Things changed, things the same: six months in Tassie

July marks six months since we moved to Tassie. Six months since we drove up the driveway to found the unlocked gate. Six months since we begun tearing out the internal lining of the bus. Six months since we begun this adventure in off grid living. We’ve learnt a lot. We’ve made some mistakes. We’ve got issues- such as mould and condensation- that we naively didn’t think about but are now so prominent on our minds that it can ruin our appreciation of what we’ve achieved (anyone with solutions please post comments, suggestions.)

We’ve had snow and rain gushing down the driveway. We’ve seen our reserve road become bumpy as the water has pooled on it. We’ve gotten blister and cuts. We’ve started fermenting veggies and other things and have bottles line all over our shelves. We’ve become appreciative of the local market. We’ve started some paths and groundworks and are beginning to design our back garden ready for summer. We’ve been thankful for our solar panels and surprised at how little power we’ve used (the lowest charge we’ve had after 2 days of no sun was 94%). But enough of the listing. It’s best to view this through a series of photos so the rest of this post is dedicated to the visual.

BUS

Deirdre, Oscar and Yoda enjoying some relaxation at the end of the day.

The bus with it’s floorboards exposed, should make installing the floating floorboards easier.

The floor in the back complete. At this stage we have finished 3/4 of the floor with some final parts to go.

CLEARING THE LAND

The area behind the bus to be cleared and turned into a kitchen garden. The ground is steeper and rocky then thought so will have to do some earth moving.

LANDSCAPING

 

FUTURE PROJECTS

DECKING

Currently we are working on adding some decking to the bus. This has been a slow ongoing over the last month due to the weather and both of us working full-time. It’s lightly snowing today so any chance of some more work today is not likely to happen. The picture below show the footings being put in and some paper sketches that Thanasi, Deirdre’s sister Tara’s partner, drew for us. We were aiming to get it down by the end of the month so hopefully we can keep to that deadline. Although in reality it’ll be another 3 weeks. There’ll be a more detailed post on this when finished.

 

 

YOGA STUDIO

We are currently sketching and designing a yoga studio/ sewing room/ office space to be built in late spring. The plan is to build on one of the terraces behind the bus. It’ll be 2 metres by 4.8 metres in order to meet local legislation which says that you can build a non-habitable building less than 10 sq metres without planning approval.

BACK OF BUS GARDEN

With the days getting longer we’ve found ourselves dreaming more of what our back of the bus garden will look like. We tossing up the idea of having raised garden beds, wicking beds, hugelkulture beds or a combination of all three. It’s a matter of cost and the matter of what materials we can source. We hoping that come the start of spring will have a design and be ready to plant out.

So that’s about it a quick overview of the six months here. I’m tossing up the idea of writing a more dedicated post on what we’ve learnt over time. Sort of in line of the earlier design posts we did from Mount Barnett. I’ll see how that idea goes. Enjoy the reading and the visual overview.