Our eco life

By Katie: Here is a totally non-technical update of what the kids and I get up to in Atamai. The kids enjoy playing outside a lot of course. There are plenty of trees to climb, dirt to dig in, bikes to ride, bulldozers and diggers to watch. During the summer we were spending one morning a week helping out in the orchard and community gardens. We still do sometimes, but have not been so regular as the weather has become colder. We have spent a few days making cheese, either with Tracey and her 3-yr-old William or just by ourselves. So far, I have made successful feta, ricotta and have just tried Camembert (too early to tell whether that has “worked” yet). We have tried out a lot of playgroups in the area, mostly homeschool ones. There are a lot of homeschoolers around, especially here in the Motueka Valley (as opposed to Motueka itself) because it is a bit further out of town. There are 3 groups we are involved in currently but they are all a bit irregular, there are u

Greetings fellow readers, We are gearing up to move to the "soon to be ours" land at Atamai eco-village. We finally decided which land parcel we were interested in, and it turns out Katie and I preferred Lot 6 the most. You can see the lot numbers here is Atamai's stage one development. Katie and Alysha standing in the middle of Lot 6, westerly views to the distant mountain ranges in Kahurangi National Park. Here is a view looking at a north western view, encompassing Lot 6. Being the early birds here we could choose between Lots 5, 6 or 8. Lot 8 has amazing views but Lot 6 has a larger platform and more privacy nooks, as well as two stream boundaries - making it the choice for us. Lot 5 was taken off the market so it can be enhanced further. This includes an additional platform and a horse shoe lake. However this meant that we weren't able to afford it because of the increased price tag - dang! Easements are currently being registered with LINZ, and