Bring it, Spring

#1 priority for Maximilian and Dustan. Eat and grow. Eat and grow. Spring is shining upon these little men.

The weather is still a touch chilly on the mid-north coast and we still have the fire heater burning morning and afternoon, but in my mind winter is yesterday's news :) I'm done with Winter! We started Winter early this year when we arrived in Tasmania in January for a 'record cold summer', so I can't express how excited I am for warm breezes and late balmy evenings under the stars.

I was told the old schoolhouse was known as 'Summer House', something to look forward to here. Spring is giving us a preview of the best that's yet to come. 

The garden is bountiful, the flowers in bloom, the birds crazy with excitement, and the bees noisily harvesting. I just wish I could share some of the stunning images I see everyday in this valley ... for me, the scenery is both startling and soothing. (It would help if I kept my camera charged, but hey, there's nothing like panoramic feature on the iPhone to catch the wide-ness of the beauty, hey).

Our driveway meets a short section of bitumen on dirt road that runs the crest of the hill in this valley (we've discovered, a dangerously fabulous lightening spectacle in evening storms).

And inside, the Spring cleaning is done and dusted ... And we are enjoying being settled in and everything having its place. 

So, I'm awake again. I'm running my meditation classes every Wednesday and Thursday and marketing & creating like I've found a giant playground. 

Tim's business is taking off and he's adding to his supply of services and machinery with a new excavator and range of buckets (and clients). 

Bring it, Spring. This is the season for breathing the earth's beautiful image of new growth, wonder and fresh health. I'm in it :)

Valla Rural

Yesterday I opened the boy's craft cupboard to see what the strange noise was. I found the chook, Ivory, next to the egg she laid. 24 hours locked in there and counting, she got out pretty fast. 

Here are the cows crossing the road on the way to preschool a few days ago. 

And here is a snapshot of the work that took place here at the old schoolhouse over the weekend to install a new water tank and re-plumb the house.

The owners worked so, so hard. We are all so relieved that the set up is now 'concrete' - we should have normal water supply now - and there should be no more bathroom & laundry flooding, and the leak in the ceiling should hopefully be fixed but we'll keep an eye on that one. Plus, the house will stop moving on the foundations in the kitchen corner too. (We've been really worried about some of the stuff we've seen happening to the house during our stay here, but the owners have addressed all the problems now and have sunk a lot of money in to fix problems the previous owners hid.) 

So after a tough first couple of months for the owners and for us as tenants, this week marks the beginning of a new chapter for us here at the schoolhouse - and it's all looking positive.

In other news, last night the Pacific highway had another crash, and for the second time in a fortnight all light vehicles were sent on a lengthy detour around rural Valla. Rural Valla is dirt road through the forest with no street lights and the occasional goat, cow or wild pig. Cars need to drive steady along this road, and most cars took it easy last night, but the occasional cowboy sped through at 80klm/hour nearly wiping out 4 other cars on the tight bend in front of us. Living on the road is usually peaceful so it was unsettling when highway traffic was traveling through stirring up the dust.  Check it out!

I've been run down and Tim's has a bad bout of tonsillitis. We've used up the last of the firewood to boot. Tim needs to take it easy a few more days so we have a delivery of wood coming to us tomorrow. Looking forward to evenings in front of the wood heater again :)

Cold July Days

In between time indoors keeping the fire going, I've been running up klm's on my car checking out every suburb to help us decide whether we will stay 'local' long-term and where we might like to live. (We now know we want to move on from the schoolhouse when our lease ends, after ongoing issues with plumbing and water supply amongst other 'renting' frustrations - even though things are looking up now.) Oh - the properties we've seen, roads we've explored, real estate agents we've met! It's too big a discussion and decision and - getting nowhere but sleep deprived - I'm ready to give up thinking about it now. Phew (brush eyebrows).

Along the way, though, I've visited some stunning headlands and stretches of beach while Maxie has napped in the backseat, with realestate.com app open on the dashboard. The whales are traveling north presently and I think - well it's a stretch of my imagination - but I think I saw a pot of whales. One day, one day I'll get to see them up close!

This area of the NSW coast is described as 'very natural' and there really isn't much to do as far as PROVIDED children's playareas go; and when you are used to the Gold Coast and enormous parks in big supply, it's something to get used to. I'm yet to find a local playground to take the boys to. But who needs provided playgrounds, honestly. There are beachside dirt tracks to ride along, lookouts and lighthouse, quiet beaches to drive on and have a picnic, markets to discover, and shallow creeks to splash in. We are joining in on the occasional local playgroup session. And along with the big gardens at home with fruit trees for Dusty to swing from, there's more for the boys to do than they can keep up with while I chip away at my study and marketing work. 

Dusty has limitless energy these days so we are really grateful for his amazing preschool and the friends he is making there. 

Dusty's short day away gives Maxie a chance, finally, to catch some well earned ZZZ's...

Tim is already flat out with job requests for his excavating & slashing business.

So, having made the last big trip to the GC last weekend, we have no plans to drive the long distance for at least another month. It's really exhausted us driving up and down so frequently ... as much as we've wanted to catch up with friends and fam and collect stuff from m&d's, it's time for us to settle in to Valla, now. :) 

Winter solstice

The last 2 weeks has seen us withdraw indoors for couch time and cosy dinners, and venture out briefly to explore and search for community. We are feeling we have almost found the corner that we fit in, in this large section of seaside country. 

Creating connections with different groups of parents and children, like the homeschool group, Steiner school families and beach community families, has forced me to face up to being the new person in the neighborhood, a really strange feeling for me after 30 years on the Gold Coast.

Dusty is having a whirlwind play event at preschool, and Maxie on a smaller scale at playgroup. In between, we've been riding bikes on the beach and through state forest, and hanging out in our damp, wood-smoky, garden (yes, the rain still freshens the landscape up every second day, and the cool temperatures give us good reason to keep the wood heater burning away day and night). 

I think we are falling in love with this seaside town. Community, cafes, work, beaches, towns, valleys and rivers, forests and farms. We are adjusting (a little bit sulkily) to the lower pay rates for work, and to the distance away from most family and friends, just because it is so irresistible to live in this region for a while. 

It's hard to not try to plan for the future everyday, as usual. Somehow, this place needs to stay apart of our lives... 

But for now, it's the middle of winter, and we can keep decisions low-key as we rest after our big 8 month trip across the states, and as we get settled into our favorite rhythm here in this old schoolhouse. It's a nice place to spend these short days and long nights. Happy Winter, it is.

To market, To market

We had a stall at the Valla Beach markets on the weekend to promote my book, Dusty's Wonder Bug. I put a box of schoolhouse lemons on the table to draw interest (you know, with the book being about treats - real food grown in nature), and my fruit got a lot of interest. So I sent Tim home to pick more and he returned with kale, lemonade, oranges and lemon, and we made $35 in 35 x $1 coins by 11am. We had a giggle. We sold it way too cheap, apparently. The good news is that my books reached the right hands in the process, and copies will be ordered into the Nambucca Valley libraries. 

The little boys were wonderful sitting there, drawing and juicing lemonade at the table. 

My last market down here was the Port Macquarie Foreshore Market. It was also stand-out, fantastic food and produce on offer. There's a whole bunch along the coastline, we'll find it impossible to get bored on the weekends.

Kinder at home

We haven't made enough juice or lemonade to get through our mountain of lemons, so I was pleased to have visitors yesterday to share schoolhouse lemons with - even if our visitors were unexpected. Our visitors were locals, with a truck full of water for our tank. 

The water tank for the house had drained empty over night, and I had woken up to a dry tank (save the tears from me leaning in to check the water and sobbing in despair). We spent all Tuesday figuring it out, and by 9pm the owner and Tim had it sussed and repaired.

But asides from that major hiccup, our boys and I have had a really relaxing time, just doing the homeschooling 'kinder' thing at home. These were the images I loved from our past few days. 

Dusty writing and illustrating a picture book about a dog floating in a bubble.

Maxie getting into the dirt holes after the plumbing was dug up. 

Dusty with his glass marble arrangement of an elephant. 

Maxie's secret creation - stuffed goodies in his water bottles.

Dusty posing for the camera, after taking photos of me and Maxie - the next photos were taken by Dusty.

... Oh and I mustn't forget the pecan & carrot cake my little boys made today... 

Ingredients - carrot, cinnamon, SR flour, honey, oat milk, eggs, grape seed oil, ginger and pecan nuts, lovingly squished and stirred by 2 blondies :) 

Like a Local

What I've found (and been surprised about) since moving here, is that the towns are pretty far apart and the fuel stations and supermarkets are few and far between - compared to our old stomping ground anyway. 

Because I didn't think about it first, I had to make a 40klm trip east to get fuel so I could head west for the homeschool meet up. 

It was fun to meet locals at the meetup (when I say 'locals', the distances between two families was just under 200klm! Needless to say the meet ups are only fortnightly).

Our boys had a ball playing the gross motor team games including blindfolded hockey races, piggy-backs relays, tunnel ball, shot put, and an almighty water bomb team fight to decide the winner ('the team who is driest wins the day'). I was pretty involved and laughing my ass off and only remembered the camera at the end!

We visited the closest Steiner school, which is 8klm (20 minutes) by dirt road through the forest. The children were  sweet and we might go for a playgroup session. 

In the meantime, we've bought enough firewood (and Tim has cut a load) to keep the wood heater running continuously. Dusty had the idea to make and serve up lemonade to the hardworking wood-choppers so he busied himself with the juicing. Unfortunately the chopped wood has taken over their undercover play space.

And the rain has started again. But this makes Maxie happy, because worms (Wooms!) are easy to find.