February 2007

Found this while searching through the last two years' paperwork trying to discover long lost tax receipts for last year's tax return and, if I admit it, the year's before, stuffed in a rat prone area. Someone gave it to Trev just before we left Queensland, and we laughed. When it resurfaced today it got a half smile and a big heartfelt sigh. Trev and I have had a few um... readjustments to make. He will say he was 'sacked' and that I've promoted myself to site manager (The decision was mutual - ed). I'll roll my eyes and raise my blood pressure in response. I can handle that. It's not entirely true, but I can handle that. But it's going to a neighbourhood street party and when Trev pulls out the guitar and on discovering he's left something at home, I oblige and run back and grab it, to return and discover he's singing his latest song. He calls it the 'House building blues', and it includes the much repeated line, 'I've got a woman on my back...' Then blood pressure turns pressure cooker and without the lid firmly attached I explode. Well, actually I don't. I take matters into my own hands and figure my reputation as a low maintenance woman is shot, so I might as well go right on ahead and take on the role of site manager, because, honey, there ain't no house building go'in on!

We both retire to opposite sides of our not very big shed and mutter darkly. I absolutely REFUSE to look up statistics of how many Owner Builders divorce, besides I was never silly enough to marry him in the first place.

I understand Trev is happy to let sleeping dogs lie and if it takes us two years before we clear the house site he will be just as happy (This is, of course, an egregious exaggeration - ed). It's been six weeks of waiting for the site to be cleared and the post holes drilled and I'm well aware that summer is coming to an end and we're better off getting it done now rather than during a wet winter.

To give Trev his due, he has been working the past two weeks, packing cherries. I should let him have a bit of a blast too. It's only fair.

No comment, except to say that those of you with experience of spousal relationships will be able to read between the lines and appreciate that there're two sides to every story - Trev

February 21

I wrote the above a few weeks back and forgot to upload it. Since then there has been some action on the housebuilding front. Well bottom actually. The excavator has levelled the house area and in the next couple of days Trev will be setting up profiles for the post holes and we'll be on the waiting list for a revisit, this time an auger to dig them down to 'refusal' ... rock.

We have a new family proverb ... house plans on the move, spousal relationships improve. Not that we were ever really at each others throats. Much. Trev and I gained our Cert II in First Aid with St John's Ambulance, so hopefully we will be able to cope with the almost inevitable hammer on thumb building incidents.



The garden, meanwhile, is looking good. The corn is flowering, the tomatoes in the greenhouse look like creating many hours of industry when it comes time to bottle and dry them all. The potato crop in phenomenal. The Peter Cundall mulch/potato method has given us a record crop, how much of that is simply a more conducive Tassie climate I'm unsure. But I'm like a kid with lollies when pulling them up. We've pulled about ten kilos of carrots and have about the same again to go. Trev has got into the swing of the gardening thing and has been out there turning over garden beds and replanting them. Which is fantastic as I haven't been able to really get in to it for a while, with every spare moment being converted into website design, (not this one obviously). Caleb is finally back at school.

NZ Yams or Occa growing.

They take advantage of summer down here, and has only had two days back. At least now we won't have to discover that after repeated requests not to swim in the dam we find three very well established tadpoles turning the dam wall into a slippery slide and the dam water, (apart from being very smelly) has such high turbidity it now gunks up the garden hose repeatedly.

I've purchased a copy of 'An Inconvenient Truth', and loved it. It was like watching a televised Al Gore version of The Weathermakers. Though Tim has never regaled us with his personal details I've got to put that down to American movie making strategy to entertain while educating, even if it's a very tabloid game. The message is very clear, you sow the breeze, you reap the whirlwind. In this case, quite possibly, literally.



February 23

Received a copy of the UK version of the book. Which is a real thrill. Unfortunately there is a typographical error on page 217 that Dominic Baxter from Ireland was kind enough to point out. The info reads as though both incandescent and flouro lightbulbs consume the same amount of energy, cost the same, and have the same carbon emissions. Something that most of us know by now, simply isn't true. Snowbooks promise me it will be changed in the reprint.

There is talk in Australia of phasing out incandescent bulbs altogether, so it's timely info to repeat. So for the sake of European readers and for anyone who is interested I've attached a copy of the original Excel file.

Lightbulbs! A comparison between incandescent and flouro

I hope to catch up with another update over the weekend. As there have been a few building site dramas this week.






February 26

Who-hoo! Trev and I have two new forms of transport. Mine is carbon neutral, and cost $100 new (the one we bought from the tip turned out not to be resurrectable and is now classed as spare parts). Trev's is a child of the 80's. A you-beaut ute in various shades of white and red (rust). It cost him $550 and a carton on beer (beer is a form of currency anywhere in Australia for those of you who fall outside of its borders.) It will be a great way to transport timber from the mill 200metres up the road, recycling trips, and to get Trev to and from his newest job, which is working in an apple orchard, which is 3 or 4, too dangerous to bike, kilometres down the road.

My wee treadly, of which to ride on the road would be just as deadly, will be ridden a shorter distance to a Footie oval on which I will circle endlessly till I melt a few of the kilo's currently adherring to my backside. I'm still keen to be hooked up to a battery and charge it, or do something other than expend energy needlessly. But at least I'm not driving myself to a gym to work off kilos and at some expense, both monetarily and carbon creating.



Trev and I have had our first building 'burn'. We were verbally quoted one amount and charged three times it to level the building site. (The job didn't get three times bigger, just the bill). A very nasty little surprise that resulted in our resolution to always get written quotes. And wherever possible hire a machine and do it ourselves. So we've spent a week licking our wounds (bank account bled quite severely) and have found someone who hires out a mini excavator with an auger. So Trev will be dropping a few holes next week, and we'll only be paying $44 an hour.

More positively we hauled together a shopping list of timber required for the house and worked in with our local timberman, Brian and came up with an Excel sheet that worked out super feet, lineal meters etc and came out with a total cost for the timber, which is around the $18,000 mark. Considering it's celery top pine (which is not really a pine, but they call it one). This is VERY cheap. Though we are aware that its a huge job for Brian, and there may be times when we will need to source it elsewhere. But still. We had calculated a far higher cost on the timber component. You win some, you lose some. Trev's housebuilding enthusiasm has returned. Partially, I expect, from having watched some terrible show about building your dream home during the week, where this English couple decided to build a Georgian Mansion, and their motto was BIG, in fact it was the most repeated word. The only thing bigger than the house was their mortgage. Well, the house did have to be BIG so they could fit their heads into it. Anyway the wife was a BIG horror. Watching the massive 40 trucks worth of concrete foundations being poured.... I felt physically ill. Trev and I met each others eyes with raised brows so often I think I strained one. At the end I turned to him and said, 'Bet that makes you feel better about our house'. His instant response, 'Well I'm not sure about the house but it sure as hell makes me feel better about YOU'.

Sweetheart.

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