lystn

Welcome to the show today! I’m so excited because I have a guest who’s in the Facebook group and a listener and on the other side of the world who shares her passion for homesteading also known as Lifestyle Block. Tell us a little about yourself. So, I’m in New Zealand for start in the north island in a place called Wanganui which is on the west coast of the North Island. It’s about 1/2 way down in a pretty good climate. You can grow pretty much anything here! We’re about 20 minutes out of town of about 40k people. An average size town here in New Zealand. We have 2 hectacres about 5 acres 4 1/2 acres of pastureland 1/2 acre around the garden which is pretty much food few roses and things but mainly food We moved here in May 2017, so we’ve been here just over a year and a half and made huge strides. Doing things slowly isn’t really my style so we decided to jump in gunboats and all! We made the decision to change our lifestyle dramatically on the back of the US elections 2016 Elections a lot of people in America might be surprised to know that New Zealanders followed that election really closely. Aside from us being really horrified, we decided that you know, individuals have to take a move to really counteract some of the nonsense that’s going on in the world. So we decided we would move and make this a place for ourselves for our family and friends. It was a really big jump but we did it! Well this is so fascinating and you know I’m very interested in politics. Tell me about your first gardening experience? I’ve lived lots of different places, but my very first gardening memory, when I was about 6, my parents moved from the lower part of the north island up here to Wanganui, that was back in the early 70s. Wanganui is really coastal, so there is a lot of land on sand dunes. We have this really intensely black iron sand. nothing grows in this sand other then coach grass, this gnarly tough grass June grasses box thorn But your making things grow?   Well, my mother bless her tried to put in a garden, but didn’t really know about putting extra organic material, because my memory was she would try to plant things and they wouldn’t grow. I remember watching the water disappear, I remember being out there and watch her trying to water the garden and her just really having no success at all. Then when I was twelve Mum took me on holiday to England to see her parents. My grandparents were avid gardeners and I remember thinking as a child at home, my grandparents garden where everything is blooming and they can’t and there was such a difference between what they were growing and I thought, why can they grow things and she couldn’t? Sounds like she was sure trying? Yes, she was trying! I think putting a lot of organic soil in the sand would make a big difference. How did you learn how to garden organically, is that what’s made you be more successful? yeah, it is, but I kind of feel like, I inherited green fingers from my grandparents I’ve really never needed to apply fertilizers, always been into composting. The first house already had a compost bin already sit up. I didn’t seem to have any pests. I didn’t have any money to buy fertilizers and it worked. The next garden, again, I just had amazing soil, this was a big vegetable garden and I had 2 little girls by now so I was growing food for us no money making due with the compost I’m kind of a really active person and I found when I had little kids, one way of, I wasn’t sort of to sit down and play on the uni-ball. I used to take them out in the vegetable garden digging used to sit in the garden digging up worms looking for insects always had them out in the garden That was another reason to be organic, I didn’t want them sitting in the garden playing in chemicals. So, I’m torn between going with...