A slight change of plans

It's been a few days since I last posted and there are some news. I have applied for a few jobs in Germany and responses have been good. So good in fact that I will be going to Germany for a week on the 6th of March.


I will go by car and take a few things with me, so am busy packing and planning. I have thaken book cases and shelfs apart, wrapped my wine glasses, packed boxes and put everythin on the table in the spare room. It looks like so much and so little at the same time.


Car will be packed in a weeks time and then it'll be a 13 hrs drive

Seedlings

With the pending move, i had to reconsider the plans for the garden, after all, I am moving in what i'd call main havest time.

So the garden will be reduced to salad, peppers, radish and tomatoes for the moment and some kohlrabi that will be planted a few weeks from now.

I started on the first few tomatoes and peppers this weekend and they are sitting in the windowsill now. 3 days down the line from when i planted them i can see the first green peeping through the soil.
Majority if not all will be eaten straight away, after all i cant move all of this to Germany. My mom will as always have plenty tomatoes for me to deal with once i get there and lots of fruit trees too. There will also be lots of beans which will aleady be canned so we will have some food for the cooler month ( more then i can produce in my coirt yard anyway)

Where will I move to?

The above is a view of Seboldshausen, the small village that I will be moving to.
Below is the house I will be moving into (circled in red)

Below is a floor plan of the house that I will move into. The house is a two story house which is split in an upstairs and downstairs house. The downstairs house was my first place that I lived on my own about 10 years ago. It has been rented out since then. My mom and brother live upstairs but the two houses are completely separate from each other with the garden shared. The garden is a good acre too but my mom already said that it’s getting too much for her, so it will be mainly me planting.



I have some plans for the next 5 years on some of the areas of the house that are without heating and insulation. For once I want to move the back door to the kitchen instead of having it in the outer buildings. I also want to add heating and insulation to the empty room that is currently used for hanging up washing in the winter and change it to a bedroom, with a hallway to connect it to the front hall/entry.

A very cold weekend

The weekend has been pretty cold with temperatures dropping to between 0 and -10C. Saturday it started snowing and it was an icy wind and at  times ice rain, way too cold to go outside. Sunday instead was milder, most of the snow was melted and temperatures went up to 0C.

I spwend most of my Saturday in bed with tea and reading very relaxing and it helped fight of the cold that was coming my way.

189 days - or - 27 weeks and 0 days

until I till permanently move back to Germany.

That might be a shock to many of you but it's something that I have considered and debated for the last 7 month already. Originally I had planned to move towards the end of 2013 but several things made August 2012 a much, much better prospect.

When I left Germany in December 2003, it was mainly because I was hearbroken from having had to leave the US, not wanting to deal with the culture and re-entry shock, wanting to find my own feet and seeing something of the world. I picked Newcastle because of the work offer that I received and had an amazing 7.5 years here. There are two main reasons why I stayed so long a) the amazing people and friends I made here and b) Convergys and both are very much interlinked with each other. To be honest if I had not been made redundant last year, I don't think moving back to Germany would have made it on the list until a few years down the line. Anyway, things happen for a reason and I found myeself as a person over the last few years and know that I want to continue the direction of homesteading and moving back to Germany will help me on this way.

So where am I going? I will be going back to Seboldshausen, a village with 250 inhabitants, nestled in the foothills of the Harz mountains, surrounded by rolling fields and woods. An amazingly beautiful place in the countryside.  

Privacy

Due to some plans that I do not want to share via the www yet, this blog will be made private as of Monday next week (this will be for a duration of 2-3 month only). If you want to continue to read, please comment or e-mail me your e-mail, so that I can add you to the list of approved readers.

Thanks
Anja