Our eco life

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...

No matter how exhilirating it is to move to a new place, nothing beats the warmth of family. It was lovely to have Betty (Katie's mum) and Alex visit from Christchurch this weekend - our first real visitors from the city we recently moved from. How wonderful to catch up with them as we gracefully  welcomed them into our new "village" living :)  They were fortunate enough to come at a time when the village was having their 3-4 weekly AVC (Atamai Village Council) meeting. This is where the villagers gather to discuss the various things happenning around Atamai and to make communal decisions on required items, followed by a shared potluck meal and socialising. Over a glass of wine, an intricate array of interesting subject matters are included as part of the entertainment. Both Betty and Alex enjoyed the experience ...  at least that's what they told us ... ;)  We also had a nice day at our local beach, KaiTeriTeri , which also happens to be one...

After living in our container for nearly 4 weeks, it was time for the piano to come into the warm folds of the house. But how do you move a 200-300 kg awkward object like a piano up a >1m deck?  ... use a HIAB pickup truck, of course!   Rob, our resident engineer guy had one that could lift 1 tonne - perfect! So here is the process: Step 1: Mosey on the truck close to the container, nuzzle the crane into it, and lift up the piano with nice and wide straps. There was "just" enough clearance for the crane to lift it up. Step 2: Carefully maneuver the the piano unto the pickup truck.   Step 3:  Ride the pickup truck and steady the crane and piano, just like a regular cowboy does. Step 4: Get close to the deck, lift the piano up and get it unto the deck. Step 5: The piano rests on the deck and awaits the lifting team to get it inside the house. Ah yes ... the lifting team. I put out the word on the village loop for volunteers to assis...

Now that I’ve explained the relative make up of the structure of Atamai, I can explain other things a bit better. If you missed that explanation, look here: http://ourecolife.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/so-how-is-atamai-structured.html One clarification about Atamai’s internet capability. The village is meant to be hooked up via fibre optic cable internally (the so called “intranet”) and that will come at a cost to the developer (ADL) and is included in the price of the section. However Atamai doesn’t currently stipulate how it will connect to the internet. That is to be determined by the village council (AVC). The present story … At present the village is located in an area where marginal rural ADSL is available. This means ~2mbps downloads and ~500kbps uploads during non-peak periods (per line).  However because it is on the fringe of the service, the ADSL modems here have to be occasionally reset, some days a lot more than others. If you complain too much to telecom ...

As I understand it ...  Atamai land is currently owned by the Atamai Land Trust (or ALT) which has 3 people as its settlors and trustees, they are the ones who have injected capital into the project thus far (Jurgen, Jack and Ben). The beneficiary of ALT is an incorporated society called the Atamai Village Council (or AVC). It’s a non-profit membership based model which allows for the communal ownership of the commons land, and any financial gain returned from that land is used to maintain and pay for improvements to that land (eg. fruit ocharding, vegetable and animal farming, village centre development etc). In essence the purchaser of an Atamai plot will become a co-owner of the commons land via membership to the AVC, which is a condition placed as a covenant on the section being sold. If that section is to be sold again in the future, that covenant will still be in place to ensure that the commons share ownership is transferred to the new owner. Legally the land owned by ...