4 February 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well Laura Ingalls was probably not as lucky as we are, but it’s still a prairie. I should call this post Big House In The Paddock though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We moved in three weeks ago, and we’ve been pretty busy ever since. Jenny had given us a four pages “to-do” list, and though we’ve only covered a couple of items, it feels like we’ve been here forever. The first few days, it was too damn hot to be doing anything outside, with temperature way over the forties, so we just cleaned the house, rearranged the girls playroom into a classroom, since they’re starting high school this year, moved the TV room, etc etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Then the temperature cooled down a bit (this is Western Australia, cool means thirty degrees) and we started the heavy stuff. First there was the trench to dig (the short bit by hand, the long bit with a tractor. I love tractors), for the irrigation system for the horses troffs (aka a big basin full of water for the horses to drink), but then the fitting and the joints were leaking so we had to do it all over again. Then there was the cleaning of the shed, with tools on one side, machinery on the other, and a ton of crap in the trailer for the rubbish tip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I was digging and playing in the dust, Claire was busy cleaning windows, clearing flowerbeds, checking on the bee hives, scraping the empty swimming pool clean, … and that’s only her daytime jobs, as she’s still working night shifts at the restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, Sasha and Kerstin<\/a>, my overlanding mates came down for a few days. We met briefly on Flores, in Indonesia. They were riding their bike (Honda Africa Twin, one of the best “Dakar bikes” ever) East to Timor when I was driving Troopy West to Sumbawa. Anyways, they stopped on their way South for a few days and helped us setting up the veggie patch. Pretty simple design really. A frame of rail sleepers (=the big wooden beams they used to put across the rails) in a rectangle, a bed of geotextile (a sheet of some sort of fabric to retain the water a bit) and you fill up the garden with compost, horse shit, chicken shit, sand and dirt. To protect from the sun, some piping bent in an arch, repeat three times, lay over a shade cloth and Bob’s your uncle. You may start planting and sowing. Yay!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But if you’re planning a veggie patch in this heat, you need water. Especially in this sandy soil. It’s like pouring milk on a Weea-Bix, two minutes and the milk is gone. Pfffft, disappeared. It’s magic. You can’t just “water the garden with a hose” you need to actually soak it. Dench it. Bucketloads of water won’t suffice. So I spent a whole morning assembling some pipes and tubes and joints and flexible pipes with holes in it, so the water now drips-drips-drips slowly through Claire’s salads, beans, basil, and all the goodies we’ll be soon eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s nothing like eating a fresh salad with basil and tomatoes (from the garden), sprinkled with olive oil (olives from the garden) with eggs (from the garden, well technically, the chooks, but you know what I mean), then have fresh figs (from the garden) for dessert, or maybe an apricot or a peach, and guess where they’re from…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday I filled up the pool. So after a most deserved dip, I got out and realised the grass around the pool was dry and yellow. It’s not comfortable at all. It’s like walking on corn flakes. So this morning I went on fixing the sprinklers and designing a network of pipes to extend the sprinkler system to water the lawn around the pool. In a week, we’ll we walking on a smooth carpet when I get out of the pool. Aah the luxury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s so much to do though, with two kids and four horses and a house this big, it’s no wonder Jenny’s overwhelmed. Between that and her day job (dentist), there’s no time for anything else. Long live HelpX<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this is still a temporary thing. We are still looking for “real jobs” and still going to interviews and things. At least one thing is certain, after two years in the Pacific, one year in Asia and now a month in a farm, there is no bloody way we’re going back to live in a city apartment. I’d rather drive an hour every morning to work, than live in four concrete walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"