Sythe still in the bush (update thread)

It's a farm now!

The photos (bad quality because bad internet.)

Home sweet home, for now. One day we might make enough for a house.



This is my new means of obtaining internet. It's a two meter yagi. Sometimes it drops out like all fuck but I managed to get Top Gear Burma special down on it in about a day. And I have been able to keep up with administering the servers etc. so it's not too bad relatively speaking.


Vege garden. Lots of digging over still to do. We've got corn, tomato, water mellon, cucumber, sunflowers, garlic, onion, strawberries, pumpkin, beans, peas, banana, aloe vera, broccoli, radish. We also have two apple trees and a lemon growing. The secret to gardening is to do it hardcore. $30 buys you a 25kg bag of 'meat meal' which is ground up animal entrails and bones. Stick it on your garden and it goes like it's on crack.


More solar power. Up to 480W now. Enough to run a fridge which is fucking amazing. No more tinned food. Meat every night.


Stove:


We have 15 chickens who just wander around aimlessly until you come near them then they conspire to place themselves under your feet no matter which way you walk. Unfortunately not many eggs at this time of year as they are malting. On the plus side they eat all the bugs and we don't need to feed them.


This is Pepper, one of our breeding pigs (the female.) She is by far the naughtiest animal in existence. She actually walks around biting the chickens so she can eat their feathers. She also eats plastic hoses. The pigs are so difficult to keep in a paddock that they just roam around too. We haven't had a problem with them wandering too far though, they are always keen for food. After several attempts at fencing them we just fenced them OUT of our area and the rest of the farm is theirs.


And this is Tux. He is about 50,000 times more likable than Pepper. I treat him a bit like a dog.


This is what our front yard looks like about half the time at the moment. We're on a mountain so we get clouds just rolling over us:


More later if I have time.

 

It'll take us a few years before we can supply our own food. We still shop once a week. It's about an hour to the nearest large shops.

Dumb question. What do you think?

 

Yeah it's good fun. We're to the point where it's pretty comfortable now. Have a proper queen bed and mattress. Hot water showers at night. A fridge to keep food cold. Enough power for most things we want to do. It's slow going but things are getting done. Mostly we need to clear more before bushfire season but that's 6 months away.

 

Girlfriend

These questions and more answered in the original thread: http://www.sythe.org/sand-box/1611046-sythe-bush.html

 

None of the animals we have currently are for eating.

I'm hoping the farm will turn a profit within 5 years. We are going to try running/breeding old-breed free range pigs.

We are doing self-sufficiency and will continue doing it even when/if the farm turns a profit. This is partially because supermarket food is increasingly toxic, and partially because we just like the lifestyle.

The land has potential to turn a fair profit. I am also hoping we can get the licensing together to start a micro-brewery here at some point. But that's a little way off.

 

I've always wanted to live in the country.

In 2008 after working in an office cubical for a year I decided I'd start actively looking for cheap land with a view to living 'so that I could walk at least a kilometer in any direction without leaving my own property.'

Farming is great. The average age of farmers in the world is something like 55. They are all ready to retire so the agriculture market is ready for a boom and the land is cheap and abundant. But that's not even the half of it. I don't have to commute or adhere to strict schedules. No one gives a flying fuck if I start work at 7am or 10am. I can do pretty much whatever I want.

Be your own boss, be free, eat good food, live off the land and avoid tax by making food instead of money.