This Easter weekend was our first opportunity to actually stay at the farm and have a little break away from city living. The van had been duly cleaned and all filth removed, and all it took was a bit of planning to get ourselves set up for a few days on the farm. With a brand new porta-potty, and some comfort foods we set off to the farm after our last job on Thursday night.
I'd love to be able to say we stayed there continuously, but that wasn't how it worked. There was no running hot water, no real toilet, and no way to have anything but a cold wash. The next couple of days were spent working through these issues and finding solutions. On top of the residential issues, we also had a bust coolroom that needed fixing. Is there a reason why all things mechanical break down on long weekends? A trip down the road to our local chinese gardeners and we were armed with the name of a mechanic who would travel out on Easter Sunday to fix our coolroom. When asked if they charged more for a public holiday, they laughed and said 'No, we're Chinese. Same rate everyday!' Bit like Happy and I. Doesn't matter if it's nighttime or weekends, we charge the same.
My new wireless modem also had a workout, and even though it is slower working than here, it is still manageable. This is brilliant news, as it means that on the days when I have a big job, but want to get out to the farm I can pick up sticks and sit in the van watching the farmers at work. It may not sound luxurious, it's certainly peaceful though.
Food was simple, and utterly fresh. There's nothing like thinking up a recipe and heading out to the fields to grab the ingredients. We road tested one of our habanero chilllis last night. Spicy and flavourful, and just hot enough. One of my next plans is to organise a better kitchen out there so we can pack and process jars of produce straight from the field. With the kids coming out to help us always, we should be able to fix up many jars, and I'll also be able to give them a bit of a cooking education to boot.
There was much picking and packing, and many trips back and forth from van, to shed, to coolroom, to van, to shed, to car, to coolroom, to van, to shed and on and on. We need to make more sense of the area to cut down on the walking!
We did have a giggle though when we tried to move the double bed into the back section of the caravan. Of course the room dimensions meant the bed would fit, HOWEVER, some bright spark(me) didn't take into consideration moving the bed INTO this area. We pushed, we shoved, we struggled, we lifted and we carried on, to no avail. At the moment when we thought we would never get the bed in, we realised the mattress would slide in (just) through the back window. Out the back, in the dark and precariously close to the dam, we managed to push the base through the back window and into our cosy little bedroom. If only the solution was as simple as that. We then couldn't get the base to turn, or rest on the supporting frame, which meant we had to do some emergency renovation works. This involved my holding one end of the base up high, happy resting the other end on his head, and kicking out the fixed bedroom cabinet with his feet. Once the cabinet was gone we then realised that the top bunks, which fold down, have a safety lip which again stopped the base from sitting flat. I don't know what our neighbours must have thought - but if they looked over they would have seen both happy and I jumping on the mattress base until we broke through the lip. The van is rather unstable to begin with, and as it rocked and swayed and we thought we might end up in the dam, it finally gave way and the base was finally laid to rest.
Getting the mattress in was a breeze after this effort! There are still a few modifications we'll need to make to the back room to make it perfect, just give us time to come up with our next hairbrained scheme!
For all the effort put into getting things right, we couldn't have asked for a better weekend. While Happy sprayed the weeds and sorted out some spiky plants, I picked our first batch of Italian Beans, and a few tomatoes. We dined happily in our little van, then watched a couple of DVD's on the laptop, and then we slept well in our cosy little nook. We had a lot of laughs, enjoyed some relaxing times and totally recharged our batteries. If only we could live out there permanently!
It would be good too if I could remember to take photos when I'm there! Next time...
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So while I'm back in my office sorting through the work that should have been done over the weekend, the boys are out there packing up the coolroom ready for a big week at the markets. We should have a trailer load going at 3am Weds morning, and then several drop offs during the week. Fingers crossed we have a big week.
