Celebrating A Year On the Farm

Happy birthday, Green Gate Farm!

Today marks a year since we moved to the hovel we call home. It’s been a frenetic, busy time with emotions too many to count but as Mr GGf and I sat on the now finished wraparound verandah the other night looking at the work we’ve done, it was hard to believe we’ve achieved so much in such a short space of time.

The day we moved in we had a basic set up. The large living area was cavernous and extremely drafty. It had seven doors and a homemade wiring system that meant if we turned on more than two appliances every fuse in the house blew and we had to traverse the slimy chipboard path across the verandah to fix it. Consequently, we lived in layers of Polar Fleece until June when our wood heater arrived. Sometimes, it was so cold I went to bed at six to watch TV. That was after I shimmed around the spiral staircase in the hall to get to there, of course.

For four months, I cooked nothing that couldn’t be microwaved because the oven was repulsive. The one time I attempted to put a pot on the stove it slid off and the dogs got bolognese sauce for dinner. I won’t mention the mice (and maybe a rat or two). Nothing was safe unless it was in the fridge. The smell was hideous and when they died, even grosser.

But the day I came home and found the builder had taken the spiral staircase out was the day work really began. It was also the day I realised our dream might actually not be as far fetched as some people thought it was. I was so excited I didn’t care the builder had set scaffold up in place of the staircase and now, instead of sliding around the stairs, I had to climb through scaffold to get to bed.

I was even excited as I pulled down layers of smoke encrusted wallpaper that made me dry heave from the stench. Under those layers was the original hessian wall lining and a layer of newspaper from 1895. There was wallpaper from every decor period up until around the 1940s. Layers of beauty that we’ve preserved on one column in the hall for everyone who visits to gush over.

Our first milestone at the farm was when the new kitchen was installed. To have a dishwasher and functioning oven again was a joy and seeing my design ideas coming to life was so much fun.

Yes, we were having charcoal trim and not white.

Yes, I wanted dark cabinets, massive timber wine barrel chandeliers and a farmhouse sink with aged brass taps.

The tradesmen had never witnessed anything like my design choices but once it all went in, they told me how good it looked. (Of course, they could have been being nice. We were paying them).

As the year went on, our garden went from overgrown and ugly to green and serene. Mr GGF likes straight lines and spent many hours redoing perfectly good rock walls to suit his aesthetic and make the perfect garden for us. He planted hundreds of plants and I only managed to kill a few. We had the slowest fence builder in the history of the world construct boundaries to keep the dogs safe and no matter how many times I asked him how long it was going to take, he didn’t seem to get the fact that our pooches had to go to doggie daycare at my parents house every day he didn’t get it done. (That’s an hour drive each way)

We’ve had, literally, mountains of rubbish removed, burnt and buried to get the garden to the point it’s at now. Not that Mr GGF minds a good bonfire. I came home the other week and he had THREE burning simultaneously. Soon, we’ll have a wide path up to the house flanked by box hedge and an arbour at the entry with our antique green gates (the farm was named for them) welcoming our guests.

We’ve had mishaps over the year too, like the day we discovered Bonnie our dog likes to eat chickens and the morning all our hens but one was found dead after a quoll attacked them. We were evacuated on and off for the entire January holiday due to bushfire, stressed over the fact our new roof couldn’t be insured during the fire and I watched as Mr GGF almost needed a second shoulder reconstruction when he slid from the tip of the roof to the gutter. We’ve lost one sheep to a blackberry bush but didn’t manage to lose the possum who lives in the roof. We acquired new hens, more sheep, Dave the cry baby ram and recently our four cows: Maggie, Coco, Scarlett and TBone.

We’ve seen a year of seasons, been amazed by the number of bulbs sprouting from the tangle, found paths buried under grass and discovered the massive key to the front door hidden in the dairy. We now have a house that’s liveable and becoming grander as each job gets ticked off the list.

I thank James Henry Ford who built our house and whose name is carved into the wall out the back. If he hadn’t married that posh lady who wanted a posh farm, we wouldn’t be here today. I hope he’s pleased with what we’re doing to his home.