Life after Lockdown

We’re so lucky to live in New Zealand, which has done a great job managing COVID-19. After 75 days, we have been able to come back to normal inside our borders with zero cases for the past 28 days.

THE BUILD

Now that we have started getting back into the swing of things at Sakona, B is on the 7th of 10 trusses, which has taken up a huge amount of time. They were designed in a way that looks beautiful but in reality are quite difficult to build, especially for novices like us (But let’s be honest, B is in charge of building). So, as B is drilling away, the children and I have been helping on the sidelines by coating the Lawson Cypress with two coats of oil, scrubbing rust off the metal plates that join the trusses and oiling those as well. We have had 4 lovely workawayers since we’ve gotten out of lockdown and as always are appreciative of their hard work and contribution to your project!

Once those 10 trusses are done, we will get a crane to come in and lift them onto the truss posts. After that, we need to frame the roof, put the roof on, begin stacking the straw bales on the walls, plastering, joinery, earth floor and electrical somewhere in there. It seems so easy to put in a sentence but everything just takes time. Especially an earth build. Especially building it ourselves.

THE GARDEN



I’ve gotten my hands into the garden a bit more these days. I’m still learning the permaculture principles and playing around with other things like the Ruth Stout method and following a lot of Charles Dowding’s ideas. Over the lockdown, I finished clearing a garden that our 7 year old son started. It is ‘his garden’ but he said I could borrow it for potatoes, so I made it bigger and put a fence around it. I’m going to be adding onions and kale into the space. We are also creating more terraced garden beds with the cow compost and heavy straw mulch on top, which slide down a slope just outside of our future kitchen window.

Where we feed the cattle has become a huge source of compost for us. The old hay, poo and wee get mixed up and stomped around by the cattle which is absolute gold. B and I spent a few hours raking and scooping it up into the back of his ute and I spent a couple hours getting it out and dumping it over by the gardens.
The beautiful thing about gardening is all that comes from it. It is still quite patchy and underproductive but with the work we’re putting in now, by Spring things will hopefully be flourishing.

IN THE HOME

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, where I am most of the time, but have become better about preparing meals so I have time to go out to Sakona and work. The children love to be hands on. They have made their own bread, dinners, desserts; And B, who started a sourdough starter over lockdown, wakes up early to put his delicious bread in the oven. We are very lucky to be having such good food. Earlier this year, we ordered a huge amount of flour, oats, rice, lentils, chickpeas, raisins and dates and what a difference that has made. It saves on money, saves grocery runs for necessities, a massive cut down on plastic and we have ordered it organically. Having a 25K bag of flour makes bread making very convenient, oats for breakfast nearly every morning and we have been making a lot of hummus and falafels with our chickpeas.

B killed a sheep about a month ago and we had a lot of beautiful lamb dishes, including lamb burgers with feta cheese and “Mad Moroccan Lamb” taken from Jami Oliver’s cookbook.

This concludes the update of what is going on for us on all fronts for now. I will begin focusing on specific aspects of gardening, cooking and of course eco building. Happy Homesteading!