Welcome to Books and Chooks!

23 February 2020

Welcome to the first post of Books and Chooks.

Last week we finally received the building permit that lets us get started on some renovations to a converted milking shed in central Victoria (Australia). This blog is going to chronicle the building work, and beyond, as the Love of my Life (LOML) and I move towards a new phase: retired folk with a few acres, keeping chooks and revegetating a paddock or two.

In between times, I’ll chat about what I’m reading, and what I’m knitting.¹

As this is the first post, here’s some introductory background to the Chooks theme. Spoiler alert: there are no chooks (yet).

A couple of years ago, we bought a small hobby-farm, with a lovely old farmhouse, some sheds, and a little “cottage” – where I gather the house-cow was milked and the milk was churned. There’s a photo of it above, taken on a chilly morning last winter.

When we bought the property, the cottage had been converted into a one-bedroom residence with a carport. In it, there lived a hunter and a couple of stuffed boar heads, compete with tusks. Well, one had tusks. Perhaps the other was his beloved. Who’s to know. By the time we got the keys, both were gone, but a healthy infestation of carpet beetles remained. I don’t like excessive use of chemicals, but there was really nothing for it but to set off a bug-bomb and stay away for a few days. That sorted that.

We’re not ready to move for a couple of years yet, so we have rented out the farmhouse and the two biggest sheds, and we visit as often as we can. Until the cottage was gutted ready for the renovations, we stayed there, and that will be our base again once it’s done.

The building plans that will feature in future posts involve a facelift, a free-standing pergola to the front (facing the road, eastwards) and a sheltered deck to the back, which looks west across the paddocks and down to a creek that as far as we know either runs dry or floods. We haven’t yet seen it in flood but I’m sure the time will come.

Inside, we’re enclosing the carport to make a second bedroom, removing part of the central wall to open up the living space, and removing the living area’s ceiling to create a vaulted ceiling. The bathroom will stay as is, apart from a bit of a repaint and maybe a new ceiling. The living space will be flipped around so that the current kitchen/lounge will be just lounge, and the sunroom (for want of a better description) will become kitchen/sunroom opening out on to the decking.

And from the deck, as well as the paddocks and creek, there’s a view of a couple of big eucalypts and…the old chook shed!

¹If I was a crocheter, I could have named the blog “Books, Chooks, and Hooks” but I’m not. “Books Chooks and Knitting Needles” doesn’t have the same rhythm. And I don’t cook, so there’s no need to go there.