Our eco life

By Katie: Here is a totally non-technical update of what the kids and I get up to in Atamai. The kids enjoy playing outside a lot of course. There are plenty of trees to climb, dirt to dig in, bikes to ride, bulldozers and diggers to watch. During the summer we were spending one morning a week helping out in the orchard and community gardens. We still do sometimes, but have not been so regular as the weather has become colder. We have spent a few days making cheese, either with Tracey and her 3-yr-old William or just by ourselves. So far, I have made successful feta, ricotta and have just tried Camembert (too early to tell whether that has “worked” yet). We have tried out a lot of playgroups in the area, mostly homeschool ones. There are a lot of homeschoolers around, especially here in the Motueka Valley (as opposed to Motueka itself) because it is a bit further out of town. There are 3 groups we are involved in currently but they are all a bit irregular, there are u...

Greetings fellow readers, We are gearing up to move to the "soon to be ours" land at Atamai eco-village. We finally decided which land parcel we were interested in, and it turns out Katie and I preferred Lot 6 the most. You can see the lot numbers here is Atamai's stage one development. Katie and Alysha standing in the middle of Lot 6, westerly views to the distant mountain ranges in Kahurangi National Park. Here is a view looking at a north western view, encompassing Lot 6. Being the early birds here we could choose between Lots 5, 6 or 8. Lot 8 has amazing views but Lot 6 has a larger platform and more privacy nooks, as well as two stream boundaries - making it the choice for us. Lot 5 was taken off the market so it can be enhanced further. This includes an additional platform and a horse shoe lake. However this meant that we weren't able to afford it because of the increased price tag - dang! Easements are currently being registered with LINZ, and ...

Hello readers, Winter has set in well and truly for Motueka, however not quite as bad as what our friends and family have been experiencing in Christchurch of late - what with all that recent snowfall and all. We didn't have any snow here during the recent storms, but we did experience quite heavy rain fall and relatively cool temperatures. The hills beyond us however are snow capped which makes for a beautiful view. The heatpump has been going flat tack, and so has the oil column heater in the corridor to take the chill away. The electricity bill turned up this month for less than $300 however, which isn't too bad for this house with no underfloor insulation and little ceiling insulation. I expect this will likely increase in the next month however. House Design We are pretty busy with reading up on architecture and pattern language and how to design our future home. The aim is to work out how to build a not-so-big-house that will be both a cozy home and affordable. W...

Time sure flies when you are having fun. For those of you anticipating my next posts, I apologise for the time lag for this one. Winter is upon us and the mercury is falling - fleeces, jerseys, and duvets abound. However it is still relatively moderate as the sun here is nice enough to poke its head up quite often and the place heats up pretty easily. We are giving the heat pump a good run for the money, it's doing well. The thing about this place is that for every 2-3 days of rain there is usually about 1-2 weeks of sunshine - nothing to complain about really, especially when our water tanks fill up during the rain. I haven't got bored yet, in case you were wondering. We are still settling into village life and there is much happening around the place. I even had a visit from my Christchurch friend Edward who was up mountain biking the Heaphy Track . I gave him a whirlwind tour of Atamai as he only had a few hours in Atamai before it went dark. Thanks for the visit Ed, hop...

Elise and Louca at PassItOn films provided for us a professional looking video describing what Atamai is all about. Check it out below: Thank you Louca and Elise for your amazing effort! it was great to have our paths cross - hope to see you again soon.

It's now been nearly two months since we have come to Atamai, we haven't had much time to even blink. I joined the local St. Peter Chanel Catholic church choir and am having great fun. It turns out to be a wonderful way to really get to know your fellow parishioners and embed one-self into the community. I have huge respect for everybody there as they sing with such passion, and love a good challenging SATB four part harmony. There is an obvious age gap but that doesn't much bother me, many of them seem younger at heart than I am at most times. I'm also impressed with the pianist and choir master who seem incredibly talented, and a delight to work with. The choir is doing a combined concert with another local church - together they have run this concert annually ever since they featured on " Praise Be " some 3 years ago. The combined choir this year comprises a 16+ member brass band (which is quite a treat) as well as amassing over 30 members making up th...

After waiting a few weeks, our garden shed has finally arrived. This is no "garden variety" shed we are talking about, it is is a custom order 10m2 2.4m stud wooden garden shed . You get to specify where the windows and doors go, with full assembly with staining and shipping from Nelson for a tad under $NZD4000 which really is amazing value. And the best thing of all (which is quite becoming a theme of my posts here) is that it came on a back of a truck with a "crane" on it ... whoo hoo, yes another one!! Here is my picture blog ... or a Plog! The truck backs up the drive way, good thing we have had quite a dry weather patch and the ground is rock hard. She squeezes gently to get pass the container ... ... and nuzzles on down the path ... ... through some bushes It even comes with a complimentary 1/10 scale digger on its roof ;)  ... joking aside however, that digger is actually working on "our" site, cool huh! The truck driver...