Easter weekend was in charge by Steve. Steve and his sister have bought a property of land up on the North Island, 3 hours north from Wellington, and as he calls it, it is 'in the wop-wops'. Meaning: in the middle of nothing. We drove over and took the ferry: lovely trip on it self!
He (and family and Michelle) have built their own little cabin. Absolutely amazing if you think of the fact that they had never done it before. It is really nice and cosy. No electricity, no running water. But an improvised fridge, hot shower (yes!) and toilets with excellent views. ;-)
This is our natural fridge!
Anyway, back to the property. Main purpose of the land is to have native trees and enjoy nature.
The area which is still a paddock at the moment is going to be converted into a forestry patch. Sort of their retirement fund...If the non-native goats won't eat it...
Plants will be planted shortly, but before that fencing needed to be done. Or better said: old fencing needed to be removed so new and hopefully better ones will be put in. Our job was to help out with the fencing. Pretty tough job, especially since some of the old posts just refused to come out. Nasty buggers...
We also came over to shoot goats: goats are a pest in NZ (they are non-native: bloody European brought them over...) and eat everything they can get their teeth into. Unfortunately we tried to find some, but we didn't. So we shot some pieces of wood... Night time was used to play games, eat and sleep. Which I did a lot. I had one of those weekends again: sleep as much as I can...lovely!
It was lovely to see Steve's place but it did make me realise that having a property like it, is not as romantic as it first seems. It's a lot of work (especially because they live so far away), you have to be quite knowledgeable and it costs a lot of money...Maybe I will stick to my dream of renovating a little country side house...to get a wee little head start!
Speaking of sticking: loads of stick insects (wandelende tak!) live with Steve on the land...Pretty cool
[all pictures taken by Patrick, except the 2nd!]
1 comment:
Jaaa wandelende takken heb ik hier ook in het echt gezien! Zeg maar echter dan in een potje met blaadjes die elke zoveel dagen verversd moeten worden hihi. Lekker bezig daar ouwe gek, klinkt goed allemaal die weekendjes weg. Ik zal er binnenkort ook weer eens een vrolijke update tegenaan gooien. Dikke knuffel, Marloes
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