Hi Hive. Rhys here. I thought it was time I #reintroduce myself as well as introduce myself to the ‘Rant, Complain, Talk’ community. For reference, here is my original #introduceyourself post from early 2019.
The most recent photo of me on my phone. Here I am picking cumquats at my parents’ house
The main reason for the reintroduction is I’ve made some big life changes recently. In my original post I stated that one day I “hope to have a small farm with a few goats for cheese-making”. This had been the idyllic future for mrshill and I for years. Living in a two-bedroom apartment in an inner-city suburb, we were a long way from this future.
But now we are a lot closer. In January we moved to Orange, NSW. Orange is a popular weekender spot for Sydneysiders, thanks largely to its reputation as a region with fine food and wine (also craft beers and ciders) - evidence here of past weekend adventures. So Orange itself is a big country town. It has pretty much everything someone used to the comforts of Sydney would need or want (except the beaches!). This region is exactly where we imagined we would be. We are not there yet though. Where we live is very suburban. That’s OK though because we are renting for a year or so until we decide we want to settle here. After that, hopefully we’ll still love living here and will look to buy our own place just out of town - somewhere with plenty of abundant land.
Suburban life - it’s not so bad.
I have recently started up running again (had some injuries over Christmas / new year - long story) and one only needs to run one or two Ks from home before hitting rural life. It would be amazing if we could find a place within that sort of distance from town and school! That’s the other great thing about country life - there is no long commute. I walk to work in under 10 minutes currently. Suddenly I have all this extra time. I’ve yet to find a rhythm that works for me to make the most of it. Still working on it.
We are also starting to have a bit more success in the garden, thanks largely to more sunny positions and of course the beautiful Orange soil. I’ll share the spoils of our bumper beetroot crop soon.
Other perks of our current circumstances - we have two sheds (whaaaat?!); we actually have a garage attached to our house to park our beloved Toots - as opposed to the car space we previously rented under a hotel five minutes’ walk away (so inconvenient!); we can cycle into town in under 10 minutes (or walk in 20-30 mins) - it’s nearly completely flat; we have a crazy amount of storage (note to self - do NOT try to fill all the storage); and we have more bedrooms than we know what to do with!
So - quail eggs. Looks funny with three of them on toast. Nice breakfast. But look - two sheds!!!
Some of the details of what our future looks like have evolved somewhat since I converted to vegetarianism last year. I’m not vegan although I intend to ween myself off dairy and eggs some day. I’ve written about this recently and also in the past. The whole goat thing does not fit in, so on my to-do list these school holidays is to make some nut milk and attempt to make vegan cheese. Also on the list is to source some nut trees we can grow in grow-bags to get the ball rolling until we put down roots somewhere else. I imagine it will take years to grow enough nut trees to sustain a small vegan cheesemaking operation.
That takes up to the present day (I’m still obsessed with crypto and blockchain!). Thanks for reading - my first post on ‘Rant, Complain, Talk’.