Escaping the city (part 2)

A big part of this whole shift for me is that I'm trying to live a greener more natural life and feel that living in the countryside will make that easier.

I've recently gone pescatarian (a vegetarian who eats fish & seafood). A big part of that change was because of the nausea that follows eating any large amount of meat and the subsequent stomach problems which followed. Now that I  am no longer eating meat, I am feeling a whole lot healtheir. And I am only eating fish about once a week, once every two weeks. Not daily.

I grow my own herbs and veggies in my back garden. I cannot wait to start a bigger veggie patch in my new garden. And I compost too. I'm hoping to get a worm farm to help with that.

Slowly but surely I'm finishing all the "chemical" cleaning products and beauty products and replacing with more natural ones. Things that are kind to animals, and environmentally friendly.

I do recycling too (wherever possible) although it's not easy when you live in an area with no recycling bins. Slowly but surely I'm greening my life.  This is going to be a long and interesting journey since I'm also cutting out processed food. Guess I need to learn to bake bread and everything as I progress down this road.

If I find nice easy recipes, I will post them here or post links if they're from other websites. I love the vegan dad blog.

Escaping the city

Over the last year, I have been getting a feeling that I need to go and sit on a mountain for a day or two. Due to pressures at work, budget and various social happenings, I still haven't gone and hung out in the mountains for a weekend.

This has led to an ever increasing sense of paranoi with regard to my life in the city. I want out and I want out now. Eventually by January 2010, this feeling had led me to fly down to the Eastern Cape to look at houses in Haarlem. I have found my dream home.

Ok - to be completely realistic here, there is quite a lot of work to be done before it's in the state that I see it. But it's on 4300 square metres of land and it's a beautiful old Karoo house. I just love it. I had my moments of doubt where I wondered what on earth I would do with a 5 bedroom house, but I definitely know it's the right thing for me. I've even found uses for all the bedrooms (and am now wondering about turning the ceiling into a loft to give me another room).

I'm now waiting on the purchaser's of my house to get their bond approved. And also waiting on the valuation of the new house to be approved (my bond has been granted subject to valuation and sale of my house).

Which leaves me in the position of chewing nails while I wait and wait... and wait some more.