Home!

It is with much joy and gratitude that I report our final homecoming to Farm 119!

After 2 years of planning, hoping, praying and doubting, having our bond cancelled, experiencing the economic turmoil of the world (being off the beaten track did not shield us from that one) and my mom’s sudden passing…..we are now home. I am overcome with a deep sense of peace and well-being. We moved in last Wednesday after which we were welcomed by a resident baboon who found his way into Kevin’s office on Thursday morning, swung on the roof beams and crapped all over the curtains!

Nevertheless, it has been pure bliss waking up on our own land every morning. I’ve forgotten how great it is to have you own home – to wake up on a Sunday morning with an unlimited list of DIY possibilities to fill the day! Having built a new house using recycled windows & doors also means that we have the best of both worlds: plumbing that works but beautiful old items in need of loving restoration. It seems our belief in reincarnation stretches to buildings as well!

The floor (recycled wooden parquet) is absolutely gorgeous, the 3 basin kitchen sink with fancy taps is an utter delight and staring at the various views through the windows and doorways keep us entertained for hours. We are also making acquaintance with the intricacies of a solar geysers (we previously used gas) and realised after the first cloudy day that we definitely need the gas back-up!

We also collected our new family member on Saturday: Mushroom is an 18 month old cross between a Labrador and an Alsatian and was so named by the old lady who found her as a puppy in the forest when she went to look for mushrooms. She keeps the kids busy while we get on with our DIY endeavours. She is slowly getting used to the cows – the neighbours weren’t too impressed with her incessant barking in the early dawn hours of Sunday morning!

I had some damage to my plants – I wasn’t quite quick enough to secure them from the cows and lost half a fuchsia and some of my azalea plant to the curious bovines! But they are now safely stored in the new greenhouse which turned out to be a converted sukkah (a temporary structure which we erect to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkot).

There is still much to be done on Farm 119 – we’re expecting some more woofers and our revered builder will hopefully return soon from a well-deserved holiday. But the journey has finally begun….

We are truly blessed.... (and love our flushing toilet!)

Completing the house

And so after almost 2 weeks, we bid a sad farewell to our wonderful woofers. They leave behind well dug and composted beds planted with previously pot-bound plants and a variety of vegetable seeds; piles of collected cow dung and compost heaps, painted and varnished decks and a rhino-boarded children’s room. It is actually quite unbelievable that these tasks (which loomed and weighed on my consciousness) could be swiftly completed by such fantastic new friends in exchange for tented accommodation and some food… if this is the alternative to capitalism, I’m all for it!
We shared a potjie around the fire on their final evening, accompanied by our builders and lovely neighbours. I listened to Thomas (our landlord/neighbour) and Goldie (the woofer) playing guitar under the stars and felt humbled and grateful for the Universal order of things. How things always seem to turn out perfectly in spite of our plans.
The house is nearing completion and is coming together quickly now with finishing, plumbing and electrics. I still can’t quite believe that after 2 years of planning/hoping/praying/obsessing we will finally be living on the land and a new chapter of our rural integration will begin.
I have rearranged my working hours so that I work 6 hours instead of 7.5 at 80% of my pay. With eliminating a lunch break, I now finish at 2 pm and gain 2.5 hours of daylight. This has opened up an entire chunk of the day to spend playing cars with Luke, sewing Barbie dresses with Mila and communing with my plants. Mila had her 6th birthday party recently – also a “goodbye” party for the house we’ve called home for the past 2 years. Organising a birthday party without the help of my mother was very daunting but ultimately empowering. Following in Papa Tony’s footsteps, Mila has become quite the equestrian, while Luke (in keeping more with my ancestral line) is rather obsessed with cars and swear words (which he calls “square” words!).
Kevin is gallivanting again – he did the Whale Trail hike, followed by Cape Town where he opened another exhibition at Exposure Gallery (at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock). Without him working and printing at the office we’ve had lots of power for watching DVDs and surfing You Tube – when the cat’s away…
As soon as he returns the packing will start in all earnest as we prepare for our homecoming.
More images: www.digitalfactor.co.za/farm119oct

Much has been happening on the farm. I arrived yesterday to find a digger loader preparing a large hole for our septic tank, the final walls on the house raised and our new WOOFERS painting and preparing vegetable beds. I had never seen so much action on the farm at once – it was rather overwhelming but thoroughly exciting!
Our wonderful WOOFERS (Neta and Goldie) arrived a few days ago after spending some time at the Kula Dharma eco-community in the Eastern Cape. With all the woofing requests over the past months, I lost track of who’s who and so I was expecting some tough German girls, but they turned out to be a delightful Israeli couple from a Kibbutz near Haifa who can teach me a thing or two about farming! We provide them with food and “luxury” tent accommodation (and dry toilet) and in return they get onto all those jobs that I haven’t been able to. Kevin also has someone to share humus and Hebrew jokes with.
Kevin had a very successful exhibition in Johannesburg and is off to do the Whale Trail tomorrow after which it’s Cape Town and another exhibition, so he’ll be missing out on some of the action on the farm.
We’ve been spending a lot more time on the farm and it’s really starting to feel like home – the kids have also started painting their room and constantly want to know when we’re moving in. Our rent runs out at the end of October so we’ll be in our new little house before then! After 2 years of uncertainty, it’s quite unbelievable that things are finally coming together.
Kevin and I and the kids, Chunkie (the builder), his assistant Garth (and his dog) and our two woofers all sat around on the office floor last night feasting on some soup that Neta had made – there was a real sense of community. No doubt my mother had a hand in this most marvellous blessing…

Going home

This new moon sees many changes afoot in the life of the forest dwellers…we finally gave notice to our landlord and we will be making our homeward journey before 31 October. Our carport-2-house conversion is going very well – it’s is extremely exciting to stand on the new floor and see the walls go up. Our clever builder, Chunky, managed to figure out a way to fit a kids’ room into the design, so we won’t all have to squeeze into one little bedroom after all! It will be a tight fit, but there’ll be less floor area to sweep and there’ll only be enough space for things to be in their place, so no space for mess (or so I hope!).

For more pictures: www.digitalfactor.co.za/farm119aug

And so we’ll leave behind the old farmhouse that has been our off-the-grid training ground. Over the past 2 years, this house has been witness to our many moments of joy and bliss as well as our deepest despair, loss and sadness. It certainly feels as if we have worked through a lot of karma in this place. As they say in my mother tongue: ”dit was lekker, maar nou’s dit klaar!” It is with much gratitude and great excitement that we move forward on the journey…We say goodbye to the old gas geyser, wall cracks and temperamental septic tank. I’m sure we’ll miss our spacious bedroom and daily interaction with horses (the cow on our farm is pregnant, by the way).
On the vegetable front: Luke and I had a wonderful Sunday lunch in the garden last week when Kevin & Mila were on a Jo’burg jol. We feasted on our garden produce of 3 types of lettuce, some rosemary and fennel. Then, a few days ago, we had visitors…the baboons (who supposedly don’t eat lettuce) ripped out and demolished every last one of our 6 beautiful plants! So we’ll have to start again…I’ll try spinach this time…I’ve heard they don’t like it…

It’s been almost 2 years since we moved off the grid and by now the initial shock to our way of life has normalised. City luxuries like dishwashers, hairdryers and tumble dryers are items long forgotten and hardly missed. Creature comforts have been replaced by silence and wide open space.

As I reflect on the changes we have grown through, there are many valuable lessons which this rural life-style has afforded us. FLEXIBILITY immediately springs to mind.We tread the fine balance between sunshine (giving us electricity) and rain (providing our water), and so the weather plays an integral part in our rural reality. Hot baths are no longer planned or anticipated but greatly appreciated when the opportunity presents itself. And notions of “movie night” might be dashed by constant cloud cover. I’ve found that my perfectionism has been softened as we learn to digest situations with a healthy dose of humour and go with the flow of nature. While outdoor activities are always affected by the changeable weather, our building process has also taught us to be flexible. What was to be a house made from hemp, turned to a rammed earth and timber structure until the economic meltdown came along. Now it’s out with new and in with old shipping containers and recycled materials.

In my training as a management consultant I was taught to “release my agenda” when involved in high level business meetings, and this experience has been invaluable in swinging with the punches of nature.Learning to RE-USE precious resources has led to creative opportunities around all corners. Our used yoghurt containers become planters for seedlings and polystyrene packaging is reincarnated into Barbie furniture. Used water is never discarded before considering the thirsty plants or muddy boots that need cleaning.

Our daily lives are still as full and busy as when we were city dwellers – in fact, activities have only been added to our agenda. Like tapping the water tanks upon returning home from work to check the water levels, then pumping water to the header tank to ensure that our vintage geyser delivers hot water for a bath. Or checking the charge in the solar batteries with a hydrometer before watching DVDs on rainy days and mixing bio-enzymes and pouring it down the toilet once a month to ensure healthy bacterial life in the septic tank (very important!). And then there’s using the bath water to irrigate the garden - manually with a watering can. Not to mention regularly cleaning the gutters to ensure we catch the rainwater. So much for a “simpler way of life”!

With a full-time job in town, 2 small children, no domestic help (except for a well trained husband) and all the added tasks of living off the grid, learning to MANAGE MY TIME is a constant challenge. The best solution I have so far come up with is the “family forage plan”, whereby the family forages for their food in the garden instead of eating meals. This can eliminate or greatly reduce the time spent on shopping for food, cooking, eating and dealing with dirty dishes, while increasing the time we spend in the garden. Not to mention the cost savings and improvement to our health. This plan is underway (although we’re still completely dependent on the Pick ‘n Pay) and progress will be reported on…

Being so conscious of precious resources has of course taught us to have an incredible APPRECIATION for the simple things in life: sun rays, rain drops, a beautiful sunset and a well functioning septic tank. I often pause in deep gratitude to watch the children playing in the mud, ride their bikes down the dirt road or build intricate insect homes from discarded building materials. The old cliché of “the simple things in life” has never been more apt. Time spent with now distant loved ones also takes on great significance.

BALANCING our modern lives with a more natural one is a constant dance (which goes out of step from time to time). Taking our cues from Mother Nature always helps us reclaim our natural rhythms while our dependence on Her abundance continuously highlights the fine balance of nature and the fragility of the systems that sustain life on our planet. And if this awareness can rub off on the next generation, it was worth leaving the dishwasher behind!

Progress

We have just re-emerged from a family flu hibernation period and I am happy to report that our friendly and trusty builder Chunky has returned to wave his magic hammer. We now have almost half a bathroom and a flushing indoor toilet is within sight!

Our renowned solar energy expert and self-sufficiency guru, Mr R has also installed an impressive looking machine which should enable us to charge the batteries with the generator and this will hopefully enable us to live and work on the farm – quite bizarre that our future home can hinge on this piece of engineering.

The plan is (currently) to finish the little bathroom and continue to enclose the double carport into our new living quarters. I’m still trying to get my head around 4 people in 50 square metres in what promises to be the ultimate exercise in contraction. Luckily we have 1.7 hectares of “outside” and summer’s on its way….

My mom’s ashes were buried in a lovely ceremony around the roots of our family tree (a “Liquid Amber” which is apparently from the US). Rather fitting as the US is where she did her hypnotherapy and Reiki training (this is also where she was ordained as a priest into the Order of Melchizedek, enabling her to register as a marriage officer and officiate at our wedding). Mila tried balloons to the branches which are covered with little buds which we eagerly await.

The day after the burial would have been her 60th birthday and our beloved Earth Mother blessed us with rain as soft, consistent and penetrating as a mother’s hug. So I was able to have a luxurious and relaxing hot bath as a birthday present on her behalf which we both enjoyed thoroughly.

All is fine at work, the kids are happy at school – Mila loves her horse riding and Luke recently discovered boxing (which he practices on all of us). We are looking into getting a dog/s and/or horse/s once we are on the farm, but in the meantime our hamster is happy being the sole family pet. Kevin’s work is also going well – he got a bit of city buzz on a recent trip to Johannesburg and might soon be off to the Seychelles for a week to photograph a fancy hotel…I am green with envy! But then I am a "greeny"...

Update after the silence...

I turned 36 today. After the shock of my mother’s death in March and the demise of my childhood idol Michael Jackson this past week, it feels as if I’m turning 106! My birthday surprise this morning was running out of solar power (luckily the lights were on long enough for me to find my clothes in the dark), so we’ll be having some romantic candlelit evenings for the next few days while the sun charges the batteries.

We have been blessed with some decent rain in the last week (which somehow only managed to fill our rain tanks to ¼ full), and too many DVDs on cloudy days have drained the batteries…

Kevin has also been dealing with some electricity woes on the farm. Our solar installation was designed for domestic use (since we had originally planned to build a house) but then ended up moving the office to the farm. He’s been quite busy printing orders and preparing for an exhibition and so he’s had to run the generator almost every day. We’ve been considering moving to town – back to the comforts of “civilization” like Eskom and municipal water…but then he found a possible solution to the energy crisis: a gadget that enables the batteries to be charged by the generator in a short time.

In the meantime construction on a little bathroom starts today. This will herald in a new era of modern sanitation and Tom Pott’s dry toilet will become a mere tourist attraction. Now that’s a decent birthday present!

With a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of electricity and sanitation, we’ve been toying with the idea of converting the double car port into a living area and squeezing ourselves (and the 2 kids) into a cosy 40 sq.m. This means we’ll finally be living on the farm where we can have dogs and horses and the kids can run amok on 1.7 hectares of pristine beauty…farm vs. "civilization"...decisions, decisions.

It is a true exercise in trusting in the Universal flow and surrendering to the bigger Perfect Plan.

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An interesting phenomenal has been the constant emails we receive from “woofers” wanting to come and volunteer their services on the farm. (“woofers” are “workers on organic farms” who work in exchange for accommodation and meals.) I listed our farm on the website months ago and there has been a constant stream of idealistic, energetic young people who believe in building a different future and are fascinated /inspired by the off-the-grid, self-sustaining lifestyle. Although no woofers have actually reported for duty (possibly put off by the lack of sanitation) it has been very encouraging.

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There are a few reasons for the lack of email communication over the past few weeks:

(a) the daily routine of work, kids, meals, cleaning, laundry, washing mud off boots, caring for plants, chopping wood, carrying water (remember, we have no more domestic help)

(b) regularly shaving my hair - thankfully I’ve eliminated “washing hair” from the list with my lovely new #3 hairstyle

(c) having a series of emotional “wobbles” and breakdowns in the process of mourning my mother (I’ve finally succumbed to getting “happy pills” from the doctor – but now that Michael Jackson wiped himself out with all the medication, I’m very cautious)

(d) focusing my communications on learning to listen and connect to the other side. I’ve really felt my mom with me very strongly and am in almost constant communication with her. Although it is sometimes hard to know where my own projections end and true communications begin. Maybe someone has some experience to share?

(e) spending some wonderful quality time with our delightful neighbours and new friends

(f) having a fantastic weekend break with my beloved soul mate Kevin at a romantic spot in Nature’s Valley. (The kids spent the night with Luke’s loving teacher). I eventually gave in to Kevin’s suggestions of paddling down the river in a canoe and thoroughly enjoyed it (much to my surprise!)

(g) enjoying my kids and Kevin and being conscious of the immense gift of life we all share.

I’ve often tried to remember what we’re doing here (on the planet as well as on the farm!), but then I hear the call of the fish eagle or see the sun setting over the snow capped mountains in a pastel coloured sky and my soul rejoices. Nature constantly finds ways to sooth my soul and put things in perspective and for that I am very grateful.