The Challenge-Build A Tourist Establishment By Christmas !!!!

Last year I read about the funky frontyard farmer's friends challenge for themselve to survive a week on their own produce. While a week might seem a small time, it is not when it comes to producing all your own food! Of course the frontyard farmers succeeded , and in style ,by the looks of the photos. This family's journey appealed to me because they were doing something special, just changing the world a little at a time. They were also doing what I like calling  'throwing your hat over the fence' ... meaning that by throwing your hat over the fence  even though you can't walk any further , you push yourself to go further anyway because you must get to your hat.

For our family , we have set up our challenge over a course of many years, starting on our honeymoon 15 years ago where we said to each other , 'Let's have a bed and breakfast on our farm...' , we have been building ever since,with breaks when things like  babies were born and cattle prices were low. We never gave up though because we had published our decision in our hearts and it was all we ever talked about with family and friends as this dream developed.

 As time has gone on , our idea has changed as we have changed .Our 'bed and breakfast 'idea evolved to  become a place where people could learn to be self sufficient,where the stress of day to day living vanished, where children could find the joy in nature and maybe ,just maybe..... a  place to change the world a little bit at a time.

The thing is though , once you get to the finish line of something like this , it starts to get a little scary . You start wondering how it will go , will people like it , what if we  burn the breakfast etc...? We needed a challenge to get us to the homestretch . And now we have one , we have asked Jo and Joe to come and be our very first guests at 'The Little Black Cow Farmstay' in the beautiful Hunter Valley. So our challenge is to have our farmstay ready (we hope!! ) by the Christmas holidays and not burn their breakfast.

So in our posts over the rest of the year, you will see the last parts of the building, the creation of a perpetual vegetable garden , and little ideas that we might toss around and ask our funky frontyard farmer's friends to comment on to see if they would work. For instance , I keep telling my husband we should really get a duck....but he thinks 10 sheep,a pet cow, a goat, 2 ponies ,2 dogs ,4 chickens and a rooster and 2 rabbits are really enough for a farmstay.Don't you think we should get a duck???