I have not spent as much time out photographing as I would like lately due to some big changes underway. If you are not plugged in to the Methven grapevine you may not have heard that we have sold our house. We love living here but decided we want to be able to pack up and travel more easily. A house with 2 acres of garden is not very conducive to that idea! Having sold the house, we spent a lot of time deciding where to live but ended up realising Methven has everything we want: a great community, all the shops & essential services yet still retaining the small town ambiance, and a location central to all points of the South Island.
Having decided to stay here we looked for a smaller house to live and work from but couldn’t find the right combo so once again will go through the building process. I’m excited to be able to incorporate purpose-built printing room and studio space. We have found a great architect to work with and are at the early planning stage, expecting to take most of the year to complete the new property. We will live in a nice little rental cottage on a farm just out of town for the year.
With a disrupted year on the books we thought why not really mix things up. So we have ordered a large (25′) caravan that we hope to spend a lot of time in this year, doing a slow crawl around the island(s). NZ is not that big but there are endless little communities and interesting pockets of country dotted all over. We want to take the time to get to know as many of them as possible. And of course be photographing life and land along the way. I’m not sure what the end point for this photographic journey will be, but it will develop along the way.
I am hoping to connect with a lot of people on the road. This blog will be a lot more active than it has been, with updates of where we are and where we are going. So if you are somewhere near us and feel like sharing your part of paradise do get in touch, we will head your way. And if you have any suggestions for places not to miss, we’d love to hear those too. Here’s to an interactive tour.
We will be heading off in early March once we have fully moved out of our house and settled in to the cottage. I’m busy trying to figure out the best mobile internet solution because much of area we plan to go is not near cellphone coverage. If you have suggestions, please let me know.
All this means my other ‘regular’ work will be a bit disrupted during the year, but we will have short periods back in Methven now and then, so if you do have a project you need help with let me know. I might just need a bit more notice than usual.
Snow on Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill, mid summer
And for the visual of the day I have a photo I took just out of town this morning looking towards Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill. Yes it is supposed to be mid summer with harvest getting under way but fresh snow makes a joke of that. I am reminded once again why I class my 20 years farming as ‘character building’.