Living Life More: the simple life

Living Life More: the simple life: Simplicity abounds around here. A beauty-full octagon building made with strong native timbers, large windows allowing the natural light t...

the simple life

Simplicity abounds around here.

A beauty-full octagon building made with strong native timbers, large windows allowing the natural light to filter through the shadows at different times of the day.

The manuka forests standing erect, bowing only to the sweet kiss of the warm breeze that skitters across the crystal-laid roof of our home.

The gentle, panoramic view of the calm waters of the Bay, with a smudge hinting at land across the lagoon, with long white clouds resting their weary load on the top of the peaks of the other national park we're graced by.

The peace of the day.
The ever present cicadas sing their three day love song, no trains, planes or automobiles flatlining a persistent hum....none of a refrigerator, TV or radio station blurring the present time of being.

The solar panels lounge in the heat, sucking in the light, slurping it deep into the body of Tui T'Mala.

And as the ever persistent skies of summer turn white with tones of grey, an ever present nagging feeling in my belly says 'I told yah so!"

Waking for the first time this morning with no power would not normally facilitate such a deep response. In the past, phoning the power company, neighbours or landlord to rectify the problem ... or rather pass-it-on, would have sufficed. This dark morning's glower however, was all up to me.

Placing candles around the breakfast table and pulling out seaweed crackers and hastily creating raspberry chia jam for the children's fast breaker, gifted me the most extraordinary of looks from routine-rutted clients at my walk-in diner.
The head torch produced a choreographed drama of donning head gear for similar effects by my voyeurs.

'Mama's being weird, let's be nice to her today.' A whisper slipped from my eldest's lips.

My forhead lighting up the inverter box told me that we had indeed run outa power in our batteries. The one's that we're meant to care for and nurture with sunlight, keeping their bellies filled for future power usage.

Ooops!

The red light persistently winking at me, not letting on. The answer was not found in the book of jargon either, a concise life-history of our solar system.

Seeing the lesson immediately helped me to identify the problem and attempt to solve it.

If we keep putting energy out without caring for our back-up systems; not filling them with love, sunlight and peace ... then when our first port of call runs dry, where do we go to fill-up?

Indeed.

I have been there before. 

And a physical or mental breakdown is the usual response. Whether that lurks in the form of a cold, mental instability or dis-ease. Without nurturing our dear selves with whatever makes us tick, with a lie-in, a night out with mates, a weekend climbing or splashing out on a retreat, we too can run outa power and grind to a halt.

In today's case it meant working out how to isolate the inverter from the batteries, to stop our greedy household appliances guzzle the sweet nectar of life and suppling generated power to the support system of our powered up home. 

Without this we've no green smoothies or juices, the dehydrator has it's siesta while the crackers and breads fizz and ferment in the afternoon, as the sun delivers it's fanfare of an otherwise overcast day.

No power to google the problem's solution, only trust and common sense that leaving the generator on while I 'popped' into town, a four hour vacation from the simple life, would not over tax the battery supply but at the very worst would use up all the fuel.

And that was the answer. 

After several weeks of nagging intuition, prompting me to look into this up and coming headache, I managed to find the time to declutter my overflowing brain for long enough to flick a couple of switches, illuminating the present and heading outa the door throwing whole fresh foods at the children and heading to market for the day. 

With a cacophony of delights in town and friends positively enthused about the glowing autumnal day, the morning horrors of damaging our powers life support system faded into the non present and I sucked up the abundant energy exchanged in conversation, simply shopped for organic seedlings to plant in my ever growing kitchen garden and watched tour tribes children fill themselves with the power of love, sunshine and friendship, banking it in their holding systems to draw on in future gloomy days.

Busy being

We’re living our dream.

It’s not quite as fluid as when you fall asleep and live in your subconscious, but the dream of ocean views, beauty-full home nestled deep in the natural world of the south island of New Zealand, living in intentional community, off the grid and on the boundaries of our intended national park is keeping us firmly living on mama earth.

We finally got here and it didn’t take too long once we got clear with our goals!

So, now we’re tucked into our spaceship, we’re having to bend our knowledge and conscious thoughts to making the universal jigsaw complete.

And sometimes this gets messy!

Finding out we needed to buy a 4WD to get to the property.

Not forgetting to add a towbar so that we could get everything we needed on a trailer to get up the hill.

Then a mobile phone as otherwise, at the very least, the community that we live in couldn’t contact us (it’s a bit of a climb to get to us at the top.)

The 'complete lack of top soil so we have to get some quick' to create gardens so that we don’t need the fridge that we haven’t got!

The fridge that we need doesn’t come along too often second hand…three way or gas…either one will set us back a few thousand dollars.

Starting from scratch, the community has enabled us to settle in comfortably by helicoptering a water tank in so that we could be on the creeks water supply with a solar panelled pump,

laying pipes to ensure the water can get to where it needs to go to. 

WOOFERS removing concrete rubble from the old water catchment pool so that the tractor can get through to do the work.

A fire installed,

a deck fence built, 

a bathroom facility made functional, 

a bedroom built outa the workshed that now adjoins the original bedroom with steps leading up to a door. 

Electricity connected, 

additional solar panels and battery back up, 

a cave for the generator.

The list has been relentless..and there’s still a good deal of work to be getting on with.

Meanwhile, adjusting our food preparation is an ongoing process.

Living with a super dooper vitamix and dehydrator on solar means that relying on dehydrated breads, wraps and crackers has fallen away to seeing these foods as treats.

Raw chocolate alchemy comes into force using the night garden as a fridge to set the sweet treats, making only what is needed at each meal and to eat an abundance of fresh foods economically.

Gardens have been made from scratching around the clay hill, enabling us to gather our food at it’s best…collecting sea grass, horse poo and top soil, cutting back the bush to not only safeguard the house from potential fire damage, but allowing us to create more space for more edible plants.

Frequent trips to the paddocks of this land, collecting bundles of dandelion, plantain and cleavers, the orchard for our seasonal fruit and the bush for lesser known wonders of the plant family feeding us each the minerals our bodies yearn for.

Filling our bellies aside, filling our home only with furnishings eagerly found at garage sales, classifieds and the local tip, we’re luxuriously living in other peoples junk … hand made tapestry curtains, oak dressers, shell-inlaid rimu dining chairs and table, Turkish rugs, fine tableware, plants and outdoor furniture.

Creating a home outa literally nothing is filling us up inside, opening our hearts, creating new friendships, reusing otherwise landfill refuse and using trade as a better system to hard cash where we all benefit from the exchange.

I will be opening our doors to you, charting our journey of living in our spaceship, high up in the trees overlooking a Bay steeped in European history, retelling the everyday stories of our dream as the vision uncurls like the baby ferns surrounding us.

Stories of unschooling, living off grid, project managing, building gardens, tree houses, climbing constructions, creating food, living in intentional community, building an underground greenhouse, outdoor bathrooms and having the time of our lives just being.

shifting seasons

Happy equinox to y'all ... a beauty-full serene time ... autumn glowing in the sun that sets, dew perforating along the deck and winter greens birthing in their new beds.


Feeling the shift of seasons and the start of something new. 

I'm back!

Thought I'd better get back to yah before a year slid by!

What have I been up to?

I've held two outrageously awesome and funny ten week courses in 'Warming up to raw', 

written two books,

been in various roles as an ambassador to raw in festivals, magazines, radio and film, 

moved to a dream house (again) 

and to a dream location (yep! again!). 

I've been building gardens, 

nurturing my nest, 

planning and having oodles of fun in the ocean, bush and trailing after my three bush faeries as they explore their new surroundings!

Having landed in our dream location, held in intentional community, our summer days have been filled with a combination of partying, festivals, planting gardens and building our home. 


The nest is now ready for our hibernation.

And I'm ready to bring you news from my new lifestyle.

Raw on solar! 
Naturally, living life more!

A new website, a new book and a new blog is all underway...
can't wait to tell you all about it!