Forced lifestyle change.

It started in July 2000. This is when our life dramatically changed. After spending 7 years share farming on the dairy farm my husband contracted "Lepto" from the cattle which caused his kidneys to collapse although at the time it went undiagnosed, his health just went down hill and we could no longer manage the farm.

So we packed up and moved into town while at the same time started renovating our house which we had relocated onto our property. Just moving into town for the first time was hard enough! Our poor cattle dog whom obediently brought the cattle up every morning and afternoon found himself confined to a backyard and his owners were also finding it hard to adjust. The hardest of all was no longer having a regular income.

The renovations continued on the house and at this time my daughter was six months old. We did as much of the work as we could to try and save money and although my husband was not well it was during this time that I began to see just how resourceful he could be. The doctors visits continued to try and pinpoint the reason for his declining health as did the centrelink visits. Two tonne of creek rubble had just be delievered and my husband was shovelling it into the rubble drain (for the septic system) when the doctor contacted our neighbour (we were still waiting for the phone to be connected) and asked for us to contact her urgently. She had received the results from the blood test and my husband was suffering from kidney failure.

This was the turning point in our lives. We had to change how we did things, what we ate, what products we used in and around the house everything!! Up until this time I hadn't heard of the word "homos" but now it was popping up everywhere. In my husbands darkest hours he couldn't tolerate anything except orange juice which he wasn't supposed to have (potassium) and during the night I would shake him if I couldn't hear him breathing. It really was a life or death situation. A situation that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Christmas of 2000 came and we were still all together. It was our first Christmas in "Our" house. We did what most would do, read everything we could on the subject and started making big changes in our life style.

The first thing we did was grow an organic vegetable garden and being from a farming background everything was done in rows. This was ok but we had trouble keeping up with the weeds and it was really hard work. So my mum gave us the title of a book that might help us, it was "Permiculture in your backyard" This turned out to be a real little gem and after reading it from cover to cover we began constructing our new vegie garden. The chook dome was made from materials that we had on hand always watching what little money we had. This vegie garden is a whole story within itself.