We have always lived solely on harvested rainwater, but after the fires and having to rebuild we created an even more efficient, off-the-grid home run purely on solar power and rainwater. No water goes to waste in our system
We have moved in! Almost a year to the day of our house burning down we moved into our beautiful off-the-grid home. So the storytelling has been very quiet, the research and rebuild and the regathering of all we needed was all consuming. But now there are so many stories to be told!
I used to be very house proud and always made my home beautiful when we had visitors, flowers from the garden and clearing the space of all the every day clutter so that the beauty of our home and the incredible vistas could shine through. One of the hardest lessons from losing our home to fire was seeing all that beauty destroyed and the time, energy and love undone, reduced to a pile of rubble that was the biggest mess I could ever have imagined and completely and utterly overwhelming to tidy up. Completely and utterly…
Building with raw brick… it has been such journey deciding and researching what is best to build with, but we have decided to go with raw brick as it is one of our available resources and working with available resources is first prize. We are cleaning up and reclaiming as many bricks as possible from our burnt home, looking into where else we can source reclaimed bricks and also buying in locally made clay fired bricks…
Raw and bareboned
To the world
No shelter for my soul
(Or my children)
I sit alone at dusk
On the shards of my home
Broken bricks
Form a gaping toothless grin
To enter we must write the address of a house that no longer exists
‘You have 20 minutes and you can take 10 books’
On your marks get set go
We scan the shelves with half glazed eyes
Fellow fire refugees and friends are my comfort
And my competition
As we hunter gather together again
To refill the abyss of all we have lost…
Yesterday was the first time we shared our space with a gathering of friends in the 5 months since our homestead burnt. We came together with the intent of pooling knowledge and experience on how best to redesign the homestead using the Permaculture principles of being an effective, productive ecosystem…
As I step into the forties I feel as if I’ve slipped into the pages of one of my favourite authors, Margaret Atwood and her post apocalyptic Oryx and Crake. Fires and loss and looters and power outages and no comms and devastated landscapes and people….
In the inky time before sunrise when the stars still show
I walk through our still standing house in my mind, hoping reality won’t notice
Carefully and calmly considering the things I would like to take with me
I bundle my poetry, papers and words, photos and children drawn pictures into my arms
and leave…..
This image held up such a mirror for me, it’s like the images playing through my mind of my own home, how the still life of preciously placed things would have been hungrily consumed by the fire. And how easily your home sanctuary can be reduced to rubble and ash. And now hundreds and hundreds of others are homeless like us…