And so our journey begins...

This is my first ever blog... for some reason never got into the whole thing. Anyway, we thought this was a good way of keeping everyone updated on our progress... but I'd better start with an introduction:

We are Peter and Annette Tazawa (nee Lockley) and we got married last year. Annette and I have now been working on the Central Coast (NSW Australia) for about 6 years. I am a partner at Wyong Equine Clinic and Annette is now a part-timer, working at Tuggerah Vet Clinic and Long Jetty Vet Clinic.

For the last 5 years, we have been living on a small (450sq.mtr.) suburban block. Annette's always been very environmentally conscious and responsible (she even drives a Prius and before that she rode the bicycle to work) whilst I on the other hand grew up with a great appreciation for nature but my actions never really matched my well meaning intentions... hopefully that's starting to change!

We started getting itchy feet last year. We'd been cooped up in our little house for too long! Annette wanted to really let her green thumbs go wild (not enough food could be grown out of her 6mx2m veggie patch) and I'd always wanted to move onto an acreage (aka waterfront block with a boat rampa and jetty)....

Even though I'd seen this block of land for sale for some time, we'd never thought it was what we wanted. I thought I wanted a waterfront; Annette wanted a quiet bush block. This block is a bush block but its right near town. It gets a bit of noise from the freeway, but we can live with it if it means being closer to town etc, so that we are not driving so far (which is obviously a no no). We had both been reading about sustainability so much, that at some point in the past year... and I don't know exactly when.... we came to the realisation that we both wanted one thing... to have a sustainable home and apply permaculture and organic principals to our own plot of land and be more self sufficient. This block definitely had heaps of potential! So we thought we'd give it a go.

So this is our block: 25 acres of bushland with about 10 acres of it (at the back of the block) being wetland (swamp, alluvion, marsh, etc etc). The building block is only about 1~1.5 acres. It is flood prone and is in a high bush fire danger zone... (what are we doing?!*?) and the house is about 2/3 finished with no services connected and lots of unfinished areas.

Anyway, its getting late... more on this shortly!

Pete