Renovations
6 Sep 2009
Renovations to our 80 year old farmhouse are complete and The Colemans are delighted to be back on the farm. Business is back to normal and our new office is up and running. The kitchen is a delight to cook in, and the bathroom is much improved! Past students are welcome to contact us to come and see the difference! All materials and appliances were purchased locally. We also now have 5 solar panels feeding back into the grid, utilising the solar rebate scheme. The house is also now well insulated and we are keeping a lot warmer in the chilly weather.
Many of you may know that we have had a difficult year. After emergency surgery to fuse the disks in my neck, in March 2008, we moved into a house in Leongatha to aid my recovery. Just as I was recovering...
Whilst teaching a PDC in Franklin, Tasmania in January 2009, Rick was badly injured when a tree limb fell on him, With 5 broken vertebrae, one completely crushed, broken ribs and a fractured lower vertebrae, as well as internal bleeding into his kidneys and lungs, Rick is lucky to be alive.
Rick was evacuated to The Austin in Melbourne. He was operated on with 5 vertebrae fused together with metal rods, and was transferred to Leongatha hospital for the next month. Rick has remained positive and has a good long term prognosis. He was determined to be up and teaching again as soon as possible, and returned to Tasmania on crutches and wearing a brace, for another PDC in April much to everyone's amazement.
It is a tribute to Rick's work on the farm that despite the heatwave and no one on the property for 4 months, it was dripping with fruit and I was bottling apples and peaches on the Black Saturday weekend. Rick is now walking unaided, and we are so grateful that he is alive and not paralysed, which at one stage was looking possible, as he had a bone shard on his spinal column.
We have had incredible support from friends in the permaculture community; a permablitz raised some garden beds and Rick plans to focus on our zone 1 garden for a while Our stall at SLF went ahead with a team of our friends, teachers and past students on the stall. We have had ongoing support on the farm with people staying, wwoofing and generally helping us out, as we had just started renovating our farmhouse 4 weeks before the accident.
We have moved back in to the farmhouse, and we are enjoying being back on the farm immensely. Rick is driving again, and has even done a number of consultancies in recent weeks. It's business almost as usual!
Thanks for all the support and good wishes from past students and the permaculture community, it has helped us greatly. We look forward to seeing some wwoofers to help us get our new raised beds ready for Spring planting, and there's lots of general work to be done!