Two weeks to go!

Two weeks to go and things are definitely getting ready to go! One of my big goals out of the whole move is that this will help set us up well financial, especially through reducing our grocery bills as we become more self-sufficient.

To help with that, the last few weeks have been preparing for the move and getting some more plants organised. I've written before about the strawberries and grapes, but we've given them a push along by purchasing some more fruit trees.

This will be our front lawn - 600m2 of lawn. It will be the kids play area, with deciduous fruit trees around the edge (apples, pears, peaches, apricots etc). We live in a cooler high rainfall area, so the grass doesn't need watering very much at all (around half a dozen times a year), puls the grass clippings will help with compost for the vege garden. I will work on a greywater system for a portion of the lawn, I'm leaning towards not watering at all for the most part of it, and then greywater for where we want the kids to play (and green lawn!).
Part of the backyard vegetable garden. On the left of the shed I'll be putting in a henhouse for some chickens. Free eggs and manure!!! Leading up to the shed & henhouse will be some plants that will be outside of the rotation system used for gardening in the main plot. Strawberries and potatoes at this stage, but likely to include peanuts and sweet potatoes as experiments later. Where the hedge is on the right will make way for raspberries and/or grapes. They'll then provide a productive border to the rest of the garden.

Finally, the top garden - where I'll grow the vegetables. This is from behind the garden shed, looking back towards where the other picture was taken (slightly to the left of this shot). The chickens will be near the hedges on the left, but I've still got around 100m2 within this area that will be our vegetable garden. Eventually I'll have six beds and employ a rotational system, but to start will I'll be dumping a stack of seedlings and seeds into this small garden bed which the current owners have used. It's not massive, but the soil under the grass is a heavy clay, so it's going to take a little while to build up.

I'll also put in a few citrus trees towards the back fence (left of the large trees at the back of this photo), so in a few years we should be (mostly) self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and eggs. We'll need to buy in some groceries (we need a permit for the chickens from our shire council, so I don't imagine they'd look favourably on getting a milking goat or sheep!), but this will provide more than enough produce and we should be able to barter with some other residents around for additional produce that we can't grow ourselves.

So, we've notified our current landlord that we're ready to vacate, and will have removalists coming to shift our furniture in less than two weeks. Some of the plants have already started to make their way to the new place (we know the current owners quite well now!), and the orchards should be ready for the (Southern Hemisphere) summer growing season that's about to start.