Where-ever I lay my hat

The goal of this trip is to learn as much as possible about living with and from the land. Along the way we hope to also learn more languages, more recipes and cooking ideas, and more about more cultures. We are mostly interested in wine (of course), olives, nuts, bread and cheese, and hope to learn a lot more about all of these in Europe including how to make them and what to do with them once made. We want to learn about organic farming principles and practicalities. Unfortunately along the way we need to earn some money to live off and may have to be a bit creative about how we do that.

After a bit of a rocky start (the driveway disintegrating when the truck delivered the container and having to be completely rebuilt) things just kind-of fell into place. We got all our belongings into the container and packed in the way I wanted them. That involved a few times of moving a lot of stuff out, moving around and then moving it back in again. By the middle of our last week in our flat in Christchurch we were a day ahead of schedule and managed to do our final move out on Saturday 1 December. So anyone who thinks you are making life difficult for yourself if you move house a week after a thanksgiving dinner and big cocktail party, just hasn’t seen me pack! We had a lovely thanksgiving and the cocktail party the day after was our farewell party and was really good fun. We moved out to Rangiora for the week before we fly out and got to soak in our Jacuzzi in the evenings again as it is being babysat there.

There was still a bit of work to do on the land – still trees to be cleared around (our grass grows very well) and mulch mats put round them to minimise the competition from the grass. Everything also needed a bit of water as Canterbury is apparently in for a nasty drought this summer. Our trees have had a good start since it was a fairly wet spring but are now rather dry and a couple of days of drizzles didn’t make much difference.

Our final week went rather quickly and we ended up going to the land nearly every evening to do something or other. We got some windbreaks for some of the trees and put them up, got some straw to mulch the nursery plants, and of course had the final packing and organising of the container to do.

I finished work on Thursday and that was fairly sad. It has been a great job with a wonderful team and I have really enjoyed work for the last three months which has been lovely. Steve worked Friday as well and we had his work Christmas party on the Friday night at Orana park which is an African safari park.It was a really nice evening and the people he works with are very nice. They also seem to like him as much as he likes them so it was lovely. We got a tour of the park and saw the cheetahs have a run and got to feed the giraffes which I loved. They wrap their tongues around a branch and pull hard and just strip the whole branch. They were having willow which is their favourite and its realy cute with the little ones when they wrap their tongue around your finger by mistake too but not so cute when they catch you with their teeth. After feeding all the animals we also got fed and it was a pretty good meal – much better than the usual Christmas party stuff so we both had a very enjoyable evening.