Where are we now in April 2021?
We started working on clearing the initial 3 acres we are currently working in August 2020. Us two, our children in tow and a few simple tools. In this time we have cleared 1 acre of it, started our tree transplantation. The reason for this being, as we all know trees take time and sooner we got them in the ground the better. For our immediate living area 1 acre is enough to get started on. I will go onto more details about our plans for the rest of the space for a community life at another time.
We had a initial draft of where we wanted our temporary house, the 1st well, the car port/utility building and the vegetable garden.
You can say the last thing that is going up on the land will be the house. Not the usual approach i know but wed rather it took, what seems, longer than your average build where the house goes up first. Then you end up living in what feels like a construction site and you do the landscaping after.
As we began to clear and seeing the difference in the soil we temporarily decided to test growing some vegetables on the opposite end to where we initially had it on paper. 6 months later we’ve been able to get some of the vegetables and its proven to be a successful test run.
The house site we cleared, measured and started derocking and derooting. Finding the odd scorpio here and there. Thankfully we haven’t had any serious dangers with the scorpions and they’ve been decreasing as we’ve cleared. Over time once we get some chickens, dogs etc. there will be next to none left. But this has lead to me and frank going back and forth on what we should call our little corner. I am for ” Rocks & Roots and Farm” and franks for ” Scorpion” farm. The debate is still on. Feel free to let us know which you prefer 🙂
Once we started getting somewhere with the house site and started the vegetable garden, we started to move the clearing outwards. Starting to work on the car port/utility building. During this time frank has built the majority of the physical house from recycled/reclaimed hardwoods, to see a bit more on it in “The cart before the horse” article of him starting the house. As we are still renting in town we have been able to utilise the outdoor space for frank to work and store the house panels.
He then moved onto making the fence panels as the clearing has expanding and we had the initial print of the first acre. The wood he used for the fence panels are what was left over from the house panels. The quality being what dictated the left overs. The reason for this is because we want to ensure we are building the house in the most cost effective manner possible. As a form of pest control and uniform look we have been torching the panels as soon as they go up. The fence panels are almost done now, we have temporarily took a break from them however. The reason for this being that we want to finish the car port/untility building. We want to do this to move the house panels onto the site as we are aiming to have it up by end of this year.
Now that we are getting the roof on the car port/utility building we will finish the last stretch of the fence panels. So the next few months are definitely an exciting stage.
So there is a lot going on at the moment, with two little people in tow doing quality control. You’d be surprised how much Liban, at the age of 5 knows about buildings. Albeit tiring, this is one of the most exciting times. As I’ve said before i hope our journey inspires you to realise how important it is to chase your dream. Do your due diligence but let life flow.
I will revisit how the kids are and how we are navigating their LifeLearning journey. I briefly touched on what our plans are with the kids on Is Schooling Education?.
In the meantime i wish you well. Please let us know if there are any aspects which interest you and you would like to know more about. We still have some slots open for lifestyle consultations, you can find out a bit more on Book a free first session .
Blessings,
Asli
