Joanna Becker

Yesterday I opened the boy's craft cupboard to see what the strange noise was. I found the chook, Ivory, next to the egg she laid. 24 hours locked in there and counting, she got out pretty fast.  Here are the cows crossing the road on the way to preschool a few days ago.  And here is a snapshot of the work that took place here at the old schoolhouse over the weekend to install a new water tank and re-plumb the house. The owners worked so, so hard. We are all so relieved that the set up is now 'concrete' - we should have normal water supply now - and there should be no more bathroom & laundry flooding, and the leak in the ceiling should hopefully be fixed but we'll keep an eye on that one. Plus, the house will stop moving on the foundations in the kitchen corner too. (We've been really worried about some of the stuff we've seen happening to the house during our stay here, but the owners have addressed all the problems now and have sunk a lot of money in to fi...

July, 2015 In between time indoors keeping the fire going, I've been running up klm's on my car checking out every suburb to help us decide whether we will stay 'local' long-term and where we might like to live. (We now know we want to move on from the schoolhouse when our lease ends, after ongoing issues with plumbing and water supply amongst other 'renting' frustrations - even though things are looking up now.)  Oh - the properties we've seen, roads we've explored, real estate agents we've met! It's too big a discussion and decision and - getting nowhere but sleep deprived - I'm ready to give up thinking about it now. Phew (brush eyebrows). Along the way, though, I've visited some stunning headlands and stretches of beach while Maxie has napped in the backseat, with  realestate.com app open on the dashboard. The whales are traveling north presently and I think - well it's a stretch of my imagination - but I think I saw a pot of w...

June, 2015 The last 2 weeks has seen us withdraw indoors for couch time and cosy dinners, and venture out briefly to explore and search for community. We are feeling we have almost found the corner that we fit in, in this large section of seaside country.  Creating connections with different groups of parents and children, like the homeschool group, Steiner school families and beach community families, has forced me to face up to being the new person in the neighborhood, a really strange feeling for me after 30 years on the Gold Coast. Dusty is having a whirlwind play event at preschool, and Maxie on a smaller scale at playgroup. In between, we've been riding bikes on the beach and through state forest, and hanging out in our damp, wood-smoky, garden (yes, the rain still freshens the landscape up every second day, and the cool temperatures give us good reason to keep the wood heater burning away day and night).  I think we are falling in love with t...

June, 2015 We had a stall at the Valla Beach markets on the weekend to promote my book, Dusty's Wonder Bug. I put a box of schoolhouse lemons on the table to draw interest (you know, with the book being about treats - real food grown in nature), and my fruit got a lot of interest. So I sent Tim home to pick more and he returned with kale, lemonade, oranges and lemon, and we made $35 in 35 x $1 coins by 11am. We had a giggle. We sold it way too cheap, apparently. The good news is that my books reached the right hands in the process, and copies will be ordered into the Nambucca Valley libraries.  The little boys were wonderful sitting there, drawing and juicing lemonade at the table.  My last market down here was the Port Macquarie Foreshore Market. It was also stand-out, fantastic food and produce on offer. There's a whole bunch along the coastline, we'll find it impossible to get bored on the weekends.

June, 2015 We haven't made enough juice or lemonade to get through our mountain of lemons, so I was pleased to have visitors yesterday to share schoolhouse lemons with - even if our visitors were unexpected. Our visitors were locals, with a truck full of water for our tank.  The water tank for the house had drained empty over night, and I had woken up to a dry tank (save the tears from me leaning in to check the water and sobbing in despair). We spent all Tuesday figuring it out, and by 9pm the owner and Tim had it sussed and repaired. But asides from that major hiccup, our boys and I have had a really relaxing time, just doing the homeschooling 'kinder' thing at home. These were the images I loved from our past few days.  Dusty writing and illustrating a picture book about a dog floating in a bubble. Maxie getting into the dirt holes after the plumbing was dug up.  Dusty with his glass marble arrangement of an elephant.  Maxie's secret creation - stuffed goodies i...

May, 2015 What I've found (and been surprised about)  since moving here,  is that the towns are pretty far apart and the fuel stations and supermarkets are few and far between - compared to our old stomping ground anyway.  Because I didn't think about it first, I had to make a 40klm trip east to get fuel so I could head west for the homeschool meet up.  It was fun to meet locals at the meetup (when I say 'locals', the distances between two families was just under 200klm! Needless to say the meet ups are only fortnightly). Our boys had a ball playing the gross motor team games including blindfolded hockey races, piggy-backs relays, tunnel ball, shot put, and an almighty water bomb team fight to decide the winner ('the team who is driest wins the day'). I was pretty involved and laughing my ass off and only remembered the camera at the end! We visited the closest Steiner school, which is 8klm (20 minutes) by di...

May, 2015 When we arrived here at the schoolhouse, several sets of neighbors called in, including the owners of the schoolhouse. We've actually seen them several times a week as they are keen to fix and improve the property and to be friendly. Vanessa warmly invited us to visit their home down the road to meet their horses, and so we did.  Maxie walked 'Jahlie' around by the rope while Dusty sat on top, then Maxie conquered his fear of big animals and had a turn, too. And then they rode together.