These are just a few of the things we have been up to.
We set up an animal shelter. It has alkaline crushed rock base that is good for hooved feet. There is also a drain trench under the gravel to stop it getting too damp under there. We have also spread the gravel around in paddocks and night yards where the ground can get soggy, its a natural way to keep a horses hooves happy.
The sheep like it in there too. DID I MENTION WE HAVE SHEEP! That's a whole other can of worms, I hope to do another post just about them later.
We now have our solar panels installed. 11 panels plugged into a 2kw inverter. That's more potential in the panels than the inverter can take, but we don't have a north sloping section of roof, so they are unlikely to reach maximum output.
We doubled our water storage from the house. The location for the new tank was pretty obvious. I built a little rock retaining wall and filled it up with more gravel to make it level.
Above you can see Molly sitting behind a fence. That fence is gone now, we have also worked a lot on getting the bigger fence around to top part of the property dog proof, so now Molly has a much larger space to run around in.
Here (below) you can see the new tank in place and the finished solar panels. Also you can see I have several more garden beds in now.
We have also put a new electric oven in the kitchen, put in electric fencing for the horse (mostly Vicki on that), I've planted quite a few more trees (8 in the food forest now), cleared more grass out the front of the property and I've made a little progress on the chook pen (hopefully I can finish it before the Nanango markets next Saturday, because I'd love to buy some chooks).
And that's about it for the money left over from selling our old house in the suburbs. We didn't do too bad managing the money. I feel that pretty much everything was spent on things that are a long term investment, hopefully paying for themselves eventually. There were a few things in the garden, kitchen and with the fencing we have not quite managed out of the money. But on the whole we are happy. So now its down to getting serious about being frugal.
Lastly a tip for country living..... check inside your boots before putting them on.... pew it must smell down there :P
1 comments:
AWw!!!!(Your boot visitor!D) It's looking fantastic you guys! Impressive and from the pics your place has the positive air of being alive and functioning and progressing! Wow! Hey Ian, I'm enjoying the parallel between the creativity you are using setting up your new home and the thoughts that you are tumbling out with on the Gorilla Animators blog. I do believe in this creative process and Alonso just posted this great link to a post on creativity:
http://monotremedreams.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/12-things-about-creativity-you-werent.html
It made me think of all the things that may seem unrelated in your life but actually fuel creativity and I can see how your thinking with the Permaculture and Animation parallels. I think there are seeds and creative paths that prompt further creative exploration in this article on creativity just like your articles do!D Here's to the positive and inclusive side of communicating and sharing on the internet!
Cheers!
Once a giant green tree frog came up through our toilet here years ago when we were on septic.
I fished him out and he had a giant pee in my hand!D (terrified)Gotta love animals when you are being all beautiful and "rescuing" them!D
So cool that this little fella is already checking you guys out!How did you lure him out?
Horse shed with gravel is Schmick.
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