ABOUT
Hi I’m Sarah the Gardener
I live on a small 3 acre lifestyle block in the Waikato in New Zealand, with my family: Hubby the Un-Gardener, Tim the Helper and The Joeyosaurus, Toast the Cat, Sweetie and Snowy the Goats and a constantly changing population of chickens and more often than not more than one rooster, and the occasional pair of lambs.
We moved to the country from the heart of Auckland City and went from crowded suburbia to our dream rural lifestyle in 2007. We were very much city slickers, with a strong desire to become country folk. We have settled in well and are slowly transforming our land into our paradise, but good things take time. The first priority was to get the veggie garden and orchard up and running. The garden is starting to get there and provides most of our annual vegetable needs. As for the rest of the property – well let’s just say the city slicker shine still glows brightly on occasion!
We are smack bang in the middle of dairy country and our land used to be a swamp. It was drained in the late 1800s although when they had a whole new country to explore; why they would drain a swamp seems to defy logic! The upside is the soil is awesome for growing stuff in, the down side of is it tends to flood after heavy rain in the winter. I’ve seen carrots float away before!I discovered a love of writing about the trials and tribulations of my garden and my country life through a blogging competition organised by Yates – the most respected seed company in Australasia. Once the competition ended I found I couldn’t stop writing so I kept on writing whenever and where ever I could.
Then something really exciting happened. The blogs I had written for the blogging competition have been turned into a book. A proper one! It’s called “The Good Life – four glorious seasons in my country garden” and is published by Harper Collins and sponsored by Yates. Such an honour. Now there is another book on the way and so many other exciting things are happening too. I think now it is safe to say that my gardening and my writing has become my career. Not bad for a city slicker!
Come again soon – who knows how far this journey will take us, but it will be a bit of hard work, a load of fun and if the past is anything to go by then it will have more than its fair share of surprizes. We have well and truly settled into our area and have a wonderful place in our local school and church community and continued to be blessed everyday with such amazing opportunities and friends and growth. Come along with me, I have a feeling we are just getting started!
Sarah the Gardener : o )
