Tomorata here we come!

At the end of my last post I mentioned the challenge of the decision to consider moving north out of Auckland. I mentioned in passing that Auckland was unending noise stress. I have this bizarre syndrome going on where noise, even pleasing music if loud enough or long enough, becomes pain. It starts in my feet and intensifies travelling up my body.

And silence was the key thing that sealed the deal on our buying the property in Tomorata. It will give me a reason to get up each day, with useful tasks to do. It will be a challenge in the early stages not to overdo it and exhaust myself. Unfortunately the house has been a weekend home for the family for the last two years and thus the gardens and other areas have been neglected. There will be a lot to do.

I will need to break up that work into the right sized parcels and then rest before attacking the next parcel. The long term goal is to have productive gardens in the raised garden beds, in the shade house, in the glass house and the orchard. Harvesting crops that we either eat or trade with friends so that the majority of our vegetable and fruit intake is locally produced. We also have a sizeable chicken run which should see us with a surplus of eggs we can trade.

As I slowly make my way through the list of tasks, when I have achieved all the above we will then add livestock to the property. A small number of cattle in the lower paddocks. And a small number of sheep in the upper paddocks. This will enable us to have home kill meats along with making a small profit from selling the fattened bobby calves and lambs. Speaking of home kill meat, we may convert the duck run to a small chicken run with a rooster to ensure a supply of beautiful free range chickens to slaughter - aren't I vicious?

Oh, and then there is the air-rifle I have recently purchased to shoot rabbits and possums. I gave Andrew a game cookbook for his birthday so that he can get ideas for how to cook the rabbits. I don't care for eating possums though so they go into the "tank" to decompose and use the runoff liquids as fertiliser.

If I can achieve all this it will be an excellent stepping stone on my road to recovery