch, and vegetable garden.

We moved to this place after a stint in the city, both of us had spent time in the country as youngsters, and longed to move back. That's not the whole reason for the shift though. Whilst country living is certainly superior (in our opinion) to city living, there were a number of more pressing reasons for making the move.

In a nutshell, the state of the world causes us great concern. Modern society is rushing toward the final crisis, the collective collision of scarcities in energy, food, security and wellbeing. People are always prognosticating on the end of the world as we know it, and others are always having a laugh at them. I tend not to laugh at things when the evidence points in favour of the need for a more serious appraisal of the situation.

This blog is aimed at chronicling our quest toward a greater level of independence and quality of life. Now that the three W's have been answered, we are left with the H, the how of it all. You might see some of that here as time progresses. The Why will surely be revisited as time goes by, as the events that we anticipate unfold around us.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lookin' Good Mate, nice and green :-)

I have linked you to the Nano Farm ;-)

Geoff said...

Hi Kimble,

Thanks for dropping by!

Read you had 70mm of rain at the Nano Farm... I thought you were supposed to be dry out there ;)

rhondajean said...

Hello Geoff! Your place is looking good. You've done a lot of work there. It's nice to see your lovely photo of you and your son too.

I'll be back to visit again.

Alison Peters said...

Glad you decided to blog about your experiences so we city folk can look at your pictures dream of a simpler life.

Geoff said...

Thanks Rhonda!

Cheers Alison. Moving to the country was the best thing we ever did!