Greetings To You All What a great forum this is! I have gleaned so much useful information in the last few weeks of trawling through all the old posts here. Thanks to all who have contributed! So I guess it's about time I showed a face here... I currently live in Cairns (NQ) but have just bought a property in Cygnet (finalised last friday... WHOOHOOO!!) in the Huon Valley in Tasmania after far too many years of dreaming of such a move. The place is a little wooden cottage on 25 acres of hilly forested land with a few acres of flat land around the house, that I would like to plant out with fruit trees, vegie garden and hopefully raise some ducks, goats and chooks. I'll try and post an image of the place .......(here goes)........... Unfortunately I wont finish my work in Nth Qld for another 12 months, so will have to try and rent the Tassie place for a year until I can finally move there. I guess I won't have much to contribute (except for dumb questions) for another year until I move down there and put some of this marvelous advice into practice. However, some general questions arise for permies in this forum: How many people live in Tassie (and the Huon Valley in particular) and how much land do you work and (in particular) what do you grow there? How many single people are doing the permie lifestyle and what sort of issues do you encounter, such as lack of shared labour, time constraints and isolation? And finally a bit of a dumb newebie question (sorry) - I also do a bit of work as a landscape photographer that can take me away from home for 2-3 days at a time. Does the raising of chooks, duck, goats etc. require daily attention or can systems be devised where they can 'fend for them selves for a few days"? OH!!! I have so much still to learn...... Oh and one more... in a past thread I read of everyone's favourite books. No-one mentioned "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. Has anyone read this? It is the most beautifully written account of one man's close relationship and intimate observations with nature on his farm in the US in the 1940s. Very highly recommended. Peace and Love to you all Stephen
Welcome Littlefish, Very pretty cottage. I am away from my property too so this forum is a great outlet for now. I dont think it helps seperation anxiety though as your interest is continually rekindled and re-enthused. A wide variety of members here and I have found you can get info & first-hand on a massive list of subjects including ethics, land & legal issues, ideas and know-how. Jump in with any questions or offerings. Cheers Floot [in the Top End, NT]
another newbie welcome Hi Littlefish.... Wow – a “gingerbread” house in Tassie ...... a dream to really motivate you. There's a few Tassie people on this board who will I am sure be wanting to help and converse with you. Jump in when ever on any topic – there's a lot of great advice and support to be obtained here.. lots of people have so much life experience.... someone always seems to be able to help out on almost every topic.
wow, littlefish, hello and may i say, what a grouse house! some points to ponder: yes, the larger permie projects can be difficult when one lives a solitary existence. however, if you make contact with your local permie group, then you are sure to meet other like-minded individuals who are into labour-sharing, etc. i've seen many systems put into place where poultry can be fed, watered, etc. whilst one takes a couple of days respite, however i've yet to see an 'automatic milker' that takes care of the goats. maybe you could invent one! thanks for the pointer to leopold's, 'a sand county almanac'. i'll try to find it in my local library. peace out, mark.
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome! I have been impressed by the depth of experience and willingness to share on this forum. I'm busy preparing for my holidays this morning. Heading down to Woodford for the festival and then on to Tassie for 3 weeks (yippeee). Thanks for the offer widgeenut. I dont move there until December next year though. I'm going to buy a big trailer and just load up. Anything that doesn't fit gets donated or sold. Where abouts in Tassie are you moving to?
Welcome Littlefish...we just did the opposite...moved from Tassie to the Atherton Tablelands... :lol: You'll be in heaven down that way for photographic inspiration let me tell you...and there's lots of great people down the Huon and the wider Hobart area. Stock up on a LOT of firewood once you're down there mate...it takes about a year to acclimatise to Tassie for most people and in that time you're nearly always cold...you might be burning it 9-10 months a year... :lol: Love the place you've found...very picturesque and inviting!
I'm going to look around when we get there. Have to work for awhile first and pay things off but I've been scouring through realestate.com.au and https://www.propertypoint.com.au. New Norfolk and Cygnet both look great. Anyway we've given up on the container idea - our stuff isn't worth that much! (our heaviest piece of furniture is a pine dresser I got at the Gympie dump for $10.) Then there's those great ideas on the thread about eco-housing. Except my hubby is extremely impractical and has a bad back - we'll probably end up living in a container!
And another belated welcome LittleFish, What a lovely house. You must be itching to get down there and start putting your plans into practice. Have you read Dr Harry's books, 'Anecdotes and Antidotes' and Memories and Remedies'. He gives a lovely picture of Tassy and after reading them, I can't wait to go for a holiday. Speaking of which, what to do while you're away. A couple of suggestions if I may. First one's chooks. They're easy. Make sure you've got one of those large galvanised feeders. I make mine out of lengths of flu and rubbish bin lids I salvage off the hard rubbish collection. My one in the main coop is over 2' high so holds a lot of grain/feed which will last the chooks, if they're locked up which they are when we're away, about 3 or 4 days. We've got automatic waterers to both of our coops so that's taken care of also. What we normally do while we're away is get my folks and our best friend to altenate visits. All they need to do is check that the waterer's working ok and top up the feed. Collect eggs, doesn't really matter if they've been sitting there for a few days. No difference to sitting in the house other than you might get a few broken ones if the nesting boxes get a little full. Secondly, goats. Not sure how you'd go here feeding wise as we feed ours twice daily at the moment until we can organise our paddocks a bit better. I'm hoping to tape off areas of fence line where they can browse on the brush, but as present, that's not possible due to our boundary fences requiring a drastic overhaul. If they had more foraging area to their disposal, they wouldn't be so dependent on us for their food. You'll have more space than us though so you might be able to work it a bit better. Ours do enjoy their hay which we provide ad lib. Re milking, if you leave the kids on your does, you won't need to worry about milking them while you're away. It seems preferable with most goat keepers to keep the buck kids on the does, but raise the doe kids by hand. This is what we'll be doing. Pat Coleby says that once you leave the kids on the does, you'll never do it again because they become quite wild. Wild buck kids facing slaughter isn't really a problem IMO, but wild doe kids destined to be a milker is. The ideal situation would be to employ a house sitter. I used to do this before marriage and children. There were a number of properties I'd 'sit' in return for free accomadation. I have heard of organisations that arrange for sitters for a fee, but I've never used them. There are also websites that cater for house sitting/minding. However, I sourced all of mine through the riding clubs, so many of them were horse properties. There's quite a bit of work minding some of these places, but it's worth it for the sitter also. In my case, it gave me and my parents a break from each other. I recently minded my friend's farm (as opposed to housesitting) 20 acres, 20 odd head of cattle, chooks etc. No money exchanged hands but I did get a free service (and agistment) to my cow which was worth a lot more to me. If you get in with your local community, your bound to find people interested. Hope this helps. Tam
