Yurt living: Come and see our river, meet our puppy and learn about the birds and the bees

We’ve been here for two months now, and you’d think the shine would be wearing off yurt living a little bit, but it really isn’t.

Of course, we wake up on the wrong side of the bed some days. (EG, yesterday. Grumpville. Unmet Needs Central. Rip-Each-Others-Heads-Off R US. On some days like these I am able to turn to The List to rescue us all from the pit of family despair. Other days I just spend a lot of time being honest and saying sorry to my children for not being very fun.)

And life still happens, with all its small troubles.

Like, the secondhand retro kitchen we bought on the internet and then picked up to find it was completely rubbish and didn’t fit in our bus but still had to take so needed to saw it in half and bring home.

And me pulling off Juno’s jumper in the night and dislocating her elbow. *cries* We had to go to A and E to pop it back in, our first trip to the hospital with her, so sad to see her in so much pain. How awful is is possible for a mama to feel?

But still a couple of times a day we’ll look about and go “how the jeffing jeff do we get to live here?!?!” 

 Here is a video – meet our bees, see our river, our newest family member, and our epic tree. No poo views or terrible typefaces like the last one, but there is some reality about the swampy sand fly situ!

Summer is beginning in earnest. We had a week where we swam every day down at our river. It is heart stoppingly cold on the first dive in, but when the sun is in the right spot we can stay in there for an hour, splashing in and out. Even then it gets in the bones, we come home with our teeth chattering, piling on jumpers until our bodies de-freeze again. 

 The garden is going great guns. We are having kale everyday and have already plucked courgettes and candy striped beetroots, and had an argument about whether they were turnips.

WE GOT A PUPPY! After announcing last month that we were gonna get one, someone left a comment saying “Please don’t buy a puppy” which then set off a huge research project in to how to get an ethical puppy. I genuinely didn’t know NZ was impacted by poor breeders and puppy mills and things… just goes to show how naive you can be. If you know something about something, always mention it, in love and without the tension, because these small comments can really change things. After several roadtrips and visits to pounds we found a little unwanted bearded collie/ labrador pup right on the very tip of NZ and set off last week on to meet her and fell in love and bought her home. Zoe. She is completely adorbs, and is going to be an ideal farm dog, once she gets over the need to nip the girls constantly. She has a real penchant for wrapping her little jaw around juicy bottoms, which really takes you by surprise. (It is genuinely a real challenge…)

 
 Our hens have arrived and are happily laying and we’ve a host of beehives. Some are the beekeeper a and some are our own- the beekeeper is going to show us the ropes over the next year. 

Our girls are thriving here… Ramona has turned five which is completely and utterly unreal! She is such a brave, intriguing and kind person. And Juno continues to blow our hearts apart. She has a real thing for lists at the moment. She is just massively into the word “and” so she’ll spend hours every day, out loud and under her breath, listing all the names of people she loves, or all her favourite things to do. Too, too cool.

  We are digging deep over the next month, on a bender to get our big, second yurt up. This one is going to be our proper home and is a big deal, with glass windows and a mezzanine and things.

The family we share the land with our moving in too, which we are so, so excited about.

And we hope to have lots more visitors and campers and things.

And less dislocated elbows and bit bottoms.

PS YOU MADE IT TO THE BONUS LEVEL! Here is a video of Ramona and Juno lighting their own sparklers from the campfire and then just rocking out to James Brown. You are so welcome.