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Welcome to 2023! We’re now a month in and already well past new year’s resolutions and wishing everyone a happy new year.
But it has been a while since I was at the blog helm typing my thoughts away and I miss just sitting here and writing.
In starting – Happiest of New Years for 2023 and I hope the year has started off with a bang for you! Not in the literal sense of course, but moreso the sense that the year has started well for you.
Selling our current homestead and starting FIRE
In late 2022 we decided we would move back to our first homestead. I have mentioned it a little on social media and done a brief video about it, but I wanted to just mention it again.
Financially, we stand to be in a very, very good position by selling this homestead. This was always part of our fiscal plan, so it isn’t new to us. But finance and money are one of those ‘taboo’ subjects it seems and anytime you mention it there’s either someone trying to compete with you or someone telling you that you’re greedy because they don’t have what you have.
We have been working for many years to achieve FIRE (Financially Independent, Retire Early) with both my husband and I working really hard during this time to be able to earn the best money possible to achieve this goal. If you don’t know about FIRE, there are a lot of resources out there, so I won’t waste precious space here talking about. But in basic terms – it’s living frugally for a set period of time, making good investments, saving and paying down debt to achieve financial independence. We have semi achieved this, with my husband ‘retiring’ from the workforce in 2020, and me hopefully hitting that target this year!
And part of the course of those events is selling this property. As we’ve never rented this property, it stands to make pure profit with no CGT implications (CGT is capital gains tax which is a tax you pay to the ATO on any profit realised on an investment. Housing, shares – they’re all subject to CGT but for housing it only applies to properties you have rented out not your primary place of residence).
So, when we looked at where we were at, we realised that we could very easily sell this property and pay out debt on multiple properties we own with money left over. We have been lucky and worked hard to buy investment properties early on in our journey, when interest rates were low and property prices were also low. What we have in debt across 4 properties most people have on one medium home, for comparison.
This isn’t a new idea. We discussed this in 2021 going into 2022 but it wasn’t the right time then. But it came to me one day after thinking about it non-stop for a few days and when I proposed the idea to my husband, he was all in.
And this is why we decided that we would go down this route. Our life is at the stage where we are ready to pivot and start focusing on next steps, and so there is no need for us to continue to wealth build when we are earning passive income through rental income, share dividends and the like.
We’ve been working hard now for weeks getting ready for listing. We will be privately selling this place to maximise what we can make in sale. We are already about 50% moved over, and this week the insulation and ceiling in the living room are being finished at the other property meaning we can finish the move hopefully by the end of this week or early next week.
Staging comes in hopefully the week after, and then photography and listing!
It certainly has been a busy time and one we didn’t think would happen. But I do believe it happens for a reason and sometimes – often time – we don’t understand what that reason is at the time.
This year’s blogging and vlogging structure
Last year it got increasingly harder to stick to a schedule due to so many factors. But I do prefer a schedule and will get into more of a concrete schedule once we get shifted over.
That said, last year I used to do a weekly round-up post on the blog which I will now switch to social media instead, highlighting anything interesting and fun throughout the week in a carousel post.
For the blog, I’d like to move to maybe 2-3 posts per week instead. I don’t know whether they’ll be theme set – I do think maybe one needs to be theme set each week, but it may be something different like homesteading tips or hacks or something. I haven’t thought it through much as I am still needing to do research on other blogs to see what they’re doing.
For the vlog, I am sticking to weekly vlog uploads and shorts throughout the week. It has been hard doing edits as I use my ipad prod 2nd gen which is technically old tech now and have been waiting to buy my Apple Mini or Studio. It’s just a matter of picking the correct model that will give me the longevity and processing power I need, and a much better version of iMovie!
I am feeling a bit deflated with social media lately and feel as if I am not connected. I haven’t been posting or developing as much content as I got into the habit of doing, and so haven’t had much growth either. But I do also understand that there was an algorithm change amongst that and I was also focusing on growing my other social media profiles in preparation for being off work for the next two months as those social media profiles relate to other businesses I want to start.
But in general – I just feel a lack of connection. I feel like I don’t fit with many people or am only seeing the same things over and over that doesn’t really interest me. Someone I used to see a lot of posts for, who I have been following for ages now barely comes into my feed, yet they have a growing following of 10,000+ followers at this point and should be in my feed.
I dunno – I just feel as if there is fragmentation and I don’t know if that’s me or something happening from social media.
Other homesteading news from the farm
I won’t ramble too much more as it is late and I just got on here to make at least one post for 2023!
In terms of our homesteading stuff, our garden burnt out in the first week of December, and in that meantime, we decided we were moving so I never did anymore summer planting. We finished the front tropical garden which we just need to mulch, and I’ve made a bit of a plan for what I want to do at the other homestead once we move.
Our chicken tractor finally got built and it ended up being even better than anticipated! Serge and his friend Kenny framed the greenhouse with wood to secure it, wrapped it in shade cloth and chicken wire and made two openings. one is an entry door and the second is a panel that can attach to the trailer so it can be moved around the farm. It is brilliant and I am beyond happy with how it turned out.
If you remember we started talking about this and building out some basic framing in July last year – Weekly round-up 10 July 2022 – Life on Milo’s Farm (lifeonmilosfarm.com) But we have since improved the design and made it much more user friendly.
We introduced some heritage chickens to the farm, with some gold and silver laced Wyandotte’s, some Barnevelders and Lavender Araucana’s. The Lavender Araucana’s have at least one rooster we’ve named Wyatt Chirp, and I think the Wyandotte’s have one we’ve called Remington. They’re about 4 months old now and will hopefully start laying soon. My intention in getting the heritage breeds was to start breeding our own hybrid egg and meat hens.
Once we get over to the other place and the garden is in planning, I may consider bring on some silkies or more Araucana’s and putting them into the garden area. I just saw Cog Hill Farm doing it for their potage kitchen and it works a treat. So, this is something on my to-do research list.
When we move over, we are building a huge barn, new stables, a studio for me, workshop for husband, and a big new arena. It’s going to be amazing once we get there and I simply cannot wait. So make sure you’re signed up for email notifications for new blog posts, and subscribed to us on Youtube and social media to get all the new farm updates.
I best be off, but it’s been lovely to write again, and I cannot wait to get into what 2023 will bring!
TJ
