The Family

We're a pretty typical family and as such we'd like to stay anonymous, and enjoy our life and our opinions quietly, privately.
So, for the purpose of this Blog we will simply be The Man, The Woman, The Boy and The Girl and our home will simply be The Farm.
And like most of today's families, we're more complicated than the 'average' nuclear family - so we'll also refer to The Big Girl who will appear in our lives every school holiday and most long weekends.

The Man is a chef by trade, who jumped his particular career ship to work in copper smelters for a few years.

The Woman is a journalist, editor, photographer, self-employed businesswoman - all of the above.

The Kids are four, five and 10.

When I speak about 'we', I'm not talking about the royal 'we' - I'm not that pretentious.
You can't be when you're living in a house whose decore consists of half bare rock and half 70s brown and orange melamine and lino.
The we is The Family - we are living this 'change' together, and it's a hell of a ride so far.

High Hopes

I'd already purchased around 80 packs of heritage, non-hybridised, open-pollinated seeds when I realised just how much digging I was going to have to do to plant them all.
We were still two months away from moving into 'the farm' and I figured I better start collecting pickling and preserving recipes, and hold off on any more seeds for a while.

We'd named the house and the potential business.
I'd bought the seeds (again, I point out - heritage, non-hybridised, open-pollinated seeds).
The Man had researched permaculture, solar power, stone-walling, grey-water recycling, wood-stoves and wormfarms.
Even my friends had bought in on the idea - requesting organic tomatoes and lettuces whenever they became ready.
And two months before I was due to finish my job I stood in that big chunk of barren vegie-garden-to-be and wondered how on earth we were going to do it.
We hadn't left our old home-town yet, but I held the words "hired rotary hoe" close to my heart for a long time.
I felt they just might mean the difference between my dreams and a window-garden (a window-garden full, mind you, of heritage, non-hybridised, open-pollinated seeds).