Our Home - Now Sold
We have made the sad decision to leave our lovely six-acre paradise.....
We have recently been doing a major business-planning exercise, regarding the future expansion and
development of our New Millennium Essences business.
After much soul-searching, we have decided that we must, reluctantly, sell our home, and move up north,
to the Auckland region, for reasons of business development.
Note: Click on the picture above to see larger pictures of the outside of the house.
Our home is a comfortable four-bedroom, two-bathroom house, with lots of living space, on six acres of land,
in North Otago, New Zealand.
We are located out in the country, 20 minutes drive south of Oamaru and one hour's drive north of Dunedin, 6 km (5 minute's drive)
north of the small village of Hampden, which has a very good shop with postal facilities, a garage, pub, and an
award-winning fish-and-chip shop.
The house has a large covered-in porch area, on two sides, where we store a good supply of fire-wood, tools, chook-food,
etc. There is also ample indoors storage space, with a pantry (in addition to huge cupboard-space in the kitchen, and an additional
large cupboard in the foyer area, and a large walk-in cupboard (for linen, ete, whatever) in the living/dining room. Three of the
four bedrooms have wardrobes, two of them very large. There are a total of three toilets, one off the main bathroom, one
in the en-suite, and one in the workshop. There are plenty of outside lights all around the house.
Click on above picture to see a
slide-show of the rooms inside the house.
The property has been organically certified (transitional) since we have been here (two and a half years), and although
we recently dropped out of the certification system, it would be very easy to re-start certification, as we have all the
required records and paperwork, and have continued to manage the property according to the certification standards.
The property is fenced into 8 paddocks, plus three orchard areas, and two vegetable gardens (all well fenced).
All the paddocks have water-troughs for the stock, fed by plastic pipe, although presently the stock water system
needs some minor repairs. The stock fences are in excellent order.
Our house is an old farm-house, originally built in the 1920's, and extensively expanded and modernized, with the most
recent addition being a brand-new modern kitchen a few years ago. There are four bedrooms, three double and one single,
one with a very large walk-in wardrobe and en-suite. There are two living rooms, one being an open-plan with the kitchen,
a very powerful log-fire that also heats the hot water and with cooking-tops with room for five pots or kettles. The fire heats
most of the house in winter, and there is also a small pot-belly stove in the other living/dining room, though we have never
needed to use it, as the main fire is powerful enough. We have the right, under the clean-air policy of the Otago Regional
Council, to keep using the fires into the future, as our total land area is more than two hectares, and we are not in a town or village.
The kitchen has huge bench spaces, tons of cupboards and shelves, twin sinks, an under-counter water filter, a bench fridge
(as well as space for the usual large fridge) a modern dishwasher, twin eye-level ovens, range-hood, and a ceramic
wipe-clean type four-element stove-top built into the bench. There are also tons of power-points above the kitchen
benches.
The main lounge area has large north-facing ranch-sliders, opening out onto a good-size deck, with the adjacent
living or dining room also having french doors that open onto the deck. The single bedroom also has a door onto the deck.
We have immensely enjoyed living here, located out in the country, with no neighbours. We are surrounded by a
large sheep farm, and our property lies well to the sun, being on a very gentle well-draining north-facing slope. There are
well-established very mature hedges and trees all the way along behind the house, for protection from the southerly winds,
and more hedges and trees around the driveway and in the hen-run, etc. There is also a pine grove, and a hedge, that
protects the front half of the property from easterly winds.
Click on above picture to see a
slide-show of the farm sheds.
We have very large and extensive farm buildings, including a shearing-shed (complete with sheep pens and a shearing machine).
There are two chicken-houses, a fenced-in chicken run, a large farm workshop, a small animal-shelter type shed (suitable for
raising a few calves, etc), and a small sleep-out type room (not a legal bedroom).
The shearing shed/farm workshop has an adjacent stock-yard (for sheep) with drafting gates and a loading ramp (for sheep).
There is also a smallish workshop, near the house, attached to
the main garage (with its own toilet), a potting shed, and a roofed-over area for doing outside seedling and potting work.
The farm sheds and workshops all have power, and some have low-pressure water. There is also an outdoors power-point
in one of the paddocks, with a 3-pin socket inside a metal box and two flood-lights on a pole.
There are two garages, both fairly small, ie. garaging for a total of two cars, and a sweeping circular type driveway, with hedges,
shrubs, trees, etc, from the main gate up to the house. There are some lovely mature silver-birch trees on one side of the
driveway, and the main orchard area on the other side, with a huge old walnut tree and a good selection of mature fruit trees.
The property lies well to the sun, with the house build in a long rectangular shape, with one of the long sides facing due north,
with lots of windows to catch the sun, and a deck on the north side. We are on the end of a river-flat, which ends at the road, and
the front part of our property slopes gently up to the house. In other words, we are right at the start of the gently rolling country,
with the house, gardens and orchards on the gentle north-facing slope.
Click on above picture to see a
slide-show of the garden, orchard and driveway.
The mature fruit trees include about 14 apple trees, 5 apricot trees, one peach tree, one quince tree, 5 pear trees,
3 cherry trees, and about 17 plum trees. We have recently planted about a dozen new apple trees (old heritage
varieties), and a range of blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry bushes. There are also 6 old grape vines. The first fruit
is ready for eating in November (cherries), and the last (apples and quinces) is ready in May.
Most of the apples are varieties that store well (in boxes in the garage) right through winter and spring into early summer.
If you really push it, the last of the stored apples will last into December.
There is way too much fruit for the average family to consume, there is always a large surplus to sell or give away,
and of course we have a huge collection of bottled fruit in our pantry. The quince tree is a special asset, producing lovely
very large fruit, ideal for bottling, jam, etc, or they would sell really well, as they are large and very clean. The apricots are
really delicious, and sell really well, as well as being bottled, eaten raw, etc. The plums are an ongoing joy all through summer
including the 5 greengage trees, that produce tons of little green very sweet fruit, though they tend to be biennial in their
fruiting. The apple trees are very reliable fruiters, with a good range of varieties.
Click on above picture to see a
slide-show of the fruit trees.
We have put a lot of work into the fruit trees for the past 3 seasons. The weeds and long grass has been cleared from round
the trees, they have been fed with lots of compost, seaweed, etc, and heavily mulched. They have been pruned and sprayed
with an organic spray (essential oils and flower essences) that we have developed ourselves.
We have developed two large vegetable and herb gardens, one of which is surrounded with a rabbit-proof fence, and the
other is close-by the house. Our cat keeps the mouse and rabbit population in check. We have a few sheep (recently sold) to keep the grass
grazed, and a few hens for eggs, with a small surplus that we sell. The property could easily support several dozen hens, and
the eggs would easily sell in the local community.
Regarding water, we are on the local rural water scheme, with the water coming from the Waianakarua River, which has the
best-quality river water in Otago, according to the Otago Regional Council. There is ample water storage on the property,
with 3 water tanks
on the property, the main one being 30,000 litres. There is a very powerful water pump, that gives water of a good high pressure,
with a backup low-pressure system from a gravity-fed tank. There is also an old well on the property, which we have not used,
but the well has a water-right with the council and could legally be re-activated. There is also huge potential to collect rain-water
off the very large roof areas, but we have never needed to do that, as we have always had enough from the rural water-scheme.
The local climate is mild for this latitude, much warmer than (for example) Dunedin or Central Otago. We are 2 or 3 km from the
coast and for some reason it never snows here, and is often a few degrees warmer than Oamaru, being just far enough from the
coast to avoid the cold coastal breeze off the sea that Oamaru often has. We get less frosts that further south, and further inland,
and of less severity. We were able to grow early potatoes, planted in early August, and ready for eating by late November.
It is ideal here for growing potatoes, carrots, parsnip, beetroot, radish, silverbeet, lettuce, onions, garlic and similar.
We have also successfully
grown corn, beans, outdoor tomatoes, pumpkins and squash, and broccoli. We also have found that herbs grow really well here,
and we currently have parsley, chives, peppermint, lemon balm, sage, oregano, thyme, lovage, common mint and clary sage
all doing well. There is also a lot of dandelion, chickweed, puha and some nettle, that all grow wild, which we use in our
salads and cooking.
Every year, we have had hay cut in the paddocks, which we have sold to a local farmer for a profit of a few hundred dollars.
This past summer, we got 23 and a half of the very large round bales, plus plenty of scraps from around the corners of the
paddocks that we raked up by hand and stored for our own use. If there were no animals eating the spring-growth grass,
balage could also be cut in late spring, as well as hay later on in summer.
There is a Sky TV antenna on the house (which we have never used, but it should work ok), and we have a good internet wireless
broadband service for $30 a month, through a local small isp company. Telecom are intending to install a new broadband access
cabinet nearby within the next year, so we are told. The mains power supply is very reliable, we have never had any outage due
to storms, etc, since we have been here, of more than a few minutes. The phone is also very reliable, and there is excellent cell-
phone coverage from both Telecom and Vodafone, with full-strength signals.
And, here are some pictures of our abundant vegetable garden.....
If you are interesting in discussing with us the possibility of buying our country paradise,
or if you know somebody who might be interested, please
E-Mail us, at
,
or you are welcome to call us on (03) 439-4195 or (027) 231-2885.
The price is $290,000, which we believe is very good value for all that you get.
