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Thursday, May 23, 2013

I've been prone to a little reminiscing lately thanks to Tammy and also to this book. Thinking about how we started out here on our little farm and where we were before that in Sydney's suburbia.
 
Little did I know when I first met Tim that we would be such kindred spirits and both have a zeal for gardening in particular herbs and vegetables. But we did and when we first set up our home after we married, we couldn't afford to do much to the house itself but we could definitely dig the soil and sow seeds. And we did. 
 

Although I had never done a lot of cooking whilst living with my parents, I knew my way around a kitchen pretty well and whether by necessity or maybe even to impress my new husband, I cooked pretty much everything from scratch from the very beginning. I loved cooking and I still do.

Vegetable gardening with children and chooks

Our block of land wasn't huge, about 700sq metres but we did grow quite a lot of our own vegetables. Given that the house was built in the late 1950s and a very typical Aussie yard, there was a well established lemon tree to give us some fruit but that was it. Also true to the era, there was an incinerator which we converted to a compost bin. Along the way we added more fruit trees, a couple of bantam chickens and a worm farm to the mix and things were good. Homesteading a little in the city.M sister even made a video of us for a university assignment which thankfully I have never seen. But we really did talk about and dream of making a move to a more rural setting.  When a work transfer opportunity came up in a country town, we jumped at it and in a nutshell that is how we managed to make the move from the city.

Georgina and the girls
 
To this day I don't think my lifestyle has really changed much living in the country. I still garden, I still cook our produce and I still have livestock but for the past 14 years that we have lived here, it has been on a much larger scale. And not once have I seriously thought about moving back to the suburbs or even into town. I am truly at home here.
 
Tracy

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i know what you mean we will never move back to the town either we love it on the land.xx

Joolz said...

It's nice to hear someone so contented with what they have.

We live just outside the town limits of our town on 2.5 acres and I could not imagine living with neighbours next to us again.

I still have dreams of chooks and a good veggie patch - I have 2 sheep so that's a start, I suppose.

Cheers - Joolz

Our Neck of the Woods said...

Oh I just love this post! I'm so glad I decided to participate in the homesteading series because it makes me happy to reminisce! I love the photo of gardening with children and chooks :) I think we are kindred spirits, Tracy!

Staci@LifeAtCobbleHillFarm said...

Lovely post - I, too, absolutely love our lifestyle. You can always go to town to shop or eat but then escape to your own little quiet piece of the world. :)

Kim said...

I think you are right in saying that things don't change.If you have that simple living mind set , you keep doing the same things but on a different scale. We have lived on farms our whole life, but our retirement plan is to move to a house we bought in the city - we spend lots of time imagining how to do the same things we are doing here on a smaller scale as we get older. David says I can't have a goat there though...but if I could get a really quiet one , maybe no one would notice.