Monday, July 18, 2011

Lessons from a New Country Lifestyle




Take yourself out of your comfort zone and you’re surrounded by things you have never seen before….

A freight train full of cattle. Stopping the car to give way to a mighty python on the way to pick strawberries in a farmers field. A flower on the roadside that looks like a white powder puff pompom just waiting to be picked.

This is living. Life is unexpected and alive.

I am a romantic..I fall in love with people, places, moments and words. Truth is I have considered living permanently in a number of places that stole my heart on my many wanderings…..Bali, Prague, the Islands of Greece..I even had a brief love affair with Berlin. Frances Mayes stole my heart with her Tuscany and I had to go find my own…but children come and life’s desires change and suddenly you can really shape in your mind your own forever dream.

So the adventure continues, the world turns and on this merry go round of life – we follow the breadcrumbs of inspiration, puzzle out our path and if you go with your instincts...fall on to your feet – in a whole new world. Hopefully one in which you will fall even deeper in love, that special place in the world to call your home.

My new home teaches me about life, myself and even how I want to raise my children.

I’ve realised I don’t want them to be shocked at the idea of an honesty box at a farm stall selling just picked fruit or have them feel surprise a strawberry field doesn’t have high fences to stop people stealing.

I want them to know the wildness, not just the civilisation of life. I want them to be free to trust and marvel at the simple pleasures – the wide open spaces and beauty of this charmed life.


So here is a list of things my new life has shown me

The joy of winter should include picking strawberries fresh from the patch

Giving up television is absolutely liberating and reclaims so much time

Wide open spaces

Not having to rush

A world without traffic lights is a beautiful place

Echidna’s can wander into your garden

My children can now explain to me the workings of a worm farm

It is more satisfying, beautiful and makes much more sense to grow food as well as flowers in your garden. Why have we all just decided to mainly grow grass when you could turn some into your own edible patch?

I can actually grow food – no one is a gardener until they actually try

People can be openly passionate and deeply in love with their surroundings

The satisfaction of buying fresh goats cheese from a market from goats that live up the road

Wild horses aren’t just a myth or childhood fantasy

Fruit comes from flowers (I told you I was from the city!)

The delight of wandering each morning to find freshly fallen golden passionfruit laying on the grass

Some of the friendliest and most creative people live in the countryside






All this and we are 6 months out of the city. I wonder what we can learn in a lifetime?


I am starting to believe life begins again at 35…

“She was waiting unconsciously, for that revolution which often comes in the life of a woman no longer young and directs the future course of her existence.”…..Nancy Mitford

Viva La Revolution!







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