doorways opening.

Okay that month flew by! Slack me. Partly sapped by 'flu, and frustration with the lack of progress...
Anyway... some progress has been made. Many more trips out to the block, cutting, clearing, showing the Architect the site.

This is her assistant, helping

Bringing home loads of firewood. And then doing the incredibly difficult - reaching lots of decisions. Where do you put the solar panels? Where should the veggie garden go? Where will the orchard be? Where will the cool-room and butchering area be? Where's the pig sty? How do you get water to xyz? And so on...

Relatively limited construction has happened, but quite a lot of destruction! I've been getting some of the huge amount of recycled wood I need for the list projects de-nailed. Yep, I'm in denail. I dug my first two holes, and am actually quite positve about it - they're about a meter down to clay - more than I expected and more than I hoped. Great for planting piles and poles.

I got my owner builder course done and passed, and have done and passed my 'white card' OH&S exam. I'm going to have to re-evaluate whether when the revolution come one sends the lawyers or OH&S or the politicians that passed this load of rubbish to visit madame Guillotine first... It's largely a lowest common-denominator, one size fits all rent extraction scheme, worth about 20 cents if you were feeling generous. But $260 dollars is what it costs and you really have no choice: that's your cheapest option.

I've been slowly working on my door at the Community shed. It's made of red ironbark - salvaged from old fence poles.

That's the upper half. The lower half is about 1/4 longer, convenient height for elbows. Lot of work in it - it's going to be more than 100 posts laminated. The wood is among the heaviest in the world (more than a metric ton seasoned, per cube), fire-resistant and will do 25 years underground as a fence-post, so it should see me out. I'd like my coffin made of it which will see my pall-bearers either drive front end loaders or join me.

Considering this is the original posts - it's an exercise in making a very heavy silk purse out of a sow's ear. I left the outside as it came - so it will very rustic indeed on one side.

I did manage one trip to sea this month 1! and caught near nothing. It was pretty cold and bleak, but we got a great rainbow

I've been attempting to drain my body via the nose, which has been a little unpleasant on the body and brain, but a bit offputting to others... and to me going out to do the necessary gardening and work on the block - to say nothing of shooting wallaby for the dog, cats and ourselves (see priority ranking) -which involves a fair amount of walking in the dark and cold to say nothing of processing it. We've had vicious frosts - down to minus 4 - with even the puddles freezing over.

Fortunately one did wander into my veg in the dusk last night, just as I went out to get some spring onions for our evening repast - and so I didn't have to lie down on frozen ground - or puddles and could turn it into more food. I'm just glad of the freezers. They are going down a bit, and we probably only have about 5 months meat and fish in them... My plans on an early easy night went down the drain with an Ambo call, so I got to sleep at 2 AM. I don't mind doing Ambos calls but it has left me tired... so good night.
(an eagle over the block)