Who we are ….. who am I?

When I first started this blog the aim was to tell you all a little about our journey through living on a lifestyle block. That aim hasn’t changed, in that I wanted to tell people about our life, our farm, the flock of Gotland Pelt sheep and why we decided to buy a farm in our retirement. What I now realise is that the ‘journey’ to this particular lifestyle started a long time ago and so I thought I’d share my story. “Why?” you ask, well because I want to promote New Zealand and its story and as I am an avid photographer thought you might like to see some of the wonderful scenery we have here (since we can’t visit new places at the moment).

The beginning of the lifestyle farm idea started with Leigh and I renting a property on the West Coast of New Zealand, when I was working for the West Coast District Health Board.

The place we rented was called ‘Moonlight’ (isn’t that a cool name), which had a house and some land and because I have been interested in raising sheep for their wool a friend gave me a couple of orphan lambs who needed a home.

This started a serious discussion into what we wanted to do when we retired, and when we could afford to buy a house of our own.

We stayed in Moonlight for only a year unfortunately and when we shifted we had to find a place that would let us have the two sheep, Mintie and Rosie (Suffolk sheep). We had bottle fed the sheep and continued to feed them with sheep nuts, hence they were very friendly.

Our move to Runanga was a good move but still in a rented house and land. That stay lasted for about a year, then we decided to move back to the Canterbury region. We had to leave the sheep with the property as we were going to move back to the city for a while. Luckily the person owning the house and land was happy to include our two sheep into their flock, so Mintie and Rosie had a new life with a big flock.

One year later and we had the means to look for our own property in Canterbury and because I wanted to purchase the Gotland Pelt sheep it was necessary to find somewhere suitable for the requirements of the breed.

We found West Coast Road after about four months of looking at more than a dozen properties. So that is the beginning of the story with the lifestyle block.