| The main event this weekend was that we went for a long bike ride to test out the feasibility of being car-independent living at the land – and it turns out it’s very doable! I’ve included a map to the right which shows some key points in our region starting with the point marked “A” which is our land. The second point marked “B” is about 5km away and took 40 minutes to ride to since its pretty rough road along that segment, it’s the point where we can decide to turn north or south. North takes us up to point “C” about 10km away which, although still dirt road, is actually highway RS-476 where a bus passes by each day that goes to Canela. Point “D” is also about 10km from our land and that’s where we biked to, it’s about halfway to the dam (point “E”) where our nearest shop and pub is! it’s also where we get onto highway RS-235 which is a proper sealed road about 15km from Canela. So it was a good successful bike trip taking about three hours there and back and proving that we could easily have gone all the way to Canela – which we’re going to do next week! We only did a small amount of work on our house this weekend as we’ve decided to work more slowly on it now that we’ve got the most important bits done (the frame, walls and roof). Beth finished painting the outside with oil and kerosene to help prevent rot and termites and started putting the floor insulation in. We’ve been collecting polystyrene rubbish for a month or so now as it makes excellent insulation – it’s not very environmentally friendly stuff, but when it’s collected from thrown out rubbish it helps the environment because it puts it to good use instead of going to a land-fill somewhere. |
This weekend I also started getting the cable set up for our rural net connection. The first step involves stretching a cable 160 metres from our house to the “rock office” where we can receive a workable 2G signal.
A got a few nice nature shots this weekend, a couple from Saturday morning when there was a lot of mist and the cobwebs all became visible from being covered with tiny drops of dew. And I got a couple of good high-resolution shots of a brown butterfly and a grasshopper (as usual, click images for better resolution versions).
Oba! no need for crappy supermarket bread any more – here’s the first loaf of home made bread from our trusty old ‘coski!
