How our Sustainable Small Farm™ Christmas differs from a city family's

Our Christmas was spent harvesting food. No break for us. It was a cold morning for Christmas (8 degrees) and we had to bring in the wood and light our rocket stove, as  a bonus we heat our water and cook our breakfast on it. If we don't grow our food and bring it in we don't eat and have to buy the poison food from the shops – something we are determined to avoid, so today we harvested some bounty, I harvested: Potatoes, beetroot, Giant Russian garlic, 2 globe artichokes, and a handful of wheat, chives and fennel. Then we both picked fruit: 830g Black currants, 164 raspberries, 48 youngberries, 12 silvanberries, 13 loganberries, 2 marionberries, 4 blueberries, 1Kg of sour cherries, 4 strawberries and 1.6 Kg of red currants.

We harvested this as well as watered all the gardens (twice today as it was windy and I've got seeds in) and Lisa cooked our Christmas lunch. Lisa made a Christmas present of sugar-free raspberry cordial for our good neighbors over the road and dropped it by. After lunch, Lisa collected the eggs and cleaned the chooks' water and I thinned some red gravenstein apples and fed two buckets of them to the sheep. Then I refilled the water drums from the top tank off the shed – we water the gardens by hand at the moment with watering cans and bucket our water to the cabin for drinking and washing dishes. We're not complaining – we like doing this. Before enlightenment chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water. It's very Zen. There's something nice about it too. We use less water to grow all of our food than a city household uses normally without growing any of their food. What can you say? The proof is not in the Christmas pudding, the proof is in the doing.

This is how we live, in nature, dependent on her and the sweat of our bodies for our food, it doesn't just get bought at a shop 20 minutes away by doing some office job for some, often disreputable, company or the government. It is hard won, not easy, made harder by the harassment we get just trying to do the right thing – BUT that doesn't mean we stop doing it, stop living this way, stop doing the right thing. We live self-sufficiently, sustainably, honourably. We try like hell.

So please – when you think of moving to the country and being self-sufficient – don't think it's the easy life, the simple life – there's not much simple about it. It's not easier than city life, far from it it there is a lot to learn how to do, a lot to overcome and put up with (fight against even). It's not that simple but it is good. The good life. That is, when you've learnt how to become a country person and “re-wilded” your heart. When you've survived on what most city people waste and listened to them telling you how you can be sustainable when you've lived it for 20 years while they've never grown more than a tenth of what they eat and made none of the products they “need”. I'm not meaning to offend here – I'm just telling it like it is. The truth. We really are sustainable. We're the real thing. We don't get days off unless we have a friend who can feed animals and water our vegie gardens for us. We sacrifice our holidays for our beliefs, to be sustainable, to walk the talk. We celebrate every day we are alive because we know what we work for and fight for, and we know how good it is. We love this way of life. Despite all the hardships that make it difficult to do. Despite it being a lot easier to live in the city and conform.

In the morning we have the “good morning world” songs of the small birds, the fantails, fairy wrens and others. During the day we hear the magpie, crow, and yellow-tailed cockatoos with the whistler in the late afternoon. Wallabies run for cover as I go on an early night slug hunt to keep them from eating my beans and potatoes, and the owls bring the curtain of night down. Go to bed and let me be – I'm hunting mice and frogs. The world is good.

Then we do it all again the next day, and the next after that, with variations and mountains, valleys and seasons. Trees and fresh air, rain, hail, snow, sun and cloud. Tears, laughter and love. A real life.

So, as you can see, our Christmas on the farm is a world away from a city person's. We wouldn't swap though. Would you?

Merry Christmas from us all on the farm.

Tassie Tigers need keep their strength up. "Fezzy-boy Moo" needs rest and sunshine!