Wakefield New Zealand

Our new home town  is slightly smaller than Nafferton (East Yorkshire) where we lived in the UK.  According to Wikpedia,  Wakefield has a population of 1663 but it  is only a fifteen minute drive from the busy little town of Richmond  (population 11,000) where you can buy almost anything you need. We will be living on the edge of the village but within a short walk of the centre.  We went to have another look around the house yesterday, just to see if our furniture will all fit in, and find out where all the switches and stopcocks are in case of emergency.   It has been a while since we agreed to buy it, so it was  good to go back and remind ourselves of what we are getting into!   The garden is great, it's already divided up into smaller areas, there are lawns, vegetable gardens, a chicken run and hen house, a water garden and a small creek running through the centre.  There is even a dairy with stalls for milking two cows!   We have peach, plum and walnut trees already in fruit  and the fencing is secure enough for us to be able to get a puppy and chickens quite soon .
  The house is quite badly in need of a lick of paint inside and there are loads of jobs that need doing to make it our  own and get it into a good state of repair.  This will be the fourth house that we have renovated, so although we had vowed never to do it again, at least we know what we are getting into!
 In general the standard of housing here is not as high as it is in the UK.  It's quite usual for houses not to have double glazing or insulation and because it is an earthquake zone, the majority are not made of permanent materials (brick or stone) so they can feel quite flimsy.    Having said that, there has been a lot of new development in recent years and all new houses are built to a similar specification as they would be in England.    The older villa type houses like ours are made of native hardwoods such as Rimu and feel very solid, they sit on wooden piles rather than concrete foundations and are usually roofed with corrugated steel  (very  noisy in the rain!).  Our heating will come from a woodburning stove with a solar panel on the roof to help heat our water. 

 Here is a quick photo tour of Wakefield, including one of our house taken from a nearby hillside.

Wildlife

 We had our first encounter with a whitetail spider.  I'm told that these are the only really nasty biting arachnids in New Zealand. Their bite is not fatal but can cause severe pain and in my books that makes them a most unwelcome house guest.  The good news is, they are easy to recognise, slow moving and not aggressive so we caught it in a glass and released it outside.  I can't bring myself to kill spiders, even whitetails!   The other pest here (which is far more annoying) is the sand fly.  Tiny little midge like flies that you barely notice until they bite your ankles and then you can't think about anything else for the next two days except the intense urge to scratch your own skin off!   Fortunately our neighbours, who are country Kiwi folk, gave us a top tip and we now make our own insect repellant, one part Dettol to three parts baby oil.  It works a treat and costs very little.  
Our garden is teeming with birds of all shapes and sizes, we have a family of ducks, exotically plumaged  pheasants, tuis and pukekos (my personal favourites), plus dozens of smaller songbirds, many of which are European immigrants like us. 
The pukekos are noisy, cheeky , rather gawky and messy; just like teenagers, they also seem to be awake and making a noise half the night!   We have a family of five at the moment who chase each other around the lawn all day squawking loudly. Our landlord keeps threatening to shoot them (I hope he's joking) - apparently the locals don't find them as endearing as I do
.Everything is in bloom at the moment and the garden is beautiful. We are in mid summer, the hills behind our house are starting to turn brown, despite a recent deluge, because rainfall is so low here in the summer months.   The valley where we live and where we have chosen to settle is very fertile and snow is virtually unknown, although the surrounding mountains are snow capped for much of the year.   I can't wait to get started on my vege patch! 
Here are my bird photos, and one of Picton harbour where I snapped the cormorant. 

Moving on

We have a date to move into our new (old actually) home, the removal company is booked for Valentines Day.  I can't think of anything more romantic than starting a new life together so that had to be the day.   The process of buying a house can be much quicker here, it's possible to see a house, put in an offer and move within a couple of weeks.   We didn't plan to buy so soon, we had a very sensible time scale of one year to look around, find the right area, check out all the schools etc. etc.  But we're not very good at sticking to plans, call us spontaneous, flexible, stupid, whatever!  Anyway, we saw this house on sale privately and thought there was no harm in looking....  So now we own a house here, or we will do in less than a month.  It feels as though we have made a real committment to stay and give it our very best shot.   We have stuck to the original dream of owning some land and hopefully that will provide us with enough food for only one of us to go out to work.   I'm reading everything I can on growing veg, self-sufficiency and home economics at the moment.  I'm also wondering what on earth possessed me to buy those five inch heels and a cocktail dress three weeks before we came out here!! Anyway, here's some pictures of the house that were posted on Trademe, the Kiwi equivalent of ebay.

Around Nelson

We chose to settle in the Nelson area even before we left England.   We liked the idea of living close to beautiful beaches and having easy access to mountains and national parks.  Nelson also seemed to offer a nice climate and a laid back bohemian culture, being home to a large artistic community.   We have not been disappointed.  We had intended to travel far and wide when we arrived, but there are so many lovely places on our doorstep there hasn't been any need to travel more than two hours in any direction.  We are planning a road trip in the near future though, the aim is to travel  down to Invercargill along the West Coast and return through Christchurch on the East Coast - watch this space!

Picton, the gateway to the South Island

 We took the ferry from Wellington to Picton when we arrived.  The three hour voyage across the Cook Strait and through the Marlborough Sounds is breathtaking.   We were so excited when Picton came into view.   It's a tiny little place, but lively in the summer with backpackers from all over the world.  There is a rather good maritime museum, an aquarium, lots of nice cafes and gift shops and er.....thats it really!   It's a really good starting point to explore the sounds either on foot, or mountain bike, or by kayak.

Our temporary home in Brightwater, near Nelson

Hello and welcome to my blog

Well I have finally got round to setting up the blog I promised I would keep when we set out on our big adventure three months ago.  I hope to keep family and friends up to date with our new life and post lots of photos of what we are up to.  The hardest part of leaving was saying goodbye to all of you, the last few weeks have been exciting and mostly very happy but sometimes sad thinking of everyone we love, especially at Christmas.  We said goodbye to Grace our eldest daughter just before New Year as she decided that she wanted to go back to her old life and her friends in the UK.    Now we are looking forward to our next move, into our own place.  We have been living in a very smart rented house in Brightwater, but there's no place like your own and we can't wait for our move to Wakefield on Valentines day.  We plan to grow our own food, keep chickens and possibly a couple of sheep (we can't afford a mower!)  It sounds easy when you say it quickly but I'm sure we are heading for a pretty steep learning curve!  We came here for a complete change of lifestyle, all prompted by an increasing dis-ease with a capitalist throw away culture and a desire to spend more time together and reconnect with the simple things in life.    Some big changes have happened already, I am enjoying the first school summer holidays at home with my kids in six years!  The weather has been great, Nelson has a reputation for being sunny which it has certainly lived up to so far.  We go to the beach a couple of times a week and we are cycling everyday to take care of  Minty, a lovely eight year old mare we are fostering until April.  Life is good.