Joanna Becker

December, 2016 This is the Argents Hill (population of 221) Christmas  Party. Couldn’t be more beautiful. Christmas Carols, Macksville. Salvation Army puts on an incredible show here, we love it more every year. And our town over the Christmas season. You can only feel good when you hear the fiddle playing in the pub as you notice a new set of Converse strung over the power lines.  This town has all the good things in all the littlest ways. Heritage town, heritage fuel station, heritage car. We were  driving to Coffs Harbour but had to put the destination on hold to do a few laps in Bowraville to get a better look. My brother  and his fiancee brought their snorkelling gear to Scott’s Head and swam me out to see a Wobbegong Shark who was sleeping under the rocks! Amazing experience. Must get some gear now.   And our fun few days of camping at Hat Head, NSW. National Park living is always so relaxing and restoring. We took our renovated vintage caravan.

This amazing beautiful life we get to live in one week in mid-North Coast NSW, so stoked to call this valley home. Shelly Beach  World Rally  Camping under the stars  Shopping & Lunch at the foreshore  One week. Just one week in the regular life of us. I love our new home. 🏡

May, 2016 This is what you will find at Shelly Beach - #7 Beach in Australia - at 5pm in Autumn. We are so thankful we can call this our local swimming spot. The colours of my morning in for  also. Avocados - preserving and making chocolate breakfast smoothies. Pineapple - preparing for fridge containers awaiting little fingers t hat steal pieces during the day. Grapefruit - juicing to store and use in dressings. Turmeric root - boiling with cinnamon and ginger for tea with honey. Saucepan - full of root vegetables and Asian flavours for breakfast (and dinner tonight). Loved my morning touring our home-place checking in on our food and picking macadamias, pecans and turmeric for our day. And as usual, a little more sightseeing.  Revisiting this coastal temple - I never run out of love for visiting lighthouses in Australia !! Arakoon, NSW

April, 2016 What an amazing day we had hanging out with this guy. He taught us some tricks with gardening - basically, food can be grown in anything, even the pockets of your old jeans hanging off the wall. How to remove weeds effectively. His story, his love for growing food, and the reason he loves having such a long beard :-) He was naturally such a gorgeous funny guy and I was more than happy to get a hug at the end of our time together plus a photo with my book, which I was honoured to give him to share with his family. Costa Georgiadis, the host of Gardening Australia.  We headed up to the Gold Coast again for some more shifting - a whole container of furniture can be moved to our farm now that we're settling for good.  I was born, grew up and lived on the Gold Coast and the Main Beach area for 30 years. Now after only 1 year living elsewhere, I have come back to this beach (Main Beach) and floated on the surf and felt 'home'. Isn't it amazing how the

November, 2015 ... We found what we were looking for.  12 months after we sold our house on the Gold Coast and set off in a caravan to find land we could be inspired by - it was right there the whole time, we drove past many times and we ruled out every other possibility - we finally let ourselves buy our dream property.  In September 2014, when we shifted into our caravan, we learned how to minimize our living needs and reduce our footprint on the earth, changing habits. There was still so m uch more we could do. Now we bring these lessons to our farm where we are also learning from the locals. You might like to keep visiting us via this page to see our new spontaneous 'firsts' in learning about self-sufficiency methods as we discover a new meaning of community.  Tomorrow is our 7th day here. We've had a huge week re-organizing and mending sheds, trans-planting our veggies & herbs into the vegetable garden with some extra TLC, setting up composting system

July, 2015 We still are happiest when we're sightseeing in the car and seeing what Australia, natural-made environment and man-made environment, has to offer us. The life of travelers on the road, sunset views from the car's front windscreen. I took this near Kempsey, mid-coast NSW. Everyday I drive along the country roads and think to myself: It's just stunning country, mid-north coast NSW, 4 minutes from the beach. The world's best-kept secret. Here we are at nature's playground, Coffs Harbour NSW. Just 2 trains a day ... The Nambucca train station, less than 5 mins drive to the beach. In shade and in silence -save the brief 3 minute commotion when the train calls in to drop off or pick up a few ... Stand up paddle board and surfing comp at Scott's Head, NSW. Atmosphere here is salty and smily, everyone's laughing and getting out on skateboards and wave boards. Bellingen on the 3rd Saturday of every mont

September, 2015 #1 priority for Maximilian and Dustan. Eat and grow. Eat and grow. Spring is shining upon these little men. The weather is still a touch chilly on the mid-north coast and we still have the fire heater burning morning and afternoon, but in my mind winter is yesterday's news :) I'm done with Winter! We started Winter early this year when we arrived in Tasmania in January for a 'record cold summer', so I can't express how excited I am for warm breezes and late balmy evenings under the stars. I was told the old schoolhouse was known as 'Summer House', something to look forward to here. Spring is giving us a preview of the best that's yet to come.  The garden is bountiful, the flowers in bloom, the birds crazy with excitement, and the bees noisily harvesting. I just wish I could share some of the stunning images I see everyday in this valley ... for me, the scenery is both startling and soothing. (It would help if I kept my camera charged, bu