Where it all began

It has been 18 months since the cat, hubby and I packed up our things and opted for a tree change moving from inner city Brisbane to the country.

We left behind not only the noise pollution, traffic congestion and living too close to neighbours, but also easy access to public transport, entertainment and shopping precincts as well as being within 15 minutes from most of our friends and family.  But we haven't looked back.

We are now 100km north west of Brisbane, 10 km from the nearest town pop 2000, in a tight knit farming community.

We purchased 3.5 acres with an old house run down out buildings, one big empty paddock and loads of potential.  We have good soil and technically live in the sub-tropics, but because we are inland (approx 100km as the crow flies) we get cool winters including heavy frosts.  I am hoping this gives us the best of both worlds and allows us to grow some crops from cooler regions as well as things like bananas and mango's that traditionally do well in this area.
Our farm (again I use that term loosely) had originally been part of a much larger dairy farm so was pretty much barren in terms of established trees with just a few Eucalyptus along the road frontage and a coupe of misshapen Jacarandas.  There were also a few ornamentals around the house yard including some roses chewed off at ground level by cows that had been allowed to wander freely and a collapsing shade house densely packed and waist high with who knows what.
There was no vege garden but we did inherit a large Bell Chili bush and an overgrown Passion fruit vine that would later yield a harvest of more that 7kg of pulp.
So that's where we started this journey.  Now I hope to use this blog to record our successes and failures on the farm, voice my opinions about life and generally track our progress as we aim to life a simple life.

The shade house - after clearing the path