introducing: the section on the hill

This is part of the half acre section we bought 3 years ago.

After the earthquake in February and 2 years of trying to sell the section we have decided to refocus on moving on to this section on the hill.

We feel very committed to this town, it seems obvious (now) that we recommit to the place we already have. Lyttelton being "quake central" we are guessing that there will be minimal, if any interest in buying land here for a long time yet and the longer we hold it while living somewhere else the further we go down the financial plug hole.

So here we are again - in some ways in the same place we were 2 years ago but in other ways standing in a different place within ourselves.

The vision for this land has always been to develop a thriving edible landscape; part food forest, part intensive beds, a few animals (chickens, ducks, bees, our worm farm and anything else that would fit) integrated into the design and some type of shelter for the humans!

The steps were dug by Gunter a couple of years back just before we abandoned the idea of building here the first time around.

On the left, off the photo, is a steep gully planted up in native seedlings that are thriving. Thanks to the timebank member who offered us his seedlings growing on his property and advised us to plant small; the smaller the seedling, the better they will take hold.

It seems to have mostly worked.

On the driveway the native species we planted are also growing well. This planted up edge is planned to buffer the property creating a corridor for native birds and other native insects, adding biodiversity and creating a shelter belt.
Most of the rest of the property looks like this.

The section faces almost directly South (for those from the Northern Hemisphere, remember for us in the South this is fairly bad news) and is steep as is most of the land in this small town.

It isn't all bad news though.

Look at the view we savour whenever we are here and with good permaculture design we will do the best we can and the rest we will rely on local systems to provide.

gorse

We also have quite a bit of this thanks to our English pioneering ancestors. In line with looking around at what we have an abundance of and using that, I have had plans to harvest this to experiment with plant dyes but haven't got there yet.

There a few edibles in amongst the grass, in particular chickweed, a staple salad ingredient at the moment, yarrow.....
and a lush and healthy nettle plant that we imported from our last house. I brought it for it's seeds. I'm planning a large plot of healthy nettle. For eating raw, the sting will disappear once you have rinsed it under cool water.

We continue to try to rent out or sell our small bach that we moved out of in March but in the meanwhile we tend this garden aswell; harvesting food and kindling and collecting green waste and compost.

There is a lot we can not do or do not know at this stage but there is much we can do and this is how we have chosen to reconnect with our section on the hill.

There is one terrace on the hill.

This is where we have started; clearing the grass a bit at a time with the machete, laying an easy sheet mulch bed and getting a bed of garlic in the ground.